Honey Trap: In Your Dirty Ears

It starts with a pulse — low, mechanical, deliberate. Not hurried, not impatient. Just waiting. It stretches itself into the space like a system booting up, testing its weight, the air thick with static. It’s always been here, this signal, running in the background of the world. You’re just now tuning in.

Then — movement. The pulse tightens, sharpening into something more structured, each layer clicking into place like gears locking together. There’s a metallic slickness to it — a hypnotic draw you can’t resist stepping into. It flickers between the mechanical and the organic — shuffling garage rhythms, liquid sub-bass, something grinding, something wet. You’re not just listening anymore. You’re inside it.

I probably wouldn’t have found Honey Trap if it weren’t for my friend Pete. We’ve orbited each other for a while, but dancing keeps pulling us back into the same spaces — late nights and packed floors. It’s the kind of friendship that builds in bass lines. 

Pete runs Clubstack with his friend Serena — a running chronicle of dance floor recommendations, night recaps, and takedowns of Resident Advisor’s taste level. I follow along for leads on where to go, and last June, Pete’s put Honey Trap on my radar. 

Honey Trap isn’t just a party. It’s a signal, a rogue transmission, a frequency that appears when and where it wants. It shapeshifts between venues and cities, existing somewhere between the underground and the mythic. Its schedule is unpredictable, but for 2025 the goal is once a month. You’ll find it in the tried-and-true spaces and places entirely new. From New York to Berlin, Helsinki to Melbourne, the night becomes a vessel for the avant-garde, the obscure, and the irresistible pull of sound that refuses to be pinned down.

At the helm of Honey Trap is Amelia Holt. An architect of chaos, she bends rhythm into something elemental. Broken beats collapse into high-octane hypnosis, and sharp electro laced with krautrock delirium rewires the entire crowd. Her curated lineup of hypnotic, relentless sonic sculptors is often drawn from her agency, House of Ill Fame, but Honey Trap doesn’t work on exclusivity — it thrives on the unexpected. Talks of future collaborations with Trick Pony, Nummer, and the minds behind Big Science Records hint at an ever-expanding soundscape, a party that refuses to settle.

Justin Strauss and Sharlese summon ghosts from the East Village grunge scene, resurrecting rhythms that refuse to be forgotten. Pleaser turns the night into ritual, a passage through the unknown, sound unraveling like an incantation. Elena Colombi shifts between cosmic psychedelia, jungle’s raw pulse, and post-punk’s serrated edge — each transition a jolt to the system. Second Contact stretches time itself with acid-drenched textures melting into alien frequencies, selections flickering between underground dance's metallic shimmer and deep sound's meditative weight.

Honey Trap doesn’t belong to one venue — it adapts, shifting to match the bones of each space it inhabits. Every location bends the party into something that shapes the night in its own way. Some spaces lean into intimacy, others into chaos, each frequency leaving a unique imprint. 

Past editions of Honey Trap have sunk deep into the leather-clad corners of Nightmoves while others have stretched across the pulsing ecosystem of H0L0.

At Nightmoves, it plays out like a tug-of-war between strategy and surrender, where sound dictates movement, and movement reshapes the room. The bass presses in, humming and lingering beneath the skin. Before the weight of it fully settles, the space holds a rare stillness, inviting you to sink into leather seats, let the low throb of sound curl around you and conversation float under dim lights and scattered rhythms. As the night deepens, Honey Trap fills every gap and absorbs every surface, reshaping the air itself. The walls become archives, holding the ghost print of every sweat-slicked track that’s ever consumed a dance floor. The sound clings to the ribs, coils through the gaps between bodies and moves without hesitation or restraint. It’s the kind of night that doesn’t build to a peak — it is the peak. Hours stretch into a single, fevered moment where time blurs, control slips, and the music takes over.

At H0L0, it sprawls under the sun. The music slowly unfurls, coaxing movement rather than demanding it — drinks in hand, laughter low, bass humming beneath the skin. Then, the descent — from golden light to red-lit obscurity, from words to something felt in the ribs. The floor turns bouncy, becoming liquid beneath shifting bodies. The energy thickens, the space tightens, the line between DJ and dancer vanishes. The booth glows like a control panel swallowed in fog and silhouettes of a single, breathing entity.

Honey Trap isn’t just a party you go to — it’s a wave you tune into. It’s a frequency, a signal moving through time, slipping from dance floors into mixtapes, radio waves, and the spaces between beats. It’s for those who find themselves on a packed floor at 4 AM, and for those whose only dance floor is their living room with lights dimmed, speakers cranked. It pulses through radio stations and SoundCloud sets, carrying the night’s afterglow to whoever is listening. Whether you’re priming for a night out or dancing alone, these radio sets are transmissions with signals that pull you under.

The first, Amelia Holt’s Kiosk Radio set, begins as a faint hum — more felt than heard— curling low in the spine. It lingers, unfolding in slow pulses, waiting for you to lock in. Then, a shift. The bass seeps in, thickens, moving like something alive. Vocals drift, not as words but as texture — a ghost of sound woven through flickering neon, passing headlights, distant sirens. Dub echoes, acid bass lines, stripped-down electro — glitching, distorting, blurring between decades, between memory and hallucination. The rhythm tunnels forward, kicks sharpen, synths stretch into neon smears, each transition both effortless and inevitable. It isn’t chaos — it’s control, stripped down and spiraling inward. And just as seamlessly as it builds, it unspools. The beats slow, dissolve into something hazy. A comedown without collapse. A transmission fading back into the airwaves. Was it always there? Will it still be playing after you’ve walked away?

The second, Holt’s Lot Radio set, cuts through static — low, deliberate, stretching into space. The bass hums beneath, a pulse waiting to take form. Then, movement. Beats stack like scaffolding, the melody flickering between acid-drenched textures and static-washed synths. The sound moves in layers, loops folding in on themselves, past and future coexisting at once. And suddenly, you’re inside it. The rhythm presses against the ribs, moving like a city at night — fluid, flickering, unpredictable. There’s no single path forward, no clear start or end — just motion, floating somewhere between control and surrender.

The third, Second Contact’s Kiosk Radio set, is a slow frequency curling through the airwaves, waiting for the right ears to catch it. No urgency, no rush. Then, the beat locks in — not forced, just inevitable. Textures ripple and flicker, synthetic and organic, acid-laced synths stretching at the edges. It doesn’t demand your attention — it burrows in, shifting between deep-space transmissions and the low-end throb of an underground club. Beats don’t just move forward; they loop, distort, stretch. A city flashing past a train window — one-moment neon-lit and sharp, the next blurred into motion and shadow. And then, just as easily as it takes over, it recedes. The rhythm dissolves, leaving only traces — a hum, a ghost of a bass line still vibrating in the body. The transmission fades, but it doesn’t disappear. It lingers. Waiting to be picked up again.

The most recent Honey Trap party was on Valentine’s Day, set in the hot, smoky basement of Nightclub 101 — a space with low ceilings, heavy air, and sound that moves like a living thing. The upstairs room with its Mondrian-like ceiling is one world; the basement is another entirely. Here, there’s no room for pretense. It’s humid and electric, pulsing with a heat from something deeper, something raw. The walls press close, the bass heavier in the tight space reverberates like it has nowhere else to go. Time itself loops, distorts, and drowns under the weight of the sound.

For this edition, Amelia Holt and Second Contact curated a set that felt like sex magic — a slow, intoxicating burn of downtempo, trip-hop, and deep slinky bass lines that wrapped around the crowd like a second skin. Nothing rushed. The rhythm pulsed in waves — teasing, lingering, stretching itself out in the air like the final drag of a cigarette. Each tempo shift was deliberate and tactile, like a hand grazing skin; like a whispered secret between the beats. 

When Pete texted about catching the Valentine’s Honey Trap, there wasn’t even a question. He met me there about an hour late — typical of him. I was already sloshed off tequila, a fat edible, and free champagne from a fake engagement bit I pulled with my real-life ex-fiancé, Charlie. It had been a running joke between us for years, a bit we leaned into just far enough to make bartenders give us "on the house" congratulations while everyone around us tried to piece together whether we were serious or unhinged.

When he found me, I was already deep in the crowd with Sol and Nema, lost in the pulse of the night. I scolded him for being chronically late and missing Amelia and Second Contact’s insanely powerful B2B, but we were too happy to be dancing together to care.

A certified party girl, Pete slipped in seamlessly, folding himself into the heat of the room, the rhythm, and the sweat-slick bodies. He has that effortless 2000s energy, like he walked out of a grainy, overexposed club photo from the peak of electroclash — messy but intentional, the kind of cool that can’t be faked. He moves with pure abandonment, but not in the way most people do when they give in to the night. His movements are sharper and more fluid, like he’s chasing something just out of reach or happily letting the music pull him forward. Watching him dance is hypnotic, like catching glimpses of a music video half-remembered from a past life.

At some point, we slipped outside for a cigarette. The night air hit us, cooling the sweat on our skin in the February cold. It wasn’t until then, away from the dark and the haze, that Pete actually saw the words on my top — Too Much Princess for One Boy. He laughed and shook his head, “Awesome.”

Making our way back downstairs, we hit the bathroom and swapped my red tank for his black velvet one. Adjusting to the too-bright fluorescent light, the moment felt both absurd and completely natural. When we turned back to the mirror, it just made sense.

Pete looked better in my tank than I ever did. The guy’s hot. I was outdone in my own clothes. Tragic.

Back on the dance floor, the music had thickened, pulling the room further into its trance. We raged — bodies moving with abandon, bass pressing against our chests, sweat slicking our skin all over again. The energy swelled, swallowed us whole, and for a while, nothing else existed.

This was Honey Trap at its most intimate. More than just a party, it’s a spell, a fever dream, a ritual. The music didn’t just move through the room; it consumed it, reshaped it, and made it something unshakably alive. From the low ceilings of Nightclub 101’s basement to the thick, red-lit air to the sweat-slicked bodies moving in unison, the night was transformed into something outside of time. The evening’s moments became stitched together by sound, folded into the rhythm, and made eternal in motion.

Then, the comedown.

Sometime in the morning, Pete and I collapsed onto a couch, too spent to do anything except exist. A soggy bodega grilled cheese balanced on one knee; chicken and rice sat half-eaten on the coffee table. Pedro Almodóvar’s Los Amantes Pasajeros flickered on the screen. A movie about hot people in an absurd liminal space, it felt like the only correct choice. The music still rang in my ears, faint but insistent, as if the night had refused to fully let me go.

Maybe it hadn’t let me go. This is where Honey Trap lingers.

The memories are still fresh, humming in my bones, living in the back of my mind like a song I haven’t fully come down from. Honey Trap doesn’t just throw parties — it collapses time. One track blurs into the next, one night folds into morning, one crowd dissipates only to return again. You leave, but you don’t really leave — not entirely. The music is still playing somewhere, humming just beneath the surface, waiting for you to tune back in.