Girl, this term was rough - sickness, death, and burnout were constantly on my mind during various parts of the fall. Throughout it all, the one thing that kept me smiling and out of my head (and sometimes out of my skull) was music; the promise of dancing to a top-notch DJ set dragging me out of a late-evening slump and off to the clubs. In the immortal words of Moff from Human Traffic, I’m having the best time being off my pickle, and feeling the music.
You…you know what I mean, yeah? Cushty.
The weekend has landed. All that exists now is clubs, drugs, pubs and parties. I’ve got 48 hours off from the world, man. I’m gonna blow steam out my head like a screaming kettle, I’m gonna talk cod shit to strangers all night, I’m gonna lose the plot on the dancefloor. The free radicals inside me are freakin’, man! Tonight I’m Jip Travolta, I’m Peter Popper, I’m going to never-never land with my chosen family, man. We’re gonna get more spaced out than Neil Armstrong ever did, anything could happen tonight, you know? This could be the best night of my life. I’ve got 73 quid in my back burner - I’m gonna wax the lot, man! The Milky Bars are on me! Yeah!
- Jip, Human Traffic
Kloud
September 14, Village Studios
The best events I’ve attended have been the ones I entered with zero expectations. Prior to Owen messaging me about Kloud playing at Village, I’d stumbled across one of their LA sets online, and while the production and crowd were bumping, each part of the set I skipped through seemed monotonous. However, my desire for a night of dancing was stronger than any musical reservations I harbored, so a week later, Owen and I found ourselves downing ciders in a park near Davie Street (not Emily Barnes for once).
This was my second time at Village and it was one of the least-attended events I’d been to - a fact which worked in our favor as there was plenty of space to dance and a clear view of Kloud’s shiny, jet-black mask and high-collared jacket (which at times during the set made him disappear into the wall behind him to eerie effect). As soon as the set began, I knew I was in for something special. Occasionally, I’ll encounter music the likes of which I’ve never heard before and is attention-grabbing due to its sheer originality. Kloud began the set with a minimal pulsing beat, and for the next hour and a half, wound spirals of razor-sharp patterns and progressions around that unwavering techno backbone. I literally gasped when, for the first time in my life, a drop consisted of the music pausing for a breath-taking beat before whipping back into life.
If Kloud hadn’t been so good, I likely wouldn’t have brought tickets to several of the events I ended up attending this term.
Pendulum
September 19, Harbor Event Center
In September, my obsession with DnB hadn’t yet hit the frenzy it would towards the end of the year, and so I was originally reticent to buy tickets to Pendulum (who I actually hadn’t heard of until that event). However, Owen’s excitement was enough to convince me to go - unfortunate, considering he got mono’ed a couple days before the event. Fortunately, Liam, Rita, and I held down the fort, and the event ended up being enjoyable, largely in part due to my first encounter with the ferocity of a dnb crowd. Unfortunately, Pendulum served as a reminder of how lacking (read: dogwater) Harbor’s sound system is - perceptive readers will note that Harbor doesn’t appear again on this list.
This was also the occasion where I realized the significance of the amount of liquid one consumes before an event - downing a wink and two coolers fifteen minutes before heading in ensured that I was in and out of the washroom at least three times during the set.
Mall Grab
September 27, Celebrities
One of the things that made this day so much fun was the fact that I was out and about since the morning; I helped Jason prep for Joanne’s surprise birthday party, had fun at said party, bussed home from the River District, showered, and hopped on transit downtown, making it just in time for Mall Grab’s opening.
Celebrities is usually busy, but I wasn’t prepared for how packed it was that night, a situation not helped by the, shall we say boisterousness of a UK-dominated crowd. Not to say that this was a bad thing - there’s nothing like the roars and whistles of a drunk group of Scottish lads during a break in the music.
Mall Grab’s set was good (with exceptional visuals), but Boys Noize was the standout memory of that night. The venue emptied out around 1:30AM, letting me get closer and closer to the front until I was one row away from Mr. Noize as he unleashed tantric alien tractor beams on a sweat-soaked crowd. All in all, a solid evening - Celebrities never disappoints.
Habstrakt
November 1, Celebrities
Speaking of Celebrities track record, Habbi highkey killed this night - a fact made sweeter considering we almost didn’t end up going. Owen was on the mend from a six-week tag-team cagematch against mono and a lung infection which, days before, had left his white blood cell count at an alarming low of 0.1. His doctor had just given him the go-ahead to return to his regularly-scheduled programming, but we were both exhausted from the week and weren’t sure whether we had the get-up-and-go to head downtown that night.
We’d both had our eyes on the Habstrakt event since it appeared on EdmTrain, but we’d held off on buying tickets until the afternoon of the event, when we checked in with each other, and, in traditional us fashion, said “fuck it we ball”. We bought tickets and promised to arrive at midnight.
I woke up from a two hour nap at 10:00PM wondering what day it was, popped two Advil, and caught the train downtown, sheltering under the awning of the Starbucks outside the Yaletown-Roundhouse station while Owen struggled with gang violence causing delays to the trains at Bridgeport.
We stayed at the back for most of the event, something which didn’t prevent us from being astounded by Habstrakt’s masterful mixing as he dropped doubles and triples throughout a set that set the bar for good club music. His mix was especially good considering it wasn’t like his online sets - it was a simpler, polished version of his unique high-intensity bass house. Also, there’s nothing like catching a glimpse of Habstrakt mad-mugging the crowd right before dropping a heavy track with a perfectly-timed CO2 cannon shot.
Skepsis
November 8, Village Studios
This was an event that we needed no convincing to attend, and was made more special by the addition of Anna to Owen and I’s dynamic duo. There are few feelings more exciting than passing security at Village and hearing the sound of disgusting UK dnb blasting into a packed dance floor. While Owen and Anna checked their coats, I lined up three Jager bombs - my dance-centric drink of choice given the helpful jolt of energy from the shot of caffeine (remember, minimal liquid: the only thing lacking in Village is a fast bathroom line) - and we headed straight into the crowd.
Skepsis came on with a jug of drano, a five-foot-long snake, a heavy-duty rubber plunger, and proceeded to clean out the pipes of the entire crowd with the rudest toilet dnb I’d heard to date. There were multiple points during the set where Owen and I turned to each other and burst out laughing because of the fart noises coming through Village’s Funktion-One sound system. For a week after this set I had Double Vision on repeat for several hours a day.
Cyclops Dome
November 15-17, Tacoma Dome
I’d been looking forward to Cyclops Dome since September - in fact, looking forward to a three-day rave trip with the boys was one of the only things keeping me going through the term - you can’t get much more than a fire lineup and a heater group. I was also excited to experience the cinema of Tacoma, a city which didn’t disappoint in its hilarity - to get back to our AirBnB from the rave, we had to walk through a homeless encampment next to the highway, over the pristine body of a dead racoon, and past a shiny new mega-casino.
Packing 17 people into an AirBnB with one washroom wasn’t nearly as bad as we expected it to be - in fact, the trip went off without a hitch. Even though some of the group was extremely rushed getting in to Tacoma (Jason hurling packages of food at me when I opened the front door as the girls finished the makeup they’d began in the car), D1 was an excellent opener to the festival, the production effects of the suspended fully-articulating screens sufficiently blowing our minds.
If D1 was a good meal at a food court, D2 was like mainlining a Michelin-star feast. With a full fifteen members of the squad coming up on acid, we found ourselves a third of the way to the rails as the Deathpact set started. Seeing Deathpact last October at the Commodore, I was struck by the scale of the production this time around - after consuming ravers for a full year, that night the Deathpact entity gorged itself on a ferocious crowd of the biggest bass-fiends on the west coast.
While, at this point, my feet were killing me, I managed to stay standing as Alison Wonderland cut me to ribbons, and - broken, bleeding, and bruised - finally sat with my back against the stands just before Subtronics’ second set of the weekend. And what a set it was. Sitting down, tripping balls, I watched as Jesse revved up his chainsaw of wonk and absolutely eviscerated the crowd.
After hoofing it home through the rain, the house stayed awake for the rest of the night, yelling over a game of Waterfall Park while Owen and I obsessed over the thickest racoons on the internet. D3 was a good cooldown - I enjoyed Inzo sitting high up in the stands with Harvey and co., and laughed when I later heard the story of Frank throwing up into a trashcan during the same set.
The day after getting back to Vancouver, I, along with half of the squad, developed the gnarliest sickness I’ve experienced, which lasted a good three weeks all the way into the beginning of December. (Hey, still worth)
Delta Heavy
December 6, Enso
Continuing the streak of UK DnB, I knew Delta Heavy would be a good pre-game to SOTA the proceeding week. Getting off the expo line, I struggled through the combined Canucks-Taylor-Swift crowd to meet up with Owen and Gucci at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre Browns a couple hours before the event, where I discovered the concept of a Fuzzy Peaches Bellini.
This was my first time at Enso - the sound system was (marginally) better than Harbor, the crowd was appropriately boisterous, and the musical stylings of “Your Evil Boyfriend” and “Chatterbox” made for good openers.
SOTA
December 13, Village Studios
Big SOT flew over from the UK, committed war crimes at Village, and flew back.
With the absolute squad of Frank, Justin, and Owen (with Isaac joining us halfway through the set), all I remember from that night is being yelled at by a building manager for peeing near a tower next to Emily Barnes, catching the last 20 minutes of standup comedy neurofunk from Chatterbox, and finally going absolutely feral when SOTA came out gunfingers blazing. He barely left me time to breath between the nastiest jump-up drops I’ve ever heard, hands down.
Leaving the club, Owen and I unanimously agreed that the set was (musically) the best we’d seen that term. For posterity, this set is very similar to the one he played that night at Village.
Jungle Cakes
December 21, Red Room
A spur-of-the-moment ticket purchase after finishing my post on Study Music Evolution, I was excited to experience the Red Room for the first time, and it didn’t disappoint. The Red Room is the kind of place which, as soon as you step in, feels familiar - you already know the bar, the space, the crowd, and the sound system. The dance floor was well-sized, the perfect level of full for the whole night, and held the most diverse crowd I’d experienced in Vancouver - something which seems common with DnB events.
In rapid succession, three serious-looking British gents hit the decks, played some respectfully tight dnb and jungle, and didn’t touch the mic once. The crowd was super fun (lots of fist bumps and grins), and the washrooms and water stations were quick to access, allowing me to get in a solid three hours of dancing.
Check check check check check check check…breakbeat ensues
Netsky
December 27, Fortune Sound Club
That was not big SOT. (though there was some fyne shit in the crowd)
Contact D2
December 28, Vancouver Convention Center
A fall events recap in Vancouver isn’t complete without attending at least one day of Contact. While last year’s lineup might’ve been more enticing (hard to beat mommy Rezz), I was super excited to see James Hype, and wasn’t going to complain at Deadmau5.
The squad was vibes - Mitchell (mostly recovered from his mono), Liam, and Owen. We met up at UBC, hit a tower at Browns, and arrived at Contact in time to be in the crowd for the end of Bijoux b2b Nostalgix. Throughout the night, I was impressed by how respectful the crowd was - I guess Deadmau5 brings out the older ravers who know how to handle themselves.
James Hype was everything I wanted - I saw Rash and Wallace on stage, screamed when the “Number 1” remix came on, and heard some new music that didn’t disappoint. And then Deadmau5 came on, and my low expectations were blown out of the water. He was one of the best DJs I’ve seen in terms of the quality of his visuals and sound - you could tell he produced with a deep knowledge of the hardware his music was going to be played on. Finally, almost half the set consisted of some ear-lickingly-excellent DnB that left an exclamation mark at the end of a term of musical madness.