Do you have any ambitions to release a full length album?
I'd like to do an album but sometimes but I feel like people's attention spans aren't really there to focus on a whole album. It's weird because I come from an album background as I used to own my own record label. I love listening to albums start to finish but what I'm doing is more based in clubs and club tracks are digested one at a time. But when I have a concept that makes for a full album, then I'll make an album. But I haven't really gotten there yet. But I felt that the West Coast EP was a full EP as I thought that the tracks felt connected together and it would be something that you'd want to listen from start to finish.
When you first came out with your sound it was pretty ahead of its time and now everyone is doing it. We've got talented people like Tchami out there. Is future house here to stay?
I'm not really a sub-genre type of guy, I'm more into good music. You mention Tchami and he's someone that's here to stay. He makes great tunes. He definitely has a style and a sound. I've been asked this question a million times and all I've got to say is that the cream rises to the top. Genres come and go but its the artist that stays.
If the artist is making dope tunes then that's great. If people go one day and say “Oh, I'm tired of future house, I want to hear banana house” or whatever you want to call it – it's just about good music. There are so many different sub-genres and that comes and goes.
"To me a rave is an illegal party with a bunch of kids."
Good music is good music.
Absolutely, it's a proven fact.
Is HARD Summer a rave or music festival?
It's an electronic music festival.
How did the term “rave” get such a comeback? Every time I think of a “rave”, it's a party at some abandoned warehouse back in the 1990s.
Totally, that's what I always say. To me a rave is an illegal party with a bunch of kids. These festivals cost upwards of 10 million dollars to produce. I've never been to a 10 million dollar rave. For me a rave costs something like 10 grand to make. That's my definition of it but everyone else has their own take. I just feel like the word has a bad stigma to it and we're doing large scale events. In my opinion, that's not really what a rave is. But that's just my opinion and whatever people want to say, they can say it.
"I think the 3 best cities for electronic music in North America is L.A, New York, and Toronto."
Tell me about HARD Toronto, has HARD been to Toronto before?
Yeah we've done a bunch of stuff there. We did a tour there in 2010 with Crystal Castles, Rusko, and Sinden at the Guvernment/Koolhaus. Then I did a show at Fort York with Justice and M83. I did my Ship to Ship tour at the Hoxton. I've played Digital Dreams multiple times. Now we're coming back for this show at Echo Beach.
I have a huge lover affair with Toronto. I really love it there, I think the 3 best cities for electronic music in North America is L.A, New York, and Toronto. The people there just go hard. They want to party, they are always up for it, and they love their music. I play a lot of festivals and at some places I have to alter my sets a little bit because I go too deep then people won't really respond. But in Toronto the deeper I play, the more they're into it. They're really know whats going on with electronic music there.
In terms of lineup – how did you put the HARD Toronto lineup together?
HARD Toronto is there to give people a taste of what HARDfest but with using only one stage. I love hip hop, I love electronic, rock, house and all of these different styles and that's what makes HARD unique. So I just try to get a blend of a little bit of everything that we're about.
RL Grime is one of our key dudes, we love him to death. He's really come a long way. His big trap/hip hop sound is the essence of what we do. Same thing with Dillon Francis, he's a character and we built both of them from day 1. Both of them are from L.A. and they really represent what we're about. And then we are bringing Prydz and Big Gigantic, who are totally from opposite sides of the spectrum, but they all fit together. I've been good friends with Claudia from Crystal Castles for a long time.
I met the Cosella dude when I was last in Toronto at the Hoxton. Every gig I go to I usually get a lot of people coming up to me and giving me their USB drives so I can listen to their stuff. I try to listen to it all but it's tough these days with everything I do. When I ran a record label, that's all I did. But when Anna Lunoe or Motez were playing at the Hoxton, a track came on and Cosella told me it was his. We were both downstairs and everybody was stomping on the floor boards above us and you think that the whole floor will cave in (laughs).
"If I hear the track, and play it in my set, and I dig it, I'm in. That's how I found Deadmau5. That's how I found Calvin Harris."
When I heard the track, I said “Wait, that's your track?”, and when he said yeah, I told him that I played that track all the time. It got me excited to listen to his drive. So the next day at the hotel I was trying to find his drive and I couldn't find it at first, but once I heard that track from one of the drives, I knew it was his. That's when I knew that I had to get him on the HARD Toronto lineup, and when I told him he was just blown away. I even popped his track into my set the next night. The track was called Cosella - “In My Roots”, it's sick. That's how you do it, by giving people opportunities that deserve it.
