Move over to the dark side
Cloak & Dagger festival will tickle your goth soul
If the real world already feels too much like an unremitting sea of bleakness punctuated by violent, howling noise, perhaps this weekend’s inaugural Cloak & Dagger festival in downtown L.A. isn’t for you.
But what if two nights of heavy, goth-inspired music (a category that today transcends any particular sound) in a pair of old downtown theaters sounds like a respite from anxiety? Then this show — with headliners Jesus and Mary Chain, KMFDM and scores more — may actually be a security blanket.
“A lot of people want to avoid what’s going on in the world right now, so they’ll turn to music to escape real life,” said Adam Bravin, one-half of the electro-rock group She Wants Revenge and a co-founder of Cloak & Dagger. “We’re all surrounded by so much. Part of the reason the fest is so interesting is that we know people want to escape right now.”
The Cloak & Dagger fest, which will run late into the evening on Friday and Saturday, began as a literal manifestation of what’s always driven fans of eerie, mysterious music — the desire to inhabit a different world, one that felt more relatable and cathartic.
That’s what led Bravin (who, outside his band, also DJs as Adam 12 and is a fixture in both Democratic activism and the West Hollywood disco lounge Giorgio’s) to create the original Cloak & Dagger club night in Hollywood two years ago, with co-founder Michael Patterson.
The weekly night requires a “black card” membership to get in and comes with a drolly rigid dress code (guess what color is solely permissible) and a flair for immersive theater. Bravin was a hip-hop head growing up, and he saw the connection among ’80s and ’90s staples like Bauhaus and Siouxsie and the Banshees and modern hip-hop and techno with a melancholy kinship. For instance, the Weeknd sampling Cocteau Twins on a mixtape, or the Geto Boys as a gangsta-rap Misfits; that’s the world he wanted to live in.
“With goth clubs, you usually know exactly what you’re going to get, from the music to the fashion,” Bravin said. “But Wu-Tang Clan is dark, Mobb Deep is dark. Every genre has a dark side.”
The idea clicked with fans. Bravin and his team — the promoters Restless Nites and stalwarts Spaceland Presents — saw an opening for a new sort of festival at the Globe and Tower theaters downtown, one that could pair the techno-metal deconstructions of Health with the noise-rap tumult of Ho99o9 and old-guard goth supergroup Poptone.
An intriguing slate of young acts — the ethereal Chasms and Drab Majesty especially — keep the lineup cutting edge even as it nods to decades of goth lineage.
With the festival, the organizers wanted to match fans’ hunger for a deep dive out of our current circumstances with the flourish and intrigue of their exclusive club night. Additionally, expect some avant-garde haunted house vibes to further shake fans out of their present malaise .
They imagined Cloak & Dagger as “a way to get upset without the stress, a way to be nostalgic without aging” said Annie Lesser, who oversees the theater and production design elements of the club and festival.
“Immersive theater gives people a safety net,” Lesser added. “Day to day, we don’t know what’s going to happen. We’re constantly on alert. Here, there’s no danger of judgment while being vulnerable in public.”
That doesn’t mean the real world recently hasn’t intruded on the show. They quickly dropped headlining act Gaslamp Killer after allegations of sexual assault (which the artist has denied) began circling on social media the week before the fest. And some fans expressed concerns that the dual-theater format would result in them being locked out for big acts.
“We’re all fest-goers too, and everyone’s going to be able to see everything they want to see,” Bravin said.
But in the same way that the original goth movement took root at the height of Cold War anxiety, maybe there’s a reason why despair, anger and escapism seem suddenly relevant across all music genres. Bravin is self-aware about his adult-goth indulgences. But we all have reason to be frightened today, and for a few hours, Cloak & Dagger going all-in on that sensation might feel like a way out.
“You know, I still like things that appeal to that darker side of my personality,” Bravin said. “If you pay close attention to that and do the work, you can always end up somewhere else.”