The walk to the venue is a long one, but it’s worth it. Surrounded by friends, early twenties, glistening with sweat, a young man takes a pill, he calls this pill “molly”. This pill is MDMA. Guided by glow sticks, the road becomes a forest, and the forest becomes a cavern. Slowly, a thumping rhythm reverberates through the cavity. The venue is illegal, an underground building repurposed into a rave, a new party and dance sensation reaching its peak. The year is 1990. Soon, the tunnel gives way to a massive facility, thousands of people swaying and jumping in unison.

The music is heavily borrowed from the disco and funk of the years before, and it’s revolutionary. Electronic sounds have just been developed and tamed, and are now being mixed with anything DJs can get their hands on. New dance is developed alongside this new form of music called Jumpstyle and Hakken, both originating in Western Europe.

Soon, new musicians begin to make names for themselves, taking the crowns from the former artists and creating new concepts for people to latch onto. Samples become normalized, and a new age of music dawns.

It’s now been around 30 years since what many would consider to be the “peak” of this rave culture, and the artists who were born out of this era are now in a tricky situation. The popularity of this culture associated with underground electronic music has now transferred into the rap scene.

Recently, musician 2hollis was shot into the mainstream as a result of opening for rapper Ken Carson on his recent tour. 2hollis was influenced heavily by the 90’s surge of rave culture. His mom, Kathryn Frazier, is the founder of the PR firm Biz 3, which manages the likes of The Weekend, J. Cole, and Daft Punk. She also co-owns a record label with Skrillex, an artist that popularized dubstep coming into the 2000s. But this advantage wasn’t exploited, all of his music has relatively no features, aside from some earlier projects which can be recovered on Youtube and Soundcloud. His music is not only reminiscent of the rave culture, but mean and explosive, and it doesn’t look like he’s going to leave the scene any time soon.

Another prominent artist is The Hellp, a two-man group by the names of Noah Dillon and Chandler Ransom Lucy. Their music is profoundly creative and is combined with wildly enthralling music videos. Their latest project, “LL” is produced with such care that each song seamlessly connects to the mood they are trying to convey. It’s easy to imagine them taking over from artists such as Charlie XCX.

The thing is, all these artists are slowly weaving their way into the mainstream, and there’s no better time than now. It’s a bitter pill to swallow, but artists aren’t beating themselves anymore. Tyler, The Creator’s “CHROMAKOPIA” was ultimately less of a coherent project, and Kendrick Lamar’s “GNX” was aiming to be one of the biggest albums of the year, but they just aren’t hitting the mark like the last time. It’s not to say the music is bad, it just isn’t as big of a change to be a prominent success. That’s where these new artists come in.

The artists and sounds that have defined the last few years of music are gradually descending from their thrones, and that dead electronic sounds of the 90’s and early 2000’s is now rising, as a frankenstein, to be reborn in a modern conext.