Ramsey Khalifeh
Late at night in Central Square, you can enter a musical world unknown to most Boston residents. The location is sent out by email just hours before the night is set to begin.
Partygoers have to bang at the door loudly for someone to open up. A staircase leads to a cavernous, pitch-black room, where the beat never stops, and repeats itself forever. Music is the medium in this shared space.
“In a society where we are so pushed away, we are so isolated and held apart and there aren't these third spaces where people can just be together, the dance floor and the trained rhythm does a lot of heavy lifting,” said Alfred Darlington, a professor at Berklee’s electronic production and design department.
In Central Square’s Subcentral venue, there’s over 100 sweaty bodies moving synchronously to the music. The sounds are layered, and the DJ controls when new sounds come and old sounds go. This is one weekend night at INFRA Boston, a new organization bringing people together to enjoy the sounds of techno music.
Victor Ribeiro, INFRA’s communications manager, understands the attraction to their shows. “I do think you can be hypnotized by the music,” said Ribeiro. Subcentral is one of the many different spaces INFRA has hosted shows. The group has arranged performances in more than eight different spots around the city, he said.
Formed in 2019, INFRA’s mission has been to pull the best of the genre from around the world, Ribeiro said. INFRA is booking talent from DJs who’ve performed in some of the culture’s most famous clubs in Berlin like Berghain, Tresor, and the KitKat Club.
(Image Courtesy of INFRA Boston)According to Ribeiro, Boston is a “transitional” city and the techno genre reflects that. INFRA, a team of four people, are all immigrants themselves.
“It is a hugely diverse group of people who are coming together,” said Darlington. “Electronic music is an international culture by far.”
Ribeiro related the struggle of movement and change typically prescribed to immigrants to the post-industrial landscape that birthed techno in the 1980s.
Now, INFRA’s ticket sales have increased significantly in the last year. According to Ribeiro, most of their shows sell out.
Berklee professor Darlington, who goes by the stage name Daedelus, recognizes the importance of electronic music for a diverse youth, highlighting its unique and essential ability to bring people together.
INFRA doesn’t stop with just hosting shows. They’ve realized the value of community associated with techno and have made the most of it. In their Lower Level space in Cambridge, they’ve hosted DJ classes and music production lessons too.
“We do really believe in this social scene, that it’s kind of like a utopia of the future,” said Ribeiro.
Darlington believes that more people in Gen Z today flock to electronic music
“They may not have an idea how the sound is operating or even where the sound lives,” said Darlington. “They just hear it off the speakers and so there is a moment there, this little suspension of disbelief, that the sound is happening at all.”
Darlington, who produces and performs electronic music, is active in shows around the city both small and large. Being on stage and watching shows too has helped Darlington get accustomed to the city, after moving here from Los Angeles before the pandemic.
“That’s one of the things that made me feel most comfortable and immediately welcome,” said Darlington.
This attraction to live electronic music has a reason, according to the science.
For thousands of years, music has evolved across all cultures. “It makes us feel a certain way. It's involved with social bonding. It’s involved with communication,” said Dr. David Silbersweig, chair of the Institute for Neurosciences at Brigham and Women’s. “It is a very important part of life.
Silbersweig has researched the effects of music and repetitive noise on the brain. The brain, according to Silbersweig, can become synchronized with the music.
“When something's repetitive, it can drive the brain or pace it. Certain neurons in the brain and the systems get synchronized with that frequency,” said Silbersweig. Many young people are unaware of how electronic music affects their mood, sensuality, and euphoria, among other things, according to him.
This repetitive noise can place people in an alpha state, according to Dr. Jessica Grahn, director of the Music and Neuroscience Lab at Western University. “We know that that kind of repetition is used in practice when people are inducing trance states or meditation,” said Grahn “That often involves a repetitive sound.”
The sort of frequencies outputted in techno and electronic music is also triggering much of the attraction to INFRA’s shows, as seen in the science.
“[These] frequencies can be associated with aroused attention,” said Silbersweig. “Sensory processing, motor control, memory, and you can even have what's called transient ripple pattern,” where it is involved in transferring memories and action plans
Grahn believes that the strongest evidence for the effect of music on humans is in the emotional domain “We use it for mood regulation and it works very well,” Grahn said.
Silbersweig believes this may be because of how music unfolds over time. Rather than a fixed state of art, music creates a set of expectations as it progresses. “Human beings are little predicting machines,” said Grahn.
It’s no wonder people are flocking to these shows.
“I’ve seen a lot of beautiful things happen at these events, and they’re not just related to people finding new friends,” said Ribeiro. “It’s people finding themselves.”