Super Ego

I CAME TO in my favorite Dumpster a couple of Tuesday afternoons ago (the one behind Best Western on Seventh Street, that "Mediterranean-style oasis just a complimentary shuttle ride from cable cars!," according to its press materials – classy) with one thought on my mind: ouch.

It turns out the unchiropractical shoe box I'd been using as a pillow contained hundreds of discarded photos: eye-popping snaps of a jillion grinning, navel-flashing ravers in fuzzy bunny ears and prismatic jewelry, tripping over their loopy hemp belts to snatch at Intellibeams. The pics were packed in an envelope marked "THUMP 2000," from the days when San Francisco's most ubiquitous DJ technollective dominated the scene with their monthly 550 Barneveld blowouts and rudimentary flash-mobocracy.

Ping went my swollen brain. Why the hell am I still crashing in trash piles these days, instead of on shivering concrete dance floors, blanketed in a strawberry haze? When did a louche, disparate army of G-Star limp wrists suck the semilegal funk out of warehouse ragers and map-point rendezvous? Where are the tricked-out double-bubble Reeboks, twangy neon binkies, and fun-fur bras of yore? Whither Thump?

The short answer is it all half-ass exploded, shattering into a million online pieces. The Bay Area techno scene hasn't disappeared: it's just dematerialized.

"People say it's impossible to hear electronic music these days, but that's bullshit," Thump's Mason Rothert says. "The only thing we haven't done is walk into their fucking living rooms and plug their headphones in for them."

Rothert, an independent radio-head and one of Thump's founding members (along with DJs Brian McDonald and Jim Siegel; DJ Dutch came aboard later), came to the Bay Area from St. Louis by way of Tampa in '97, during the pandemonium of a techno scene going for baroque, before "the scene splintered and the clubs emptied out."

"We all grew up and realized that supporting the scene meant more than just throwing hundreds of parties for the sake of throwing parties alone. The wave of electronic music that's still sweeping up places like Brazil and Tokyo never really broke here. Hip-hop infiltrated every nook and cranny of America, but the techno scene oversaturated its core audience and never moved on. We ended up competing with ourselves. It takes 36 hours of hard work to set up a party. People burned out. But we're trying to fix all that," Rothert says.

Plus, he says, San Francisco became a tad unwelcoming to a movement it helped spawn. After Alice, 97.3 FM, booted Thump from its airwaves for "formatting reasons," the collective found a huge outlet in Los Angeles on KBIG, 104.3 FM, where they broadcast nightly in the prime-time slot. "We're on the largest station in southern California, and people are wild about us. It's crazy, but we're reaching people who normally would never hear this kind of music, and we're getting a huge response. I'm talking soccer moms and their little kids here. There's so much potential for electronic music's survival with that kind of commercial exposure."

In an era of genre-shattering market force fields, Thump got wise and diversified their portfolio, hooking their ever multiplying online tentacles into mainstream success. Thump Radio (www.thumpradio.com) is a virtual abecedarium of archived electronica, streaming DJ sets, customized players, XM satellite radio access, community interactivity, and recent vinyl peeks. A major-label release by Thumpster Didje Kelli and a deal with iRiver to download portable streams overnight herald more big-time breakthroughs.

It's not all raving in the cubicles, however. Thump may be acting globally, but they're still thinking locally – reaching out to music makers from the S.F. scene like Red Eye Foundation's Scott Quick and Fag Fridays' DJ Rolo to penetrate gay and deep house demographics, and starting a laid-back weekly "industry night" every Friday at Anú. They even dabble in the occasional nostalgic Barneveld one-off (with a chill-out room even!) – but in a typically diverse style.

"Our next party features a live band, S.U.N. Project, that's basically heavy metal psychedelic trance. Bring a helmet," Rothert says.

The same Hegelian predeterminism that posits a generation of couch-surfing slackers as a mashed-potato mountain awaiting the arrival of the Internet service sector could just as easily view Rave Nation as the John Williams bleep announcing another capitalist juggernaut's arrival. Well, beam us up, Scotty – but please leave one foot on the dance floor.

ThumpChill takes place Fridays, 9 p.m., Anú, 43 Sixth St., S.F. Call for price. (415) 543-3505.

Thump DJ showcase takes place third Fridays, Anú, 43 Sixth St., S.F. Call for time and price. (415) 543-3505.

Thump's next massive, featuring S.U.N. Project, takes place Dec. 10, 10 p.m.-6 a.m., Space 550, 550 Barneveld, S.F. $20. (415) 550-8286.