Hello all! I'm here to tell you what's been going on in the Canadian hardcore scene. First of all a bit about myself! I'm DJ Frisky out of Toronto, Ontario and I've been involved with the Toronto hardcore scene for about 6 years. I was properly into the hardcore/jungle hybrid that existed in the early 90s, and then being North America's capital for drum and bass, a devoted junglist until around 1994-1995. There was virtually no exposure to the other form of music which resulted from the early hardcore so jungle was the only option until a friend of mine had an old Carl Cox CD on it which featured the track that would change my listening preferences forever - DJ Force and the Evolution - Fall Down On Me.
There were a few local DJs in Toronto that did spin hardcore once in a while, namely Ruffrida, Easyrush and Paradise. As far as I can tell, this is where Happy Hardcore in Canada began. As I mentioned, as far as rave music goes, Toronto is first and foremost a drum and bass city. A promotion company by the name of Madness dared to bring in talent from the UK and this was met with a lukewarm reception. I too tried to help put hardcore on the map with my partner Nuno in a venture called Elysium. This was some time in early 1996 and the time still was not right for hardcore in Canada. In the summer of 1996, some of the owners of Madness teamed up with legendary UK organizers United Dance to throw probably one of the biggest attempts at re-creating a UK style hardcore, fusing an awesome lineup of the best drum and bass and hardcore DJs. If memory serves me right, Slipmatt, Vinylgroover, Sy and Dougal were all amongst the performers that played that night. But alas, shirts were lost, and that would be the start of a hiatus in bringing down UK hardcore jocks.
It was in 1997 that Canada was really put on the map when Anabolic Frolic had his first mixed CD released through Moonshine. Happy 2 Be Hardcore Chapter 1 was Moonshine's strongest selling compilation album (has gone on to sell nearly 70,000 copies I believe) at the time and Happy Hardcore finally got some good recognition here, and across North America. In June of 1997, Frolic decided to throw his first rave. He asked me to help him come up with a name and he wanted it to be in a similar vein to the names of UK organizations such as Helter Skelter. I brainstormed a bunch of names, Hullabaloo being one of them - and that was selected and the rest is history. Hullabaloo has grown to become the definitive hardcore event in Canada, if not all of North America. The success of happy hardcore and Hullabaloo sparked a big demand for hardcore based parties and saw the rise of companies such as F3, Biohazard, ATM Productions, and E-Mail. Between all these companies, every major UK DJ has played for the Toronto scene at one point or another!
While all this was going on, scenes were quietly beginning to develop elsewhere in Canada - most notably Winnipeg, Manitoba. The happy hardcore scene here also had its roots in a few people who believed in the music and continued to promote it. Without a doubt the pioneer in Winnipeg is DJ Justrich who has gone on to not only promote his own events and play across North America, but he has managed to produce two successful tracks to date for the Nu Energy Collective. There is also budding talent on the production front from a very underrated producer by the name of Phosphor. I expect that we will all be hearing things from him in the near future.
Further out west in Edmonton, DJ Crunchee had started to throw his own parties under the Happy Bastards name and has had many huge events (most notably the Fun-tazia parties) and featured many of the top UK talent. Calgary as well has had it's share of hardcore entertainment.
So this gives you an idea of where things came from - but where are we now and where are things headed?
Montreal has recently discovered the hardcore sound and it is slowly gaining favor amongst the party people and promoters. There is a collective of DJs and promoters who continue to throw small hardcore parties, often at a loss, just to keep the interest alive. They are a bit behind in terms of getting the releases, but their love for the music is strong. Oddly enough, Montreal seems to be the only city in Canada that has been very receptive to the Spanish hardcore Makina. A few North American DJs such as Cloudskipper, Spree, Anabolic Frolic, and myself have all been to Montreal and we all pretty much agree that it is a great city to play in. There are a few budding producers out there as well, most notably Enterhorse, A-One and The Cheesemaker.
Out in British Columbia, the hardcore scene is struggling to get a foothold. There have been attempts by a few promoters to bring out some hardcore DJs, and though reviews of the parties have been good, attendance has lacked which has discouraged some promoters from taking a chance on this type of music. I'm not aware of any DJs in Vancouver or Victoria (the two main B.C. scenes) that play any form of hardcore.
Winnipeg and Edmonton continue to make their scenes grow and quite a few of the UK jocks continue to make appearances in these cities. I think that some of the momentum has been lost from a few years ago but support still exists.
In Toronto, the pressure by police and politicians has caused the rave scene in general to be severely damaged. There were often at least 2 or 3 parties on any given weekend but lately it's been only one major rave - and not all of them feature hardcore! The first half of 2001 had hardcore in a bit of a rut in Toronto, especially throughout the summer with only one or two events. Things are turning around now in September - there has been a smallish Hullabaloo party, and upcoming events this month include Shut Up and Dance and Slammin Sounds. At the iDance rally this year, Anabolic Frolic and I were given an opportunity to showcase Happy Hardcore in front of a very receptive audience of somewhere in the neighborhood of 10-15,000 people (according to sources there were 30,000 people in attendance throughout the day!). Big Bud, one of Toronto's largest drum and bass organizations, is rumored to be having either a full on hardcore room, or some form of representation at its next event in October.
Also, this year has seen the birth of Toronto's first major studio, ATM Recordings. The full service studio is now open for bookings, and right now we have the talents of one of the UK's finest studio engineers - DOK. At the same time, myself and DJ Hujib have built a small studio and have been working on a variety of hardcore tracks. Expect to see some Canadian produced hardcore tracks on the street hopefully by the end of the year! So expect to see a lot of noise coming out of Canada in the not too distant future!
That's it for now. If there are any Canadian DJs out there in other cities who feel they have more to add, drop me an e-mail at
djfrisky@purerave.com and I'll be sure to get more detail in for next time.
DJ Frisky.
This was posted on [
www.nextgenerationrecords.co.uk ]
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