During DJ Mag’s first summer in Canada, we caught festival fever pretty quickly. Starting with the pre-summer indoor raves like Montreal’s legendary Bal en Blanc and Edmonton’s Elements festival, we had a schedule packed with massive lineups, huge production and thousands of neon-clad fist-pumpers almost every weekend. Summer party season brought us from the scenic landscapes of Kelowna’s beaches, all the way to the middle of Ontario’s Algonquin Park, but we did our best to join you on the dance floor as much as possible to share the best moments of your summer. One thing that all these festivals had in common was good vibes, like-minded people, and great memories.
One thing we took note of during our travels was the diverse taste in dance music across our great country. One thing is for sure, bass lives on the west coast of Canada, a fact perhaps compounded by the presence of Canada’s pride and joy of speakers, PK Sound calling Calgary home. The city of Kelowna is a huge factor in the bass-driven west coast scene as well, spawning three world class dubstep artists that you know as Datsik, Excision, and Downlink. Whether it’s an underground drum n bass night, a summer festival littered with dubstep acts, or an arena show featuring hardstyle names like Headhunterz and Psyko Punkz—if you’re looking for bass, you will find it west of Winnipeg. There are two glaring exceptions for this obvious over-generalization, one of which is the Bass Mentality night spawned by Toronto producers Zed’s Dead and The Killabits, which brings heavy bass to the 416’s Mod Club every Wednesday, and featured the first Canadian appearances by names like Skrillex, Doctor P, Netsky, and Borgore. The other is of course WEMF, bringing the best of dubstep and drum n bass to the beautiful wilderness of Algonquin Park in mid August.
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Canada’s east coast festivals like Escapade, VELD, and Digital Dreams featured main stage programming similar to what we heard at Ultra and Electric Zoo, though obviously at a smaller scale—dominated by electro and progressive house acts with a common tendency to book artists like Avicii, Afrojack, Alesso, R3hab, Dada Life and Tommy Trash in headlining slots. If you veered away from the main stage to find a different sound, you may have come across an uplifting trance set from Aly&Fila or if you were really lucky, some world class techno from the likes of Dubfire or Richie Hawtin.
One festival that is completely different from the rest is the completely epic Shambhala festival, perhaps the most community-oriented and environmentally aware festival, this western Canadian staple is known primarily for bass music programming, but its hardcore supporters will tell you that Shabhalove is about way more than the music, it’s about a feeling. Share the feeling with our memories from Shamabhala article RIGHT HERE!
The next festival on the bill for the DJ Mag Canada team is the BPM festival in Playa del Carmen, Mexico which is featured in the Comin’ Up section of this edition. Each week we also preview one of our favourite upcoming festivals in our Festival Fever column on djmag.ca, so make sure to join us there to stay on top of the biggest parties coming your way. We’re already looking forward to seeing you on the dance floor again next summer, until then we’ve left you with some tantalizing memories from this summer’s festivals, including a few highlight movies and some artist interviews – enjoy!