Factory 93 makes its Forum debut with the German techno heavyweight’s in-the-round OUTWORLD concept — one artist, all night, and the only American date on the map.
Written by Eric B. Thornton
The Kia Forum has seen a lot since it opened in Inglewood in 1967 — Showtime fast breaks, Zeppelin at full volume, half a century of arena-pop goodbyes under that ring of white columns. What it has never been is a warehouse. On Saturday, October 3, Factory 93 is going to try to build one inside it.
That’s the bet behind OUTWORLD, Klangkuenstler’s traveling audiovisual concept, making its West Coast debut — and its only U.S. stop of the year — as Factory 93’s first-ever show at the Forum. One artist. Doors to close. No openers to warm the room or soften the landing.
If the name only registers as a festival-poster font for you, the backstory is worth knowing. Klangkuenstler is Michael Korb, a kid from Füssen in Bavaria who moved to Munich at 18 for a hotel-management apprenticeship before Berlin pulled him in after a gig at Ritter Butzke in 2012. His 2013 debut album, “Das bin ich,” lived in deep and tech house.
Then, around 2018, he turned the dial hard toward techno, and a year later launched his own OUTWORLD label to house it. The release titles tell you the temperature: “Armageddon,” “Weltschmerz,” “Die Welt Brennt” — which means the world is burning. In 2023 he co-founded Tote Sonne with Kobosil, one of the Berghain generation’s heaviest hitters.
OUTWORLD the event is that manifesto made physical. In March, Klangkuenstler played eight straight hours at IFEMA Madrid in a 360-degree format — DJ in the middle, crowd on every side, steel rings hanging in the dark and blue lasers slicing through them. The sound was its own headline: Funktion-One reported 40 F121 subs and 16 F124s in the room, plus a dozen more F121s stacked behind the booth just for him. Whether Inglewood gets the same rig hasn’t been announced, but the Forum’s floor map already puts the stage dead center, so expect the round.
Factory 93 has spent nearly a decade proving that LA’s underground can scale up from unmarked downtown doors without losing its edge. Moving into an arena with a single techno DJ is the boldest version of that argument yet. Tickets are general admission by level with no assigned seats; floor holders get first-come, first-served access to the stage area, so plan on arriving early if you want to be close enough to feel the subs in your sternum. Resident Advisor lists the night at 7 p.m. to midnight, 18+.
Techno grew up in rooms nobody was supposed to find. On Saturday, it moves into one everybody in Los Angeles already knows — and asks an arena to forget where it is. See you on the floor.
CONNECT WITH KLANGKUENSTLER
Instagram | Resident Advisor
CONNECT WITH FACTORY 93
thefactory93.com | Instagram | Tickets: f93.co/outworld
