The camo. The skin. The glow sticks. Walking down the desert valley road that is Polson Street towards Sound Academy shortly after 10:30pm, there was no doubt that I was heading into a rave of the drum & bass persuasion. This walk, however, was shrouded in dark meaning: Muzik, the venue where Destiny’s 22nd Anniversary Party was originally billed to be held in an indoor/outdoor two-stage space, complete with a swimming pool, was under investigation after that terrible double homicide at an OVO Fest afterparty. What a shame, I thought, as an ever-bitchy security guard frisked me with brusque thoroughness; it’d have been nice to be in a pool tonight.
It was a bit of a disappointment to find out with three days’ notice that the venue had been moved to Sound Academy, and I wasn’t the only one who felt that way: a lot of chatter on the Facebook event page indicated people were confused or unsure about coming. I’ve always regarded Sound Academy as a necessary evil for big parties… with a shudder I recalled feeling like a cheap hooker trying to convince cabs to take a $20 fare on harsh winter nights in years past. Plus, cuts and changes to the lineups remained to be seen… that being said, it was a small miracle that an event of this size could shift venues so late. Props to the rave gods (and Destiny).
Inside, the space was one long huge-ceilinged rectangle, stage at the front and a curtained merch wall at the back, and parallel bars as sides. Frantic Drum and Bass played to the spattering of early arrivals, all making good use of the wide-open floor space. After an initial walkaround and fruitless internet information scramble, I was surprised that they hadn’t set up a two-stage area… until I heard a faint whisper of snare rolls that I followed like a sleuth into an obscure and unlabeled side room where, once you walked in, you were surrounded by fat bass. Classic life lesson: Leave your expectations out at the door (you know, the place where security grabs your dick).
Local producer and DJ, Bassik, was on the decks in this side room, throwing down some pretty heavy shit – which the dozen and a half hardcore bass heads in attendance were into (it was goddamn early to be shirtless in my opinion). There was a bar here and I had my first and only visit to it; $6.75 a Rolling Rock makes you want to leave your drink and hope it gets spiked with something good.
From the depths of the side room you could see out into the first couple rows of the main stage, all flashing lights and flailing limbs and general wildness; the soundproofing in here was incredible. Bassik was making good use of the more-than-adequate sound system in here, casually cranking out overlooked dubstep cuts like Zomboy’s ‘Ragga Bomb’ remix, and doling out quality party advice over the mic like “do your drugs responsibly!” It was a safe space. Dancing makes you forget what it’s like not to feel.
Bassik popped off some trappy Drake remixes and a couple waves of techno, house, and footwork, then some breakbeat stuff along with a shoutout to the junglists in the room. My mind wandered to the portrait of wilderness that was the main room, so there I went.
I’d not previously partied to Drum and Bass for longer than 15 minutes before becoming gassed and bored. A pet peeve of mine has always been the MC – what in the hell, I wonder, is he doing? Are he and the DJ even friends? Is one a fly in the other’s ear, or are they collaborators – sidekicks? Does anybody actually understand the guy – including himself? Or is it the sound of his voice that’s supposed to be the instrument? While these questions probed and racked my brain, pockets of dance continued to metastasize on the floor.
Shot by Hector Vasquez for FUXWITHIT
In the bathroom, the attendant is rousing up chants of “Heyyyyy we want some pussay!” to which an unnerving amount of guys chime into. One guy chortles on his way out, “This guy knows!”
11:30 pm and the main room is a Drum and Bass clusterfuck. People are wired up, synced, having fun. I think about how songs only have meaning in context: Who are you with? Are you dancing? Are you smiling? What’s happened in your life recently? I’m also seeing some interesting things around here – strange messages that may or may not be real. For one thing, I think someone’s wearing a t-shirt that says “Party like a Lobster”. And then there’s Squid Guy, wearing glow glasses and a squid headpiece and is so nerdy he looks like he could program your computer and give your mother a scientifically exact orgasm at the same time.
On stage, the VIP beer bucket tips over and sends a single unopened can of Corona tumbling at my feet. My new friend Juan the Photographer says that the beer was “meant to be” and I graciously agree, sharing the spoils with he and FUXWITHIT photographer Hector.
Brillz shot by Hector Vasquez for FUXWITHIT
The last thing anyone said to Brillz before he stepped up to play his set shortly after 12am was “Hey man, I love your message!”; I know this because I was the one who said it (although I had no idea he was about to play his set). His “Twonk” philosophy has inspired creations from clothing lines to curated festival stages, and his music reflects this attitude:
“Twonk is a human weirdo, and Twonk Team is the movement of the weirdos. Twonk is about creativity, it’s about individuality, it’s about being weird… Our philosophy is all about embracing your inner weirdo, having high vibrations, and being swaggy as fuck.”
To be sure, Brillz is known for trap – a quick scroll through his SoundCloud will turn up a lot of classics that’ll make you say “THAT’S who made that track?!”. ‘Roots’ (with Kill the Noise), ‘Dirt Off Your Shoulders’, ‘Clarity’, ‘New Jack Swoop’ – Tell me about the last time you heard this and went wild?
It felt disrespectful to be on stage sweat-free, so I scurried down to the floor for a hoedown as soon as the trap got running. There seemed to be a pit of the moshy-sort so I slipped right in there, but it turns out there was just one guy who’d shove someone, and someone else would shove him…then when he got his balance again the cycle would restart. Many people were jangled and women were yapping like Pomeranians… I mean, here was this misguided chap in the frenzied throes of bass hysteria, and nobody knew what to do – myself included. I saw the guy, and accepted him, and knew he simply didn’t know how not to mosh. Can you blame a guy for not knowing? But the crazy fucker’s run amok…at least he cleared space for the get-down.
Post-rage, covered in an appropriate amount of sweat, I headed for the stage to see how the crowd was digging it. I’d say it was a 6.5/10 on the wild-out scale, but these were sentient beings and I know they were feeling the Twonk inside. It occurred to me that some – if not most – of these people had no idea who Brillz was. He was the ‘trap interlude’; they came for the extended Andy C set, and were saving energy. Brillz rinsed out his repertoire and took a humble exit.
Inside the bathroom the attendant is now calling out, “juicy poosy, juicy poosy”. I consider this false advertising.
In the side room. T.O. local Bensley, mainly a Drum and Bass artist signed to Andy C’s Ram Records, happens to be playing some house – Disclosure, maybe – and I’m suddenly struck by the notion that the side room has felt like the kiddie table at Thanksgiving. Not that the kiddie table isn’t important (we’ve all seen Rugrats) just that there’s a distinctly “adult” flavor to what’s about to happen in the main room.
At 1:15 an announcement is made that Andy C’s flight got sidelined to Montreal earlier tonight (Boo! goes the crowd)… but that he drove himself to Kingston (Yay! goes the crowd)… and then got a private jet here (Yay! goes the crowd)… but needs a smoke break (Boo! and Yay! goes the crowd)… so go on everybody and have a smoke break and come back and we’ll have ourselves a time. And thus, mass smoke break was initiated and for those who stayed, Hydee – who was on the original bill and survived the lineup cuts – pumped out some tunes for a quarter hour.
Before Andy C came on, I had him contemptuously pegged as a marathoner of an annoying art, and I had all sorts of clever things to say about the MC being part Zumba instructor, part helicopter mom. But the thing I learned about Andy C is that a critical mass of people – the same critical mass that was absent in the aforementioned mosh pit – have agreed ahead of time that Andy C is a minor God. There’s no question about it. There are only two kinds of people in the room: Those who’ve seen Andy C live and those who haven’t. Both are equally excited and inundated with myth about it. This helped me open my mind for what was to come.
Andy C shot by Hector Vasquez for FUXWITHIT
The Man Himself came on stage and the place lit up like a penguin’s beak. Pure heart and madness. A thousand pairs of hands straight up in the air, like a sea of wheat. I joined in to humor my curiosity, and couldn’t stop dancing once the onslaught began – relentless otherworldly music that sounds like it’s blowing speakers and coming up through the floor at the same time. Music that shakes you like one would shake awake a daydreamer. From the outside, Drum & Bass seems to sound the same but once you get inside, or rather let it get inside you, things change. 180 beats per minute is a lot of beats, a lot of opportunities to move and dance and inch your way towards bliss. I recognized almost zero tunes, aside from a vocal sample from Major Lazer’s ‘Get Free’ and a roughed-up remix of Jack U’s ‘Take U There’
Drum & Bass is raw. It’s ragged. It’s gritty. It’s hectic. It’s .. nonsense, frankly, and anybody who’s in on it has no qualms with others who are in. Drum & Bass is the musical equivalent to cilantro – repelling those who are sensitive to it – and the ones who stay are the ones who say ‘fuck it’ to holding on to the notion of ‘making sense’. Love doesn’t make sense! these people say, and it’s hard to disagree – so imagine a whole room of people agreeing to love each other, tacitly, through the act of Drum and Bass, neurally hardwired to the rushing stream of breakbeat rhythm. We dance, therefore we are. I understand the music ergo, I understand me, I understand you.
While dancing, I remembered learning how 180 strides/minute is an optimum pace for medium-distance running… which helped explain that part of the Drum & Bass euphoria is cardiovascular – the whole room is on a runner’s high. (Plus, I have a theory that at least one third of these people have had the best fuck of their lives at 180bpm. I have no data on this, but I feel certain to be correct within a couple standard deviations)
MC GQ shot by Hector Vasquez for FUXWITHIT
MC GQ impressed me, and changed the way I viewed ‘the buzz fly MC’. As the set progressed, I saw his role evolve along with the message of the music, notably in the phrases he chose to repeat. “Headstrong!”, MC GC says. “Ram – Ram – Ram”, he says (side note: ‘Ram’ is also the Sanskrit word for God… I wonder how many people were thrown into religious ecstasy that night…). Ram! Run at the thing! Go in! Instructing, goading, chiding – like a maestro, a leader. Co-Captain of the Love Ship Party. MC GQ!. Sometimes I still didn’t know what he was saying, but people seemed to like him. Or they liked Andy, and he was with Andy and reminded them that Andy was here and Andy-Andy-Andy!! There was a knowing and people knew.
An hour later I decided to take an exit before I was fully exhausted. Composing myself in the bathroom, I heard a casual bathroom self-talk – a random “wow, my ears are fucked” and the attendant halfheartedly muttering “…juicy poosy…”. Still processing the night’s lessons and new experiences, I left the venue and hopped on my bike, careful not to spill any bliss, high on oxygen and covered with my and other peoples’ sweat.
Photos by Hector Vasquez
