Floating Points, Orbital, Boiler Room & More to Play a Repurposed L.A. Supermarket

Expanding on their track record of throwing dance-music events in singular spaces around Los Angeles, dance music event promoter Stranger Than has announced it will soon host a series of shows in a repurposed supermarket.

The space will serve as a temporary venue for a four-month run of shows happening September through December, with the lineup thus far featuring parties by Boiler, Carl Craig and Moodymann performing as Detroit Love, Floating Points, Orbital, Luciano, Nico Moreno, Adam Ten and Mita Gami, an afterparty for the Mayan Warrior crew’s Oct. 26 show, a Daytime Warriors party and an event from the Pizzaslime collective. Additional programming will be announced in the coming weeks.

The space, a former California Market in Koreatown, can hold between 1,200 to 3,200 attendees and has also hosted traveling exhibitions. Called The Supermrkt, the venue was soft-launched as a dance space this past May with a 14-hour set from Gordo that started at 6 a.m. and ended at 8 p.m., with organizers planning to continue these daytime hours for some of its upcoming shows. Daytime shows will capitalize on the building’s unique architecture and natural lighting effects courtesy of the sun, while also offering a workaround to the city’s often truncated club hours.

“With L.A.’s time restrictions, it’s really become the city of daytime parties,” Stranger Than founder Tal Ohana tells Billboard. “In the dance music world especially, we find it’s hard for attendees, DJs and ourselves to keep up with the rest of the world’s electronic music scenes where clubs stay open until the morning hours.

“While we can still have eight-plus hour daytime parties in open air parks and outdoor spaces with large dance floors,” he continues, “permitting and neighborhood compliances make it difficult to really tap into the early morning parties that are found in other electronic hotspots globally. With the new space, we wanted to introduce this element to L.A.’s party scene.”

Ohana adds that this flexible schedule will also allow multiple events to happen in the venue during a single day.

The Supermrkt follows Stranger Than shows that have happened at locations including Cabrillo Beach and downtown’s El Pueblo de Los Angeles, with the team focused on unique locations for one-off shows that have been almost entirely outdoors. That changes with The Supermrkt.

“Indoor locations for one-off events at large capacities are very difficult to come around in L.A.,” says Ohana. “There are many safety requirements and regulations that are hard to find for a property with one large room that is also available and empty for production of this type.

“The Supermrket provides a large indoor event space, unique architecture and most importantly a venue that is naturally beautiful for both day and night events,” he continues, adding the venue “will provide a space that is thoughtfully curated towards our house and techno music scene, more specifically aiming to provide elements not typically found in L.A. for fans in the lane.

And after years of producing one-off around town, Ohana says The Supermrkt is “absolutely is a precursor to a permanent venue by Stranger Than.”