With roots in South America and international DJ experience, Luis Castellanos commits to cultivating an electronic music community in Massachusetts
Bright blue beams puncture the fog in the room. It’s Saturday night, and people are dancing with determination. The bass, loud enough to rip the air from your lungs, commands people to move. Some stand by the bar, nodding their heads. A few people in sunglasses bounce up and down. There’s a winter storm brewing outside, but this place is packed.
Through it all, one man is darting between different sections of the venue. He’s helping security with tickets, then he’s backstage behind Daniela Hensel, the DJ and main attraction for the night. Then, somehow, he’s behind the audience, holding his phone above his head and grinning. It’s the first time Luis Castellanos has shown his teeth all night.
The recipe for a Castellanos party is simple. First, book and fly out internationally-acclaimed talent. Next, secure a venue, keeping in mind that you will need to bring and set up your own equipment. Then you market the night for several weeks, mostly through social media and your own newsletter, and, finally, you charge anywhere from 20 to 25 bucks at the door. If nothing goes wrong, you barely break even.
That’s what weekends have been like for Castellanos for the past three years. He’s a member of the elusive Experience Collective, an independent grassroots outfit organizing some of the biggest raves in Greater Boston. Theirs is one of many independent promotion groups bringing their love of electronic music to a city with a largely lackluster club scene. Around here, the energy is underground, and with its enduring reputation and Instagram following, Experience Collective has become a powerhouse.
I meet Castellanos, 35, at his Brighton apartment off one of the quieter roads. He’s in the middle of a move and apologizes repeatedly for the mess. As we squeeze through the cramped walls, each floor plays a different genre of music. The first floor has a curtained-off studio where someone is rapping into a microphone. On the next floor, subtle electronic music leaks out from behind a closed door. Finally, we get to the third floor. It’s silent.
“Come in, bro,” Castellanos says, guiding me into his room. There’s incense burning in the corner. The place is empty other than two massive speakers next to a small monitor. Underneath, an audio mixer and a small keyboard are crammed on a makeshift desk. On a computer monitor, there is a spreadsheet open; Castellanos says it has info for nearly two-thousand partygoers, all subscribers to his newsletter alerting ravers about upcoming events.
He slouches back in his chair. The promoter’s thin face and shoulder-length black hair is tucked behind a snapback hat. He’s comfortable here at home base. The operation, which is responsible for some of the biggest electronic music parties in Boston, is partly organized right here in this small otherwise unremarkable room.
Before moving to Boston, Experience Collective was born and operating in Colombia, where Castellanos is from. Growing up in Bogota, he was surrounded by the city’s massive techno scene, which is much larger and louder than Boston’s, he noted.
One night in 2009, a friend invited him to his first party under those lights. That night, Castellanos saw a group of people dancing openly, wearing whatever they wanted. Through a drug-filled haze, he saw his future.
“I think [at] that moment, my life changed,” Castellanos said. “I saw a different life. … After that, I started going to parties, parties, parties. I decided to be a DJ.”
It’s difficult to get established as a DJ, and to find gigs and public support. While he was struggling at the beginning, someone suggested that instead of looking for gigs to play, Castellanos should play his own parties. He linked with business partner Mike Castellanos—they’re not related—and the two started organizing raves.
Together, the Castellanos’ have mostly worked with local artists and DJs in large warehouses. At first, they drew small crowds—from around 30 to about a hundred people. After a year, Experience Collective was attracting thousands.
The bigger the parties got, the more attention came to Luis Castellanos under his stage name, the Consciousness. That’s when he started touring South America.
By 2019, Luis made his debut in America starting in New York, then San Diego and Miami. During his last gig in Boston, he met Elizabeth Renda, a worker at the club he was performing at. The two hit it off and started dating. They later spent the pandemic together, during which time they talked about bringing the Colombian techno scene to New England.
“When I came here for the first time, there was no techno electronic music,” Luis said. “[There] was only one collective, one brand. … We decided to move to Boston because I think we can help to grow the techno scene here.”
Renda said that Luis is a catalyst of his own life. He takes risks, and leaves others wondering how he pulls things off. It all follows a pattern of unpredictability. While still living in Bogota, he graduated from law school, but never worked as an attorney. Renda said that he used his college tuition money to learn how to DJ in New York: “That’s just, like, classic Luis. … Like, how are you getting away with that?”
“He’s the kind of person who gets knocked down and will get back up again,” Renda said. “Luis is a dreamer. He’s always going to go after his dreams.”
Sometimes, Renda thinks it would have been much easier for Luis to just practice law. But his passion is for music and creating parties. Passion is a strong motivation.
The Experience Collective officially moved to Boston in 2021. Since then, it has hosted countless raves in the city. Despite having some success, Luis Castellanos longs for the music scene he grew up in. He used to be able to collaborate with different collectives in Bogota; now, in Boston, all he sees is ruthless competition.
With so much turf consciousness, clubs and bookers seldom work together. Luis recalled a time when he and his crew started booking bigger artists. An important agency that they were speaking with was told to avoid Experience Collective after receiving emails from other clubs and rival bookers questioning their business practices.
“That was a terrible experience,” Luis said. “For one moment, I thought all my reputation, all the things where I worked for so many years … was a little bit destroyed.”
In Boston, he added, “every group wants to just work alone.”
Before he started booking larger events in the city, the group kept it grassroots in the northern suburbs. Starting around Lynn and eventually moving to Everett, they hosted warehouse raves in a venue affectionately called the Junkyard.
Gabriella Bauer, a former neighbor, helped with some of the early Experience Collective parties. She recalled putting in lots of time, money, and energy. Bauer said that one time, while perimitering before an event, their decibel meter somehow wound up floating in a toilet. “I remember [Renda] at one point sticking her hand, or, like, seeing her whole half of her arm inside of a porta-potty,” she said.
Looking back, Bauer said they built their empire by standing out. After the pandemic, they were one of few independent collectives in the city with any influence. “They put it out like nobody ever thought,” she said. “They are the core. … I feel like that’s been forgotten.”
Luis stresses to think about his place in Boston’s nightlife and party scene. He wants the same kind of community that he experienced in Bogota. There’s hope, but there’s also waiting. Most nights, they don’t profit. The money gained from ticket sales is used to pay backstage crew and DJs. He dreams of a day where they’ll be able to book bigger artists and make better profits.
“Sometimes, we think [about] stopping the parties here,” Luis said. He described the events as investments into a budding electronic music scene. “I don’t know. Something in my intuition tells me, Continue, continue.”
The parties haven’t stopped in 2025. Experience Collective announced multiple shows for March, and with Renda moving to Miami, a techno hub in the US, they’ve launched Experience Minimal, which focuses on a subgenre of techno.
In his room, Luis plays some of his mixes for me. All unreleased tracks driven by heavy rhythm, sharp drums, and a transcendent hum. It’s techno. It moves your body, instinctively signaling something deep inside your nervous system to move. But then he cuts it short. I beg, but it’s just a sneak peek.
Luis still plays parties as the Consciousness occasionally. He dreams of one day leaving the small room in Brighton and touring Europe with his friends, spreading their love of music together. For now, though, his heart is set on cultivating a scene here.
You can find Experience Collective on Instagram and Facebook. The next show features Russian DJ Vladimir Dubyshkin alongside emerging artists from New York City on March 15.
