Jun 29, 2012
In case you didnt notice hometown hero Deadmau5s masked mug peering out at you from the cover of Rolling Stone all over the city this past week, electronic dance music has cycled back around onto the mainstream radar once again.
Its certainly all up in your face in Toronto this summer. This weekends two-day Digital Dreams festival at Ontario Place is but the first of eight electronic-music fests set to detonate over our town between now and mid-September. The phrase embarrassment of riches doesnt even do it justice if youre a dance fan.
The proliferation of EDM events this season has caught even the people running them by surprise, but really, this explosion has been a long time brewing. Toronto was home to one of the biggest rave scenes in North America arguably the biggest around the turn of the millennium and remains an enormous market for EDM of all stripes.
Its taken the recent popular success of acts such as Tiesto, Skrillex, David Guetta and Niagara Falls, Ont.s own Deadmau5 to alert the likes of Rolling Stone which devoted a sizeable portion of its July 5 issue to the current Dance Madness but underground dance culture has only kept growing and growing and growing in the shadows during the 10 years or so since its last dalliance with the overground. Overseas, in fact, there have never been any shadows. The masses didnt retreat when they stopped playing the Chemical Brothers on the radio, didnt watch their cities scenes wither under the concerned glare of overzealous, uninformed authorities. In many respects, dance culture is mainstream culture in places like Germany and the U.K.
Its almost like the old adage of the overnight success, says Ryan Kruger, whos been throwing parties in Toronto under the Destiny Productions moniker for two decades but this year signed on with entertainment conglomerate Live Nation as Canadian head of its newly minted Electronic Nation wing. A band has a hit song and people think they came out of nowhere when, in fact, theyve been slaving away in the clubs and travelling the road in a van for 10 years building up that fan base, honing their skills, starting from the grassroots and becoming popular that way.
I think EDM is probably a lot like that. You know as well as I do that its been vibrant and extensive in this city, but for the most part a niche until the last couple of years. It seems like everybodys into it overnight, but that took a lot of work from a lot of people for a lot of years.
Live Nation is certainly throwing a lot of money and faith at electronic music these days.
Three of this summers major EDM festivals Digital Dreams, July 21s Identity Festival and the 16th edition of Destinys three-day World Electronic Music Festival campout in August are operating under the Electronic Nation banner. Just this past week, Live Nation acquired Los Angeless Hard Events, the mother promoter behind Aug. 4s Hard Toronto festival at Fort York. The company also bought out U.K. promoter Cream and its massive Creamfields festivals in May, naming founder James Barton head of Live Nations worldwide electronic-music wing.
As Kruger points out, it makes sense from a strictly business standpoint for the corporation to get more deeply involved in electronic music at a time when dance A-listers such as Tiesto and Deadmau5 who sold out the Rogers Centre last November are moving tickets in the tens of thousands. But the fact that Live Nation has sought out scene veterans such as Kruger and Barton to run its day-to-day operations would seem to indicate that it would rather not alienate the musics enormous fan base by doing things totally wrong.
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This summer, electronic dance music can’t be beat