Photographs by Dakota Arsenault.
As a diehard fan of the electric dance music scene, you can only imagine my excitement walking into The Danforth Music Hall to see Flosstradamus on Friday December 5th as part of their HDYNATION (Hoodie Nation) Tour. The two DJs that make up this trap sensation, J2K and Autobot proved to Toronto that they know how to put on a show. The duo have been together since 2009, they blew up after their massive hit Original Don took the fresh and quickly growing trap culture by storm, making these two unstoppable in the EDM scene.
I have seen Flosstadamus perform at Digital Dreams Festival in 2013, as well as at this year’s Mad Decent Block Party in Toronto so I know what they are capable of. They like to hit hard with that bass-in-your-face style, and that’s exactly what they did, Autobot spent most of the set spinning up in their towering DJ booth 15 feet above the crowd, in their Mad Max meets junkyard set. J2K hyped up the crowd for most of the set running across the set the whole night. He would jump up on a destroyed Honda Civic sprayed painted with their logo in one corner shouting out “Roll” and the crowd retaliating with “Up!” Along with constant crowd interaction, J2K would drench the overheating crowd with bottles of water, teasing the crowd by screaming “I thought this was Toronto, now let me see those hands up” to bring back the crowd from their drifting enthusiasm. They achieved their goals as they hit the crowd with some wicked wobbles by the English dubstep producer Rusko, and bass fueled remix of Bad Boys For Life by P Diddy (or whatever they call him these days). They managed to mix in quite a bit of early 2000’s hip-hop samples that the older members of the crowd certainly enjoyed. At one point I think I saw four people surfing the crowd at once including a girl that asked my brother and I to lift her up onto the raging crowd.
Midway through their set they pleased the crowd with another one of their smash hits Roll Up (Baauer remix) egging on the crowd with the question “does Toronto smoke every day?” Fans at The Danforth were also privileged with some brand new unreleased tracks that the duo dropped for the first time. After playing just the intro of one of their new songs they froze the music and J2K would only agree to continue if the crowd gave the proper appreciation that they felt was deserved for the honour bestowed on us.
They finished the night by bringing opening act GTA onto the stage and dropping their unreleased collaboration. They told a story about how they were just messing around with beats back and forth but after touring together they decided to make the demos into something more than that. After the song they ended their set followed by screams for an encore, and they obliged with two more songs.
Overall I think it was a successful show and a great venue, Flosstradamus has a long career ahead of them and this is just the beginning.
