I didn’t need Google Maps to pick out Le Belmont’s location in downtown Montreal from three blocks away, for the chittering mess of a crowd strewn outside. Muted low-hertz vibrations breached the club’s brick and glass exterior. Across the street a squad of squeegee punks ignored the honking of a police car and huddled restless around a pile of army surplus duffle bags plus German shepherds. As I approached, the scene came into sharper focus… gaggles of gregarious youngsters smoking and chatting leisurely, dressed in a cacophony of colours and power clashing patterns: plaid and floral, bucket hats and long hair, tie dye and metal spikes – an amalgamated style I can only describe as BeachHippiePunkGrunge. The average age couldn’t have been more than 21. Le Young et Le Hip. It was Bass Drive Wednesdays, and apparently it was popular. I wove through the throngs and entered.
It was early, maybe around 11, and the dance floor was already a quarter full. People were synced up, crumping and swaying to the wobbled thump-shcrack of… dubstep, the dark and the dirty kind. A geometric rendering of an N64 controller floated, spun behind the DJ as deep swells of sound drove the crowd’s rocking bodies back and forth to the motion of bassy boom-bap bwomp bwomp. Dubstep is not dead here, it’s strong and persistent like an undercurrent. Sweeping flashes of light splintered the dance floor darkness, revealing coloured glimpses of excited serene youthful faces…more bucket hats and unkempt hair… a printed sign on corrugated plastic fronting the DJ booth, a reminder that this is Wednesday, this is Bass Drive… bored-looking but competent, even eager, bartenders at the side and back of the room… cocktail tables with semi-abandoned beers…
The lyric-less sound leered, relentless and foreboding. I am no stranger to the wub, and stepped-two in time with the rest of it, playing my part in the whole. The energy was palpable, a mood of optimistic doom that only dubstep can evoke. No lack of enthusiasm from either side, the crowd or the DJs – there were cheers as the decks changed hands, two young chaps exchanging the reins of this subterranean weeknight party. A growing posse on stage impressed a sense of community, which a quick glance later through the Facebook event – 600+ attending, about a third of that here now – confirmed: tonight is a birthday celebration for local DJs and party-starters Kapture and Dubspecter, the latter on stage now, bouncing and flailing with the robotic grumblings eking through the speakers. Intermittently a drop would elicit whoops from male groupings, met with a nod and appreciating grin from onstage. Community and unspoken vibes, everyone was tuned to it, everyone was on it… What people weren’t on was obvious, too: missing (but not missed) was the lovey-dovey-lean-in-stumble-tumble-touching-eyeroll-lipsmacking of a drugged-up majority. The scene, it seemed, was simple: show up and dance. Fuck Wednesdays. A mob of digital natives, plunking around to the underground sound of a computer’s violent haemorrhaging.
Around midnight things began heating up physically and sonically. Dubstep was still the M.O., I still couldn’t ID a single song and didn’t care. The floor was two thirds full (or one third empty, depending on your point of view) – tribespeople united to forcibly and symbolically insert a club-sized middle finger up Wednesday’s clammy rectum. Happy-birthday graphics flashed on screen and the room enjoyed a good larking back-slappy singalong, and the dubstep resumed – always dubstep, dubstep the master, generational alma mater – while the waves of energy grew higher. Though I was initially remiss at the lack of clamouring and genial pushing, I was in the middle of it then, relishing in the group therapy of bouncing, jumping, mean-mugging riffraffery, shoving just a little – “not yet!” says Not-Yet-Guy suddenly, who with this single gentle exclamation secured respect from the mob and positioned himself as Merry Keeper of the Mosh. Keep your hats on, people – for now. It is, after all, a Wednesday.
That’s what Shoe Guy was thinking I’m sure, as he jounced up in front of me – long hair flaying in the non-breeze – and put one hand on my shoulder and with the other pointed at his stocking foot then at a corresponding shoe lying on the floor nearby under a stampede of feet, and smiling broad said, “don’t worry I got it!”… and the shoe was still on the floor twenty minutes later. I held it up like a lost phone, hoping to summon him, to no avail. I worried not.
Someone was on stage next, but I’d stopped logging the changeover of DJs for they all had the same routine: Jar the record with a jog-wheel jostle, announce themselves to the tender crowd, then run a quickening buildup – along with hype and the unspoken promise that something new and different and cathartic was coming – that eventually released into… another dubstep drop. Rolling sawtooth waves, throbbing sub-bass, crazy robo-zoid zang-zonging over top. Fun, but over time it became mundane… the first time in my life I wished for less dubstep. Bring in the trap, the dancehall, the moombah, the juke, the footwork, the fucking country goddamit anything but more – omg Drake! Thank the 6 god for some lyrics to sing along to… we all run together through the six with our communal woes… you know how that shit goes…. and it’s a dubstep remix…
My next moment of recognition – the gloomy horns leading off Skrillex’s remix of ‘Burial’ – was a cue to get rude; I spent too much time wondering where the fuck these cats found so much obscure music to waste this opportunity to wild out and make dance floor real estate a premium commodity. A staid minority shared my enthusiasm… good natured people, these Montrealers, humouring a spastic weirdo. I took an unanticipated bathroom break shortly after, and experienced a special kind of FOMO as Flosstradamus’ ‘Mosh Pit’ remix dropped while I was dropping a deuce – amongst a litter of cocaine baggies, bass rattling the stall doors. The strangeness of the night peaked there and I went on to exhaust the rest of my energy in the most intense mosh pit of my life. After I washed my hands of course. Fuck Wednesdays, indeed.
Upstairs in the club I collapsed on a soft chair with my feet up, overlooking the swaying masses below. I checked my watch – 2:20am. The onslaught of dubstep showed no signs of stopping, and neither did Les Peoples’ enthusiasm. As I entertained the thought of leaving early, I felt a little like grandpa, out of the loop and trying the best he can to understand kids these days. I had always considered myself a fan of dubstep, so why did the night leave me feeling rinsed of enthusiasm for more? Was I finally the most ADD person in the room? Was this a new super breed of party people, training their endurance by staying a hair’s breadth in check of their sanity late into a weeknight? Were they perhaps indeed… insane? Out of their freaking minds? Or was there maybe something I missed by coming alone? Out of touch, that’s what it was… I sensed truth in all these inquiries. A feeling of humble wonder followed me out the door, past the tired squeegee punks, and went up into the night sky where a sliver of moon sat out of focus behind wispy clouds.
