Toronto, it’s our time to shine. After two decades of involvement in this city’s dance clubs and electronic music scene, I can say that we are in the midst of one of the strongest and most creative periods I’ve experienced to date.
Yes, our rave years were amazing — and made us one of the North American hotbeds for electronic music — but it’s the lessons we’ve learned after the crowds dwindled that have allowed our scene to rise in a more inventive and independent manner. We’ve learned to think globally and book locally, to collaborate more on party promotion as well as both music production and distribution and, at last, to be proud of T.O. talent.
It’s all of this, along with much new blood in both the DJ booths and on the dancefloors, that made 2008 the time when years’ worth of rejuvenation in our underground was finally palpable. We have infrastructure, productive partnerships and numerous local artists who’ve made big waves internationally or who are about to. So now what?
I predict that Toronto’s dance and electronic music scene will evolve dramatically over the next three years, and that 2009 will be a crucial one. I see many things in the crystal disco ball for 2009. Most come down to two words: more musicality.
Having absorbed their influences and advanced after creating countless re-edits and remixes, artists will produce songs rather than turn out tracks. After focusing, for the most part, on their own little communities, promoters will be far less insular, creating more cross-genre events as they work together. Having got over the novelty of playing on a laptop and downloading the trendiest tunes from blogs or paid sites like Beatport, DJs will be more imaginative in their song selections and mixing.
Let’s face it, for all of the great things 2008 brought us, it also featured an awful lot of the same highly compressed sounds — the same damn songs even — in too many DJ sets. It is time for blog-house and the like to evolve.
And you know what? It will, right back into the primary sound that influenced it, only with many deep new hues. Yes folks, 2009 will be the year we get our house back.
“I see dance music moving away from the big nasty side-chain electro prog house sound and moving more to deep house and minimal techno,” said Brandon Sek of Curb Crawlers at a recent gathering I organized to survey the scene for these pages.
“People are starved for house,” agreed Irving Shaw of Promise promotions, prompting many heads to nod in agreement.
Although house has, of course, remained a staple sound in clubs from its inception, it did lose much allure as it began to be viewed in many circles as a scene “of old men.” No more.
House, as a music form, has been invigorated as producers have injected doses of techno, disco, dubstep and international flavours, be they South American, Middle Eastern or Balkan. Young artists like New York’s Martinez Brothers and our own Nacho Lovers have connected the musical and generational dots as they play and produce true-school house, techno and acid redolent of the past and present. Toronto’s warehouse scene is hopping again, with much excitement around parties like Box of Kittens and Club Trash. Promoters like DMoney Underdogs — known for more aggro sounds — are hosting house-themed events. Most notably, long-time champions of house, like the men of Hot Stepper, United Souls and Boogie Inc., have witnessed their audiences swell to numbers not seen since the early 2000s.
“Proper house music will make a massive comeback in ’09,” said Pat Boogie at the group discussion. “Speaking locally, Nick Holder has been leading the way for years and has some slamming tracks coming out. Martino — a super-underrated producer, DJ and musician — has amazing stuff coming, and so does my boy Andy Roberts. Finally, a new label called No. 19 is bringing some real talents, like Kenny Glasgow, Jonny White and Nitin.”
Other local artists and DJs name-checked repeatedly amongst the group included DJ Barletta (and his Mansion project), Dirty Dale, TMDP, AutoErotique, XI, Bombaman, Egyptrixx, Syntonics and, especially, Nacho Lovers.
As for my own top five locals I think will have large reach in 2009, I’ll echo the love for Nacho Lovers and Nick Holder, and also say Zaki Ibrahim, Lioness and Thunderheist, whose debut album will be released on Big Dada in March.
Get out there, support and recognize.