Rave guide by Nathan Drake

ANO 1 #01 2014 R$ 19,90

AVE GUIDE

BEHIND THE SCENE SWEAT BOX

THE QUBE — A BASEMENT VENUE AT LONDON VICTORIA 1 — HAS ARRIVED.

# THE EDITORIAL Conselho Editorial: Nathan Lucas e Victor Brito Presidentes Executivos: Marcus Vinicius e Daniele Cardoso Presidentes de Operação e Gestão: Victória Cassia e Leonardo Bolsas Diretores-Superintendentes de Assinaturas: Nathan Lucas e Victor Brito Diretores de Recursos Humanos: Nathan Lucas e Victor Brito Diretores Editoriais: Victória Cássia e Nathan Lucas e Victor Brito Diretores-Superintendentes da Unidade Cinemídia: Victória Cássia e Wladmir Marinho

RAVE GUIDE Diretores de Redação: Nathan Lucas e Victor Brito Editores: Nathan Lucas e Victor Brito Repórteres: Nathan Lucas e Victor Brito Sucursais: Nathan Lucas e Victor Brito Núcleo de Revisão: Nathan Lucas e Victor Brito Diretores de Arte: Nathan Lucas e Victor Brito Editores de Arte: Nathan Lucas e Victor Brito Designers: Nathan Lucas e Victor Brito Infografia: Nathan Lucas e Victor Brito Edições Especiais: Nathan Lucas e Victor Brito RAVEGUIDE.CA Diretores: Nathan Lucas e Victor Brito Editores: Nathan Lucas e Victor Brito Repórteres: Nathan Lucas e Victor Brito Desenvolvedores Web: Nathan Lucas e Victor Brito Infografistas: Nathan Lucas e Victor Brito Produtores Multimídia: Nathan Lucas e Victor Brito www.RAVEGUIDE.ca Apoio Editorial: Victória Cássia e Wladmir Marinho Pesquisa e Inteligência de Mercado: Victória Cássia e Wladmir Marinho Publicidade Centralizada: Nathan Lucas e Victor Brito

# SUMARY

LONDON ONTARIO 5 REASONS WHY DANCE MUSIC THRIVES HERE

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cross Ontario, dance music has no doubt been on the rise in university and college towns. For something that has dominated Europe for years, there has been an explosive growth in the past few years, to the point that you can look into the music folder on almost any 20 something’s computer, and it’s guaranteed to be in there. Even with this growth, when it comes to hosting some of the biggest acts in the indus-

try, a few cities get the bookings far more often than others. We took to understanding this phenomenon by proﬁling an Ontario university town that somehow throws more parties, has more fans, and is just as wild as some of North America’s widely known dance music hubs. Thanks to a few key reasons, London Ontario has evolved into one of these cities.

1. VENUES When it comes to booking DJs, the reality is that they’re not going to be playing a show in someone’s dorm room. You need venues to ﬁt the bill, and London has them in spades. London Music Hall has been chief among these in the city, and it’s not just the recent renovation that’s brought that on. Back in April of 2011, Skrillex played a set there, and since the aforementioned renovations, juggernauts like Dubﬁre and Sander Van Doorn have graced the decks. For a smaller room, there’s Cobra London, which when it opened in 2012, shot to number 44 in DJ Mag’s Top 100 Clubs. Cobra has played host to names like Mark Knight and Gareth Emery, and on March 14th had Stafford Brothers on the bill.

2. WILDLY SUCCESSFUL LOCALS DJ culture in London is extremely competitive, meaning only the best ever make the transition from basement parties and bedroom DJing to the clubs. With that, many of the most successful local DJ’s have made the jump into production. Overwerk, Andy’s iLL, Klonez, and Giddy all trace their roots back here, and release songs on some of the biggest labels in the world. It’s not enough to know someone at the club to land a DJ gig, you have to be ready to be compared to the top guys before you ever get your chance.

3. Promotion Companies The city of London is home to more than its fair share of thriving promotions companies. CDN Entertainment, N.E.C Productions, Niteschool, Premierlife and many more have been instrumental in bringing electronic music to the forefront in the city. This city is a true promoter town, more than one bar has closed their doors when they couldn’t land a solid promotions company to bring in a crowd. Thanks to the multitude of companies, there is once again a competitive nature. Bringing in the biggest crowd often means bringing in bigger acts to solidify loyalty from the masses.

4. Youth Culture

Dance Music welcomes all people to enjoy, but overwhelmingly, younger people have welcomed Dance Music as their ﬁrst choice for a night out. Just as London is a promoter town, it’s also a student town. With Western University and Fanshawe College, within the city limits, there’s a massive amount of people in just the right demographic for around eight months a year. The inﬂuence of the student culture becomes quickly noticeable in the summer, with almost all bars and clubs in the city either having less open nights every week, if not closing up completely until the students return. Without the support of the students in the city, London would not nearly see the success it has.

5. Did somebody say outdoor show? You can have the best quality venues in the world, the best promoters in the world, and the best local opening DJs in the world, but the fact is, when your largest venue for electronic music shows (London Music Hall) is just shy of fitting 2000 people, it’s not financially possible to book AAA caliber acts. Through a little thinking outside the box, the dance music community in the city found a way. The answer came in outdoor shows, allowing heavyweights like Calvin Harris, Deadmau5, and Armin Van Buuren to make stops in the city without tickets costing upwards of $100. This has been absolutely key for growing support for Dance Music in the city. When you can bring the most recognizable names out for shows, you bring in both the hardcore, devout dance music fanatics, as well as people curious to find out more about the music.

BEHIND THE SCENE SWEAT BOX The Qube — a basement venue at London Victoria — has arrived.

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ith interest in house and techno higher than ever, the bug is spreading across the Big Smoke. Before it was mostly restricted to a small circle of clubs and covert pockets of the city, but The West End — previously a haven for glitzy VIP haunts — is now beginning to provide for people more interested in tunes dropping than Tequilas. The Qube, a new basement club connected

to Pacha London but with its own door policy, is where you’ll ﬁnd it. “West London has always lacked a quality venue that caters for the needs of the musically educated,” Chris Moon, the club’s manager tells us. “The Qube will ﬁll the gap and bring together people from all walks of life to share a common passion for music in a setting that has pre-

viously been unexplored. Launched on Friday 21st February, the venue is a collaborative project between the people behind Troupe/Together Ibiza, Red Sky/Why So Serious and Young Warrior, focused on bringing a single headliner to play extended sets to a cluedup crowd rather than packing a night with a load of DJs for the sake of it.

Nick Curly and Martin Buttrich have already played while Friendly Fires, Derrick Carter and Citizen are all on the agenda — but not without a touch of glamour and a no camera policy. “An attractive crowd, great headliners, this venue will ﬁre on all cylinders,” adds Chris. A quick look at The Qube Facebook page reveals a sexy, demure approach to promotion — black and white abstract images, a solitary shoe, a girl in her underwear with a cigarette and the slogan: ‘You Are More Than Beautiful’. Rather than taking emphasis away from VIP culture, The Qube is bringing a new meaning to it. A single-roomed 900-capacity den of iniquity where class and accessibility meet in the middle, and good quality dance music can go hand-in-hand with aspirational clubbing values. Not out of place within Lon-

don’s dress-to-impress district, The Qube intends to contribute something a little different to the capital’s club scene in a changing cultural landscape. “There are a lack of london ‘nightclubs’ that please people generally and many promoters tend to focus on using ﬂexible spaces and warehouses opposed to clubs,” concludes Chris. “I think it’s healthy like this. However, considering London is arguably the world’s hub of dance music, generally there could be more unique venues pushing to satisfy the changing needs of clubbers.” Indeed, as mainstream culture continues to embrace styles emerging from the underground, this club is set up to serve as the perfect receptacle for them. The Qube is thinking outside the box.

COMIN’ UP

DANCE MANIA HOUSE HYSTERIA Dance Mania transformed Chicago house from its ‘80s roots to a rough, raw, x-rated version that banged harder than anyone else. Now, after 13 years absence, the label is back by popular demand alongside a new Strut compilation that reminds the world just how inﬂuential it still is...

f Live Nation, SFX and Beatport owner Robert Sillerman is hoping to monopolize the world of EDM, then he may just be copying Daft Punk, who’ve already monopolized the answer to the question, “Who was your influence in getting into electronic music?” Today’s fresh-faced stars might consider the robotic dance music duo as the godfathers of EDM, but Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo were once excited teenagers themselves. And so far, it seems, there hasn’t been very much digging into what it was that set them off on the road to becoming global superstars. Fortunately, you don’t need to look far. “Teachers,” the squelchy roll call of Daft Punk’s musical mentors, on their 1997 breakout album Homework, laid down the bricks and mortar from which, their house – or, more specifically, house music – was built. It touches on Detroit techno, New York house legends, Dr Dre and Beach Boy Bryan Wilson, but most of all it highlights an obsession with Chicago and the sound of one label, Dance Mania. Paul Johnson, DJ Funk, DJ Rush, Waxmaster, Jammin Gerald, Lil Louis, DJ Deeon, DJ Milton, DJ Slugo, Parris Mitchell and Robert Armani, all artists name-checked in “Teachers”- itself a homage to Parris Mitchell’s 1995’s “Ghetto Shout Out,” featuring the vocals of Wax Mas-

ter. They’re also all Dance Mania regulars whose rugged, raw and often rude take on house music – dubbed ghetto house - is again bubbling in the underground, thanks to the relaunch of Dance Mania and the respect of labels such as Clone’s Jack For Daze, Night Slugs and LA Club Resources. “I would say 95 percent of people are back on board,” says Ray Barney, label head and lynchpin, when we reach him over Skype to discuss its return, following 2000’s closure alongside Barney’s Records, the shop and wholesale distribution business that Ray inherited from his father, and was the central point that focused all Dance Mania’s energies.

“We were not a label where we had any kind of conﬂict with artists,” he goes on with obvious sincerity. “I mean, we were like family. I had a big brother/little brother relationship with all the guys.”

he family is back together, minus a few stragglers, for Hardcore Traxx: Dance Mania Records 1986-1997, a compilation, which whittles the label’s 300 plus releases into 24 stone-cold classics (out now on Strut). Starting with Hercules’ “7 Ways,” a sexually charged track by Chicago early house royalty Marshall Jefferson, and culminating with the frenetic and obscene dress-to-sweat antics of “Work Out” by Top Cat, it traces Dance Mania’s evolution from challenger to DJ International and Trax Records, Chicago’s ﬁrst two house labels, which scored huge international hits, to a totally different animal altogether.

It’s encapsulated in standouts such as the anthemic “House Nation” by The House Master Boyz And The Rude Boy Of House, ever-fresh party banger, “Feel My M F Bass” by Paul Johnson, whose illustrious career includes chart hit “Down Down Down,” and Duane & Co’s “J B Traxx.” The latter, a raging whirl-

wind of claps and sampled exhortations written by Duane Burford, provided the label with its first track as well as its name when Burford offered up Dance Mania, something he’d previously used for a self-released single. “I was like, why not,” remembers Ray off-handedly, “it sounded like an appropriate name.” Most prominently featured, however, is Victor Parris Mitchell, who appears as Victor Romeo for the soulful vocal ride “Love Will Find A Way” (featuring Letreece Brown) and the rolling, breakbeat filled “Ride The Ride Rhythm,” as Rhythm II Rhythm for the smoother “A Touch of Jazz,” and as Parris Mitchell, his current moniker, for the seminal “Ghetto Shout Out.” Introduced to Ray Barney in 1987 by Vince Lawrence, co-author of Jesse Saunders’ “On and On,” widely considered the first ever house track, Victor’s initial experience wasn’t exactly the stuff that dreams are made of. “At that time Ray said he wasn’t looking for anything new but give him a call later,” chuckles Victor, who switched back to making R&B, which he’d been doing previously having started guitar lessons at age 12.

FAR-REACHING

e tried, and failed, to make a deal with Larry Sherman of Trax Records, and met with Rocky Jones, head of DJ International, but felt the label’s roster was too crowded. So when Victor and Ray’s paths eventually crossed again, Ray agreed to release Victor Romeo’s “You Can’t Fight My Love” on Bright Star Records, another one of his labels. It was distributing records from DJ International and Trax Records that had originally turned Ray onto the new sound coming from his native city, “I would imagine there were no hit records that happened in Chicago and didn’t come through our store,” he says proudly, but Dance Mania’s output, which leant toward a harder sound for dancers, rather than the radio, meant that it acquired an underdog status whose inﬂuence wasn’t immediately apparent. “I knew we were doing good music, I knew we were doing music that was popular in the clubs, was popular in the underground scene. I did not know the far reaching effects at the time that we were doing it. It was for parties in the neighborhood.”

Central to this was a club called The Factory, which was located at 4711 West Madison Street until it burned down in 1994, originally manned by DJs Quick Mix Claude and Greg the Master, but soon home to growing Dance Mania stars. “I think what came out of that was the younger generation, and what grew out of that was that the tempos got a little faster throughout the years,” explains Victor on the pumped tracks that characterized Dance Mania’s breakaway from its ‘80s roots, bpms rising to 140 to lay the ground for juke then footwork. “Jammin Gerald came out of that, DJ Funk came out of that, some of the other guys.” “I think I noticed the transition coming along,” adds Victor on this change, which had previously seen DJs pitching records up as far as possible and even modifying turntables to play faster than their intended speed. “Because the label was what it was, if you listen back to Lil Louis, from his earlier tracks, even Marshall Jefferson, a lot of their stuff was a lot rawer than the stuff that you’d hear on DJ International. Then Robert Armani came along and his tracks were really stripped down. Their tracks were bridging the barrier and it evolved from that sound.”

FOUR-DAY EVENT WILL RUN ACROSS THE MAY BANK HOLIDAY, WITH STEVE LAWLER, MK AND MATTHIAS TANZMANN AMONG THE GUESTS. The debut edition of M*A*D*E will take place across Rainbow Venues in Birmingham, running from Friday, May 2nd through Monday 5th.

hort for Metropolitan Arts & Dance Event, the bank holiday extravaganza is a collaboration between The Rainbow Venuesand Global Gathering Group. Spread across the Digbeth complex’s various spaces, the events will combine “world-class dance music, exclusive art and street food”, according to a press release. Following a regional heat of The British Street Food Awards on Friday night, the music will kick-off on Saturday at 2 PM, with drum and bass big-hitters Chase & Status, Netsky and Camo & Krooked taking over The Arena as part of a UKFshowcase. The Sunday has been reserved for house, techno and UK bass fans, with Annie Mac, MK and Redlight manning The Arena during the day. Taking care of the evening entertainment will be the trio of Viva Warriors (Steve Lawler, Matthias Tanzmann),FACE (Hot Since 82) and 10:31PM (Mak & Pasteman, Tom Shorterz), spread across The Street, The Warehouse and The Garden venues respectively. Monday’s programme has yet to be announced.

MELT FEST CONFIRMS JEFF MILLS Seth Troxler and Maya Jane Coles also down for German event

edium-sized festival Melt in Germany has just conﬁrmed 20 new acts — with techno wizard extraordinaire Jeff Mills heading up the new additions. The techno legend will be bringing his amazing DJ skillz to Melt to play the stage in the City Of Iron this year. Maya Jane Coles and Seth Troxler (playing back-to-back with Tiga) have also just been announced, as have the Martinez Brothers, Panda Bear, Little Dragon, Guy Gerber, Monika Kruse, Subb-an and lots more. They join the likes of Royksopp, Erol Alkan b2b Daniel Avery, Baauer, Boys Noize, Breach, Brodinski, Chromeo, Clean Bandit, Darkside, Dusky, Ellen Allien, Four Tet, Fuck Buttons, Gesaffelstein, Ame, Dixon, Modeselektor, Kele Okereke, Portishead, SBTRKT, Skream and WhoMadeWho, who were all already conﬁrmed. Melt is in its 17th year, and is one of the most respected festivals in Europe. It won Best Medium-Sized festival at the European Festival Awards last year, and this year is taking place 18th - 20th July in Ferropolis, Germany.

LONDONâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S BIGGEST NIGHTCLUB OPENS Studio 338 aims to bring Ibiza-style clubbing to south-east London with its heated outside terrace and a capacity of 3,000.

ondonâ&#x20AC;&#x2DC;s biggest nightclub opened its doors on Saturday, a venue with a capacity of 3,000 promising something of the alfresco debauchery of Ibiza with an outdoor terrace incongruously sited next to the Blackwall Tunnel. Studio 338 is in Greenwich, south-east London, and has hot air pumped into the outside space to heat it up in the chilly British winter. It arrives when

dance music has never been more popular while the number of superclubs in the capital has never been lower. With the exception of the evergreen Ministry of Sound at Elephant & Castle and Fabric in Farringdon, club venues had been displaced by peripatetic curators such as Broken & Uneven and London Warehouse Events (LWE), itinerant entities rotating around various semi-permanent

spaces in railway arches, car parks and post-industrial shells. Studio 338 aims to change all that, though the potential stumbling block is a location far from the clubbing hotspots of Vauxhall, Peckham and east London. The arrival of 24-hour tube in 2015 will help, but Studio 338 is primarily relying on that unique terrace plus blue-chip partners to persuade enough punters to make the trip each week.

Dan Perrin, 338’s musical director, says the venue will feature “brands and artists that fanatical early-20s club kids would walk barefoot to Kent to go and see,” citing respected US deep house crews Soul Clap and Wolf + Lamb, Berlin club Watergate, and London’s Secretsundaze. Perrin says house and techno are “90% of the musical character of this place”, but drum’n’bass brand Hospitality will also appear. The founder wants to remain anonymous and wouldn’t disclose ﬁnancial matters, but Perrin describes him as owning “specialist places in and around Bow, mostly eastern European cultural type places, if you will”. Perrin sums up the club’s niche as follows: “If Fabric is Berlin, this place is Ibiza or Croatia – more outdoor sunshine party time than head-down chinstroking.” Its position may be an issue, though. Fabric opened a sister

club in 2008 in the nearby Millennium Dome, Matter, only for it to be cut off by extensive Jubilee line weekend engineering; its replacement, Proud2, also floundered and closed last year. “It’s a lot harder to launch a venue now than it was years ago,” says Paul Jack of LWE. “Getting people in there week in week out without the name or established years of reputation is quite difficult.” It’s now Building Six, a space used by LWE for one-off events. “Having to book 104 dates a year is difficult for anyone, and for a big space it’s even more difficult,” Jack says. “Not having the fixed overheads of a venue is a massive advantage.” Phil Dudman, clubs editor of Mixmag magazine, said: “The youth are a discerning bunch – and in London, you can be really fussy … Things are pretty fierce

in this market, because it’s more popular than it’s ever been, but diluted across a very interesting scene.” The crowd at the opening are buzzy, laughing and upbeat, perhaps as a result of a stringent door-picking policy designed to remove “malevolent spirits”, as Perrin calls them. Leanne from Romford, a walking masterclass in foundation application, looks on approvingly. “The people are under control, there’s no trouble, it’s nice. No one’s too over-friendly, too over-hyped. This is the best club I’ve been to in London, deﬁnitely – Shoreditch doesn’t pull the names which you want it to pull.”