Press
U.W.O GAZETTE
By Desiree Gamotin
Gazette Staff
September 2007
With the success of DJ powerhouses like Justice and MSTRKRFT, electro music is blowing up around the world. Now, London is joining the underground scene by hosting Real Real Hard, an electro dance party happening this homecoming weekend.
Brian Wong, event organizer and resident DJ at the new label, More Proof, feels the need to tap into the hidden market of electro-hungry hipsters in London. As a Western student, he finds the downtown bar scene mundane and struggles to liven up the dance floors by providing something other than the Top 40 songs you hear at bars.
“There really isn’t anything like it here,” Wong says. “With most of the bars here, you just go to spend lots of money and get dressed up in formal wear, which is cool and all, but we’re more about just dancing and having fun. It’s just to provide something different for all the kids who don’t enjoy the bar scene right now. Give it a chance and I guarantee you won’t be able to go back to the other clubs.”
Besides music venues like Call The Office and Alex P. Keaton, there was rarely any bars with electro dance music that fans can enjoy. “Like Shout Out Out Out Out came, Crystal Castles didn’t show up — and I was really into them — and that whole electro thing didn’t really happen much, so I figured this year I’d do it up right.”
As part of More Proof, Wong would play a diverse set of tracks from break dancing music to French house mixed with disco and new wave. A lot of his music spawns from Ed Banger Records, home to French electro acts like Justice, SebastiAn and Uffie.
Created by Johnny Hockin from MTV Live and a group of his friends who also DJ-ed around Toronto, More Proof also taps into the “B-more scene,” or Baltimore club, a genre of house and dance music that blends hip hop to create up-tempo mash-ups. Big names like Diplo and A-track, Kanye West’s DJ, all dabble in Baltimore club. It’s basically house tempos with a hip hop vibe, sampling everything from Journey to Coldplay.
“There’s a new movement of dance music that’s being a mini-hit in the indie scene lately with the French labels coming out like Institubes and Ed Banger with Justice who are kind of a cross over hit the way Daft Punk was two years ago,” Hockin says. As a self-described music nerd, Hockin’s passion for electro and DJ-ing gained him a spot as an MTV Canada VJ and as well as MTV’s go-to technology specialist. Now, he’s used that passion to fuel More Proof and the events he DJs, like Real Real Hard coming up. “I think dance music now is the perfect venue to bring in the most different styles at once,” Hockin says. “It’s sort of this insane pastiche thing that happens where you know, you’d [make] an old Phil Collins song into a brand new house song and for some reason it totally works out there on the dance floor and in the moment it just feels so right but it’s just such a weird thing… and it makes it so fun ‘cus you can relive old music and new all at once.” After DJ-ing several More Proof events in downtown Toronto, Hockin is confident that electro fans will find their way to them, especially with the presence of networking sites like Facebook and MySpace pushing things over the edge. “I’m just finding that even in situations like London where I’d be skeptical, I’m always pleasantly surprised that there are so many open-minded kids getting into this stuff lately.” Real Real Hard is happening this Saturday at The Ice Lounge on 194 Dundas Street. Advance tickets are sold at Echelon downtown.