Photographs by Sean Chin.
As the summer winds down, the festival circuit is starting to wrap up. After a summer with Live in Limbo covering Ever After, Digital Dreams, Full Flex Express and Veld it was time for our last Electronic festival in the Diplo curated Mad Decent Block Party. The fest that started in 2008 as an actual block party in Philadelphia soon morphed into a travelling circus with the year the tour stopping in 19 different cities including Toronto, Calgary and Vancouver as the only Canadian stops.
The day had a bit of a rough start when XXYYXX didn’t make an appearance and no mention of why not was made. Did he not make the trip to Canada? Was he sick? Was it something worse? Who knows? Instead of a 30-minute set from Thugli the crowd was treated to a full hour of the local duo. While walking around the grounds of Fort York, I caught the end of their set making for good background news seeing what the merch tent was selling, what food trucks were stationed there to feed the hungry concertgoers and how the VIP area worked. As they finished off their set, they played the hometown anthem of Know Yourself by Drake, which features the now very famous lyrics “I was runnin’ through the 6 with my woes”. At first I thought they were just being clever of playing another Toronto-based artist as a goodbye track, but no it was much worse than that.
Only recently announced was that RiFF RAFF would be on the tour. It seemed to be a slightly contentious pick since two years ago when he played in Toronto at the Mad Decent Block Party tour stop he cut his set short and walked off stage for unknown reasons. When he came onstage though the crowd all pushed their way forward to see the spectacle as he started with How To Be The Man. He had neon green braids and bright clothing to match. As he prowled across the stage he carried a bottle of Ciraq Vodka that him and his DJ took turns drinking straight from it. He led the crowd in a chant of “I only made four million last year” showing of his fiscal conservatism. I left his show still not sure if he is a genius reinventing rap or a mad man fool laughing at us all.
After the brief hip-hop sojourn the focus turned back to EDM when JAUZ came out with a hyped up beat then right as the crescendo occurred and the beat was ready to drop, he turned off the music. An audible groan was heard, like we all realized we were Rick Rolled at the same time. The graphics that played behind him were all shark related, which made his name even more fun to say aloud. An attacking shark taking a bite out of his logo, a neon shark exoskeleton flashing in an epileptic fashion and a Super Mario like side-scroller with a shark as its hero beating up other EDM figures including a Mau5 Goomba were just some of his clever imagery. The crowd skewed very white, and very young as a large portion didn’t have on 19+ wristbands so it was a bit cringey hearing the crowd shout along the chorus the JAUZ’s remix of All Day, a song that repeatedly drops the N-bomb. When he shifted towards more Deep House material the crowd really started dancing along. He played a major throwback record in the Backstreet Boys I Want It That Way, which is guess is now old enough to no longer be considered ironic and just a classic pop song. I grew up (admittedly) as a big fan back in the late 90’s, being ten when that song came out and I have to assume that most of the kids there, while maybe were born then, were not old enough for Backstreet Mania. As I mentioned earlier with what I thought was a clever play by Thugli’s part to spin Drake, turned out that every single DJ on the day played it. Every. Single. One. Of. Them. Maybe it was a part of the contract, maybe it is just a super popular song right now, maybe they all wanted to play us lip service, maybe Drake bullies visiting acts to play it. Whatever the case is, after hearing it for the forth and fifth time, I am officially over it now.
The party continued with Yellow Claw, a group I was first introduced to at this year’s Digital Dreams back in July. The group, which normally consists of three members, only had two present, Bizzey and Nizzle, just like at Digital Dreams. Bizzey who is the groups MC demanded the crowd split in the middle to open up a giant mosh pit. From what I gathered, the ‘giant’ mosh pit never materialized, with only a few people throwing their bodies around intensely. The groups music is mostly routed in trap beats so it wasn’t a surprise that they played Fetty Wap’s summer anthem Trap Queen (even if the word ‘Trap’ means two different things in this sentence), bring a new twist on an already great song. Bizzey spent the entire show running back and forth across the stage, yelling instructions at the crowd and amping them up to see what side was more hype. Nizzle spent the whole time station behind his decks and even though it didn’t seem like he spoke with his band mate, they seemed to be on the same wavelength the whole time. We were told that they were going to turn the show back in time to 95-96 in Amsterdam (their hometown), and given the group’s age was probably when they first got into Euro House music spinning music that probably would have been played back then. They previewed several songs from their upcoming album Blood For Mercy, which currently does not have a release date.
The weather throughout the day barely held off. It was a very middle as far as temperature goes with clouds hovering over the grounds. Thankfully it never did end up raining, but the venue managed to ran on concertgoer’s parades. Having gone to other EDM raves I have never had to take my shoes off at the gates to be inspected, which is a bit off putting since it was done on a dirt path. Going to get a drink early in the evening proved to be a challenge. After waiting 10 minutes in the VIP section and barely moving a spot I gave up. Surveying the other booths was futile, as I would have had to wait in line even longer. I don’t know if the venue, the promoter or Mad Decent themselves were under prepared but I felt bad for those people who probably missed entire sets just to get a drink or some food.
Most of the acts seemed pretty interchangeable, playing the same remixes and not offering much in the way of diversity. TJR finally broke the mold. He came out blasting ‘O Canada’, and surprisingly the crowd sung along to it dropping the beat at the end of our anthem into AC/DC’s TNT, which was a fun change of pace. He was also the only DJ to keep the past a very high level, making the whole set danceable as most of the early acts had too much downtime between their drops. He mixed in plenty of older hip-hop tracks including tracks from DMX and M.I.A. (an artist Diplo is responsible for bringing to the mainstream). Earlier this summer at Full Flex Express Skrillex was the co-headliner (performing as Jack U) so it was plenty of fun hearing his old school track Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites. The biggest cheer of the night came when the Gorillaz Clint Eastwood came on, with its banging drum intro and Damon Albarn’s famous catchy chorus had everyone singing along. The set went from good to great as he ended with Shout! The famous Otis Day and the Knights song made famous in the film Animal House. A good chunk of the young crowd surprisingly knew the song and sang along. He even lowered the volume to a zero during the “A little bit softer now” part and raising it up to a thunderous level during the “A little bit louder now” refrain.
There seemed to be some sort of technical difficulties with the screens Major Lazer had set up they finally came out about 15 minutes after the start of their set time was supposed to begin to screens of a broadcast news signal. The three-piece features mastermind Diplo, dancehall DJ Jillionaire and reggae hype man Walshy Fire. Diplo started by throwing out a bunch of swag including whistles and bandanas into the crowd. A quartet of female dancers came out and flanked the stage performing semi-choreographed dance routines. For most of the beginning of the set only Jillionaire played the music as Diplo was much more preoccupied in dancing and jumping off things, while occasionally shouting into the microphone some platitudes about how awesome the crowd was. During Pon de Floor Diplo got into a giant inflatable bubble, one like Wayne Coyne of The Flaming Lips used to do, and he rolled over the top of crowd. RiFF RAFF was noticeable watching from the sidelines, as his neon hair is impossible to miss. The world beats the are rooting in the most dancey songs the planet has to offer, all of which caused the crowd to be able to simultaneously jump up in the air as a collective group. While the day was a bit hit or miss, the highs were very high the ticket prices were quite affordable and the fact that the weather was nice enough meant it was enough of a success to ensure that the tour will come back next year.
Thanks to Embrace Presents for media access.
