ÄGAPĒ

Built around the dancefloor

Founded by Andrés Daza, ÄGAPĒ grew out of the Brooklyn parties he began throwing after moving to New York. More than 120 events later, it has evolved into a promoter and label with an increasingly prominent place in New York's techno landscape.

The philosophy has remained refreshingly simple: put the dancefloor first. Good music, powerful sound and rooms where people can lose themselves in the night without distractions.

Each resident has carved out a niche of their own, with hidden gems scattered throughout their catalogues, but together they share an instinct for music with depth, tension and enough physicality to hold a dancefloor.

We watched this one grow

We bought our first ticket to one of these nights in early 2023, back when they were still throwing parties as Rave Culture at The Brooklyn Monarch.

At the time, it was simple: a soundsystem, a dark room, minimal production and a crowd that came to dance. But those nights became an important part of our own journey through techno. ÄGAPĒ helped pull us from the harder, more immediate side of the genre toward the deeper and more underground corners we have come to love.

New York has a way of eating promoters alive. Parties appear and disappear just as quickly. ÄGAPĒ kept evolving: bigger bookings, bigger rooms and more ambitious collaborations, while continuing to build around the community that got them there.

What they bring to New York

And in a city where the promoter can say as much about a night as the venue or headliner, that matters.

They gave François X his first New York booking, joined forces with 240 KM/H and Adrián Mills to bring Face 2 Face to New York, and worked with Amsterdam's Intercell on its NYC debut.

Their programming has also never stayed confined to one interpretation of techno. ÄGAPĒ became a bridge between Brooklyn and a new generation of European rave culture, bringing over the faster, harder and increasingly genre-blurred sounds reshaping dancefloors across the continent.

Across their lineups you will find schranz, industrial and hard techno alongside groove, hypnotic sounds, hard dance, bounce and artists rooted in techno's more traditional foundations.

Good programming does more than serve existing tastes. It expands them. By moving across techno's wider spectrum, ÄGAPĒ creates space for ravers to discover beyond what they already know. Sometimes one unfamiliar sound, on the right system, is all it takes to send you down a new rabbit hole.

Same premise, bigger rooms

Fast forward to today and the scale looks very different.

Their parties have moved through Signal, 99 Scott and Refuge, where ÄGAPĒ's dancefloor-first ethos meets arguably one of the best sound systems in New York. Next comes their biggest undertaking yet: ÄGAPĒ Festival, a multi-day techno festival at Industry City.

The rooms, bookings and production have all gotten bigger, but the premise hasn't changed: well-organized raves for people who came to dance. Five years of getting that formula right has earned ÄGAPĒ something harder to scale, trust.

ÄGAPĒ's identity is shaped by more than the headline bookings. At its core is a four-person resident roster, each bringing a distinct perspective to the dancefloor.

@nimal, Diossa, Johannes Schuster and Junkfile operate in different niches, but collectively they are shaping up to be a serious force within New York's electronic music scene.

Junkfile

ÄGAPĒ's musical identity starts with Junkfile, the Colombian-born, New York-based DJ who founded the platform and remains one of its residents. His sets favor fast, rolling techno where groove carries more weight than brute force, propulsive and physical, and the floor stays moving. He built his footing in New York through rooms including H0L0, Elsewhere, Bossa Nova Civic Club and 99 Scott before ÄGAPĒ grew around him.

His development as a producer has increasingly taken him beyond the platform he created. Earlier releases on So-Tight were followed by Subphase on Berlin label BCCO in late 2025, and in 2026 he joined BCCO for a date in Berlin. The catalogue is starting to stand on its own, next to the collective he built.

New Brvtalism No. 402

Diossa

Colombian-born and New York-based, Diossa works in the faster reaches of hypnotic techno, where repetition drives the set. Loops are given time to settle before percussion and texture accumulate around them, and the pressure keeps rising. She came up on a wider selection, techno alongside afro house and indie rhythms, and that percussive instinct still runs through the harder material. It has taken her from New York to HÖR, ADE and Colombia's Baum Festival.

Her production work follows the same rhythmic focus. Oberon reached Beatport's Hypnotic Techno top twenty, followed by releases on Therefore Records, while her HÖR appearances have brought the project to a much wider audience. She is now extending that identity through Obsidia Records, a label of her own built around the same groove-led, introspective approach.

_nevs, July 2025

Johannes Schuster

Johannes Schuster arrived at hard dance through a longer route than the genre's recent surge might suggest. He began collecting and playing vinyl at 15, later becoming a resident at Cologne's Artheater and its acid-techno series 303 before joining Unreal in 2021. That history still comes through in his sets: industrial weight and harder contemporary rhythms are offset by bouncy grooves, rave acid, old-school swing and flashes of melody, giving his sound a sense of movement that keeps the harder edges from feeling one-dimensional.

His catalogue stretches across Soma, Green Fetish, NineTimesNine, Märked and others, while he also runs his own imprint, 7E6D. His relationship with ÄGAPĒ has since developed into a residency. In May, the party handed him The Chocolate Factory for a seven-hour open-to-close set, giving him room to stretch beyond peak-time intensity and show the full range of a sound that can be just as playful and bouncy as it is hard-hitting.

Main Floor, Gotec Club

@nimal

Trance is only part of the picture with @nimal. The New Jersey producer draws from industrial EBM, 80s new wave and gothic synthwave, filtering the nostalgia and emotional introspection of classic trance through the aggression of a new generation. The melodies still reach for something euphoric and inward-looking, but harder drums, colder synths and a more physical intensity give them a distinctly contemporary edge.

That tension has gradually become his signature across releases including Nothing Personal, Dancing to Your Decline and the newer Keep Quiet. It is a refreshing take on trance, one that reaches back for the emotional core of the genre and gives it a new set of teeth.

_nevs podcast, Sky Stage Brooklyn

Upcoming

For the data nerds

The dancefloor-first ethos shows up in the data. Ravers who logged an ÄGAPĒ night on Mondaysover typically hit 17k steps, 23% more than the typical New York rave, at 14k.

Small proof that the philosophy extends to the people who fill the room.