What is underground culture? Scary, demented people doing awful things to each other? Annoying pre-teens trying desperately not to be their parents? The black market? Sewage?

If you believe any of these answers, you need to be at the upcoming "Nexus Gathering '98: Change of Seasons." There, you'll find the answer to this question: lots of good music and loads of fun.

Saturday, Sept, 26, Nexus Tribe will hold its fourth annual major rave party. Upon reading this, chances are you'll be, like I was, full of questions. Fortunately Nexus Tribe's Nicolas Delgado Jr. is eager to provide the answers.

Delgado is a handsome, friendly (and some may say cute) lad of a green 25 years, making it difficult to believe he's behind an event of the magnitude of Nexus '98. That is, until his cell phone rings and he phones back to leave a message, telling you "that was Toronto calling." And until you get the ball rolling about rave culture, and he tells you all about it like an excited but thoroughly knowledgeable kid.

For Delgado, the story started back in 1992, with a passion for techno music and the creation of Universal Dance Productions. UDC's mission was to provide Edmonton with dance parties. When they started out, Delgado and his fellow techno music lovers didn't know very many people and the parties were relatively small scale. But this gradually changed until 1995, when UDC staged the first Nexus Gathering dance festival.

"(The word) 'Nexus' in definition is connection and link, right?" Delgado said, "so what we're doing is we're connecting music - underground music - with the people. That's where 'Nexus' stems from."

But hold on a second. What are these dance festivals, you ask? What is this techno music? Hopefully, you weren't grinning and singing Mr. Vain, 100% Pure Love or anything by 2 Unlimited or Chris Sheppard. About this sort of cheesy, fluffy electronic radio music, Delgado leaves no doubt :

"No, see, that's a mistake - that people think it is (techno). They think techno is the stuff that's being played, the lovey-dovey stuff, like . . ." and he suddenly bursts into song: "Come on Mr. Vain . . .

"You know, people think that's techno. They think 2 Unlimited is techno. But the thing is, I want to make it clear that that kind of music - the music that Power 92 considers techno - is not the kind of music that we consider. The actual definition for that music is Euro dance music . . . And it's just full-out cheese."

Techno music is less song-driven and more ambient. It's difficult to describe because of the many different styles. Obviously, it's largely technologically and electronically created, and created mostly by DJs as opposed to instrumentalists.

In any case, the events and gatherings held to celebrate and revel in this music are the dance parties UDC and now Nexus Tribe have been hosting in Edmonton, often called "raves." In 1995, UDC held its biggest-to-date dance party called "Nexus." From there, Nexus became an annual (and growing) event and UDC became known as "the people behind Nexus." So, early this year, the name changed officially to Nexus Tribe.

The underground techno scene has been growing steadily in Edmonton in recent years, just as techno music has been rapidly gaining popularity. Crystal Method's music is now used in advertisements by major corporations. Coca-Cola advertisements feature huge raves. The number of well-known techno music artists is far greater than what it used to be. Examples include Fatboy Slim (Roackafeller Skank), Sneaker Pimps (Spin Spin Sugar), Daft Punk (Da Funk), Chemical Brothers (Blockrockin' Beats) and many others who have been at it for years and years.

Delgado says a large part of the goal of Nexus and Nexus Tribe is to dispel myths and stereotypes, breaking down walls between mainstream and underground culture, as well as between different segments of underground culture. He wants to promote the music, and not just the wearing of crazy Jetsons-meet-Emma-Peel clothing. He wants people to know that this is real music with real people behind the turntable and on the dancefloor - some his age and some older.

For this reason, Nexus Gathering '98: Change of Seasons features music of many different styles. In fact, it features music in many different rooms. Four, to be precise. Of course like the other Nexus Gatherings, these will be theme rooms to suit the party's overall theme. Past themes include Viva Las Vegas with theme rooms like Circuit Circus and Treasure Island. This year's seasonal theme is particularly elegant with one theme room for each season.

The Summer Room is also this year's main room, where the trance and progressive rave music will be played. This is the "hot" stuff, the big treat. In the Fall Room, the beats will be downtempo, with a lot of hip hop, trip hop, jazz, R&B and soft tunes, to create a mellow, autumnal mood. The atmosphere in the Winter Room will be appropriately hard - sparse, cold and spooky, at least musically speaking. The sounds in there will include turntablism, jungle and drum and bass, and will be provided in part by Disco Mix Championship (DMC) 1996 World Champion Roc Raida. (In fact "battle DJ" turntablists such as Raida are this year's main attraction.) Finally, the Spring Room will instill a feeling of blooming and joie de vivre, with more bassy music such as house techno, breakbeats and disco.

To those with any experience in the scene, this is quite a variety of styles. And this variety is there for a variety of reasons. Asked if raves have been at all profitable, Delgado elaborated: "Oh yeah, this year's been really good. The last year it has been kind of sporadic but, now, it's getting steady; we've got a good income and that's why we're able to do these shows.

"Especially when you're catering to different groups. That's one of the things that we've learned in the past is that if you cater, if you try to get the whole hip hop scene involved then . . . "

Ring, ring, ring . . .

(D'oh! Damn cell phone!)

After taking care of business, Delgado expanded on the demographics of the upcoming event:

"It's pretty much divided into two scenes: it's the whole rave scene and the whole hip hop, breakers and drum and bass and that. That's what I'm doing, I'm getting everyone together. That's pretty much what the crowd is."

In fact, this event is so significant, there's a warmup party at Rebar Thursday, Sept. 24 ($6, free CD giveaways), a pre-party Friday, Sept. 25 at Therapy ($6), and an after party at Lush Sunday, Sept. 27 ($3), all complete with out-of-province DJs.

Finally, to make our knowledge of this event as complete as possible, some specifics are in order. The venue is the 70,000 square foot, 3,500 capacity, air-conditioned Northlands Sportex. Hours are 8 p.m. to 8 a.m. Tickets are $18 for the first 1,000, $20 for the next 1,000, and $22 thereafter, with an express line for ticket holders. Additional attractions include a skateboarding demonstration by Plush, pseudo-sumo wrestling in those lovely, enormous costumes you may have seen at the U of A on registration day, "big bout boxing" with cartoon-size gloves and jumping inflatables (like the ones you loved when you were kids at the fairground).

The bottomlines here are that underground culture is nothing to be afraid of, or make fun of, and techno music is damn good stuff.