323 AM- FIGURES OF ENERGY EP

PHOTO WORK BY ADAM RINDY

DESIGN & LAYOUT BY SAISH KOTECHA (SRK3)

323 AM is the sound of Los Angeles after-hours raves: deep, rhythmic, energized, and full of surprises.L.A.-native Brian Baeza has been helming warehouse parties and beyond in his beloved hometown as 323 AM since 2014 (and began DJing back in 2006). His sets are a trip to the liminal space where your younger self once sat passenger side, windows down, as your cool older friend played a mix CD that changed the way you heard music.

His seamless blend of house deep cuts and classics, dreamy ambient tunes, banging beats and groovy remixes, with an ear to surprise and delight, feels both familiar and unknowable, where music is the force propelling us forward. His sets are made for dancing, for losing and finding yourself and rediscovering a pure, untainted love of rhythm. Baeza is all about creating inclusive environments where dancing, music and freedom are at the forefront. He’s been throwing parties for the past 15 years, and co-founded underground house L.A. label Low Recordings with Andrew Ramirez in 2019, where he’s a resident DJ. (Noteworthy events include 1-800 Girls’ L.A. debut, Bogota’s Felipe Gordon, a Frank & Tony reunion, and Lefto and JRocc’s only two B2B house sets.)

Low’s impact and sound reach far beyond L.A., with releases from Detroit’s Rick Wade and Atlanta’s Byron the Aquarius, alongside local talent from Lyon, South Africa, Melbourne and, of course, the City of Angels. Their stellar taste for world-class electronic talent is evidenced by bookings of Bianca Oblivion, Demuja, Travis Holcombe, and DJ Nobody for their first party series, Forward Rhythm (launched in 2015). “My artist name 323 AM is very much a nod to Los Angeles, the 323 area code and the energy of dance music in the middle of the night—the feeling of being in a room full of like-minded people experiencing electronic music in a pure form,” Baeza explains. “That’s why I love DJing, hearing the track on a loud system.”

In September 2026, with two decades of DJing under his belt—the last 10 of which he spent honing his production chops—323 AM released his debut EP, Figures of Energy. The four tracks represent a new era for both Baeza and Low, as they relaunch Forward Rhythm as a sublabel home for electronic music that colors delightfully outside of the lines of house.

Figures Of Energy represents a culmination, a dreamy 16-minute distillation of Baeza’sexpansive yet nuanced vision of electronic music—and he has plenty more up his sleeve. It’s filled with nods to his influences—among them, Flying Lotus, Axel Boman and Justice—yet feels fresh and distinctly him. It offers a succinct, enticing taste of his genre-blurring flavor of dance music that samples from beats, house, glitch, ambient, experimental and beyond. The music is meant to be enjoyed on a dancefloor or in nature, its rich textures heightened in headphones while biking through the city or walking through a park, or felt in your body as it blasts through a good sound system.

His music is complementary to and an extension of his DJ sets—eclectic, rooted in house, up- tempo and forward moving. Stepping into the role of producer has allowed him to embrace his love of sampling and remixing, using Teenage Engineering’s EP-133 K.O. II sampler / drum machine to pay homage to house’s roots. Figures of Energy opens with the banging, shimmering “Keep The Love True,” a ripe sonic bed for 70’s soul singer Gloria Ann Taylor’s haunting voice (via a sample of “What I Want”). It sounds like a phantom voice being freed from the celestial motherboard, a distorted message simultaneously from the past and future. An upcoming bootleg edits package will showcase his skill at reimagining music for the dancefloor.

Baeza’s life is a richly creative one, rooted in the hustle and sunshine of L.A. Outside of music, he’s the Wine Director at beloved DTLA restaurant Manuela, and still finds time for his first love, photography. Since 2025, he’s hosted KCRW’s beloved Summer Nights party in Manuela’s courtyard.

Music has always been core to Baeza’s life, as he first found community at punk and hardcore shows as a teen, and soon after on the dancefloor. Baeza came of rave age at a pivotal time in L.A parties in the early aughts, from influential beats hotspot Low End Theory—“which changed my life,” he asserts—to Ed Banger’s French touch and bloghouse fêtes with the likes of Justice. He went from singing in hardcore bands to teaching himself to DJ, and never looked back. While far from a nostalgia trip, Baeza’s sound and spirit are influenced by these scenes that reshaped the way he hears music. He remains committed to Los Angeles; local dance scene, happy to hold up the next wave of Angelenos who want to dance. “I’ve always been excited about showing people new music,” Baeza says.

As Baeza steps into the next era and decade of his music career as a DJ and producer, he aims to keep doing what he loves by sharing more music with more people and throwing biggerparties that keep the spirit of underground L.A. alive. If your city or venue is ready for a dose of the sultry, creative and unexpected side of L.A., call on 323 AM to harness that late-night magic, no matter the hour.

~By Ana Yglesias, 2026