“It is a really cultural city, musically anyways,” says James, the third member of MFR, who was recruited by the original production duo of Jared and Voytek. “In the beginning there were so many micro-electronic scenes. You had the strict sounding new techno scene, the classic house guys, and the more clubby kind of thing.” It was this smorgasbord of electronic music that James discovered when he moved to Toronto from what he calls “out West”. “Eight years ago, when I came to Toronto, you had specific groups that were doing your sort of more underground techno parties, or your more warehouse vibes, or big clubs that were doing commercial music. Our crew found each other because we all had a similar taste for the warehouse sound, which I guess has been defined as the Toronto sound that started coming out in 2007 and 2008.”
The crew James casually refers to is not your run-of-the-mill group of house heads. In fact, they’ve become household names, pun intended. Jared, a Montreal native turned Toronto resident, recalls being introduced to the crew. “When I came from Montreal to go see some parties I met Teej, Nitin and Jonny White & Kenny Glasgow (aka Art Department). At that point I was just DJing for fun. Then I met all of these guys who were taking music super seriously. No.19 was just starting up and there was a lot of encouragement to start a label and start producing. I knew right away when I saw these guys play that these were the dudes. They had the same musical vision and the same ideas I had in mind. It was that environment that really inspired me. “I moved to Toronto about seven years ago. It was a couple years after that when I met [James] Teej. We became fast friends and he started contributing to the label early on. After a couple of years of working together, it just naturally seemed to make sense for James to join Voytek and me in the band. It was a pretty organic process.”
Subsequently, Jonny’s budding No.19 label and MFR’s newly created My Favorite Robot Records spearheaded the Toronto movement, garnering the attention of the worldwide dance community. “We saw that our vision was similarly shared so it just pretty organically worked out,” James explains. “That’s why a lot of the initial support we got early on was from those guys and why there have been collaborations. We’re all friends and party together. “If someone gets the album and listens to it on the way to work on the subway I’m glad they can enjoy it as much as someone who knows us from the club scene and our dance stuff. This album captures this moment in time for us.” Jared feels similarly and says, “I feel that we are finally able to give something back to the scene that has been so inspirational to us over the years. That’s what I think is so special about what we’ve been able to achieve with My Favorite Robot and the label. It’s from our hearts, it’s our vision of
the music we love and the people we’ve met along the way. ‘Atomic Age’ is the most complete piece of music that we’ve ever done and I’m so excited for people to hear it!”
Although the availability of musical influence was everywhere, the members of MFR found their inspiration mainly from introversion. Jared explains the early years by saying, “You can see in the first few releases on MFR Records that it was just all of our guys. It was Teej, Kenny had a couple EPs, Jonny had a couple EPs, Nitin put out some stuff—we really wanted to push our vision. There were definitely other people also trying to make a mark, but more often than not I saw our crew looking inside itself to continue to build what we were trying to do.”
This self-inspiring approach to producing and releasing music made MFR Records somewhat of an outlier among dance music labels, resulting in an electronic music label focused around releasing quality, forward-thinking music with little to no regard for genre labels or danceability. James attributes MFR’s tasteful curating to their personal connection to the label’s artists. “Ultimately the label is about releasing what we think is high quality electronic music, regardless of what genre it falls under. One of the upcoming releases is one of the most techno kind of releases we’ve ever put out, but when you listen to it you still hear that MFR element. All of the music we release has this something to it. We discover that by getting to know the artists better and keeping close relationships with the producers we work with. We try to keep a pool of inspiration to push ourselves.” Jared chimes in jokingly, “When you have your own label you can take a few more chances. Maybe it’s dance, maybe it’s more of a listening track, and that’s the beauty about doing your own A&R!”
When talking to James and Jared, they use the term My Favorite Robot interchangeably, referring to both the band and the label as MFR. “I treat them both equally,” Jared says. “It’s a huge release to be able to go in the studio and make music! The label I absolutely love, but it’s a lot of work between the artists, mastering, PR and distribution — there’s just so much more there.” James adds a note of humor, adding, “They’re both my babies. Twins!”
Although MFR Records has positioned itself at the forefront of the new era in electronic dance music, the My Favorite Robot sound is an even further deviation from the norm, standing alone even amongst its own label releases. “It’s not something that we’re intentionally trying to do,” explains Jared. “If you look at our music we put out on other labels as well, I would say it probably sits in its own little spot amongst the other stuff.” Jared is referring to MFR’s not-so-dancey take on electronic music. Drawing
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