2011 Recap: Andrew Ryce

Being tucked away on the West Coast of North America has its pros & cons. For sure, we got geography for days & the eats are healthy… but when it comes to dance music, Canada’s left coast hasn’t necessarily been the greatest place to make a go of it. Having watched artists like Mathew Jonson & The Mole move to Berlin to have at a legitimate career, it’s galvanizing to see the current crop of West Coast producers set on building careers on their home turf.

Yet despite the ubiquity of the web, getting anyone outside of BC to take notice is still a challenge. Which is where Andrew Ryce comes in. A writer, critic & overall scene enthusiast, Ryce has been instrumental in chronicling the underground dance activity in Vancouver over the past couple of years. Writing for Resident Advisor, FACT Magazine & Pitchfork (among others), his reviews of albums, EPs & events have shone a slim beam of light on our corner of the dancefloor, giving global perspective to our very regional scene. On his Future Proofing blog, Ryce often delves a little deeper, choosing to navigate lengthy topics (the 2010 feature on Autonomic DnB is ace) with in-depth analyses & constructive critique. Most recently, Ryce has been profiling many of the West Coast’s key players with fantastic interviews & exclusive mixes (the most recent post on Max Ulis features an ESSENTIAL 15 min mix of all original Ulis beats).

At the rave, Ryce will be found at the centre of any dancefloor – he’s an active participant in this world, far from a chin-stroking pundit. The coverage our scene has received on the global platform via this fellow - while totally warrented – is greatly needed & hugely appreciated. We’re glad to have someone like Andrew in our midst soaking up all our hard work.

Tune of 2011: Blawan “Getting Me Down”

Andrew Ryce: Everybody had a hard year.  Everybody had a good time.  How’s that for a cliche intro? Sorry, that’s all I know how to do.

Music? 2011 was the year that house broke. Again. It never went away, and in its home sectors it was as strong as ever, but it seemed like halfway through this year that that pesky rigid line which divided what was once dubstep — “bass music” — from its four-to-the-floor cousin seemed to simply dissolve in a sea of crosstalk and coy flirtation.  By the end of 2011, it just feels like everything is house: whether you’re looking at it through the spectrum of soulful deep house, classic Chicago, skippy garage of the American and British varieties, whatever: it’s all about house.

This tectonic shift has its ups and downs: for every genius idiosyncratic take on the stuff there’s a million producers taking stabs at it who have no idea what they’re doing, with very few reference points outside of a few deep house tracks they may have heard as part of the whole resurging trend in the first place.  I won’t name too many names, but the whole thing was wildly uneven: take Blawan, who caught everyone off-guard with his Brandy house refix “Getting Me Down” — my personal favourite dance track of the year, and #1 over at RA as well — then proceeded to trot blindly down the same path, releasing the savagely disappointing “What You Do With What You Have,” a ham-fisted admixture of cliches that was simultaneously boring and maybe a little offensive.

But all that aside, and putting aside the general feeling of assimilation that all of this inspires, 2011 also felt like the year when, in dance music anyway, genre really didn’t matter anymore.  Everyone ran off on their own paths doing whatever the hell they wanted.  Though the d-word was thrown around a lot and misused as much as ever — and the d-word mainstream erupted to new heights, baiting moaning and controversy from all corners — it felt like there were no rules anymore. One of my favourite producers of the year, Salva, started the year with a fantastic album full of UK-friendly hip-hop excursions (Complex Housing) and ended it with an EP of muscular weirdo house music.  There wasn’t even any accounting for taste anymore: Scuba made trance (“Adrenalin”), Robag Wruhme made prog house (“Donnerkuppel”), and as time passed it seemed like those little things that used to make genres like that unbearable were suddenly everywhere — and totally acceptable, at least in the right circles.

I don’t think any artist embodies this better than araabMUZIK, whose Electronic Dream took his trusty MPC to a number of trance tracks — sampled almost in their entirety — and became one of 2011’s most addictive and inescapable albums.  Challenging notions of taste, genre, authenticity, and authorship, there’s a whole dialogue surrounding Electronic Dream that’s not worth getting into here, but suffice it to say it seemed the crown jewel of a zeitgeist of the intentionally gaudy in 2011.

I don’t know what the hell to say about 2011 personally other than… what happened?  Personally it was a landmark year: working harder than ever, I had an extended and life-changing stint over in Europe for the first time, seeing the club scenes and artists I had covered for well over a year finally in action in their own habitats: London, Berlin, Amsterdam, and especially Bristol all stole my my heart.  For me, 2011 doesn’t get much better than the twelve days I spent in Bristol.  Great people, great music, and a healthy appreciation for the arts of all kinds, it was an inspiring place to be.

But as much as I may have left my heart in Europe (anyone who knows me personally will attest for my distaste for many aspects of Vancouver), upon returning I also embarked upon a mission to really highlight the strength of British Columbia’s ever-bustling music scene.  Beginning my “Futureproofing Vancouver” series in the second half of this year, I couldn’t be prouder of the way it showcases the best our community has to offer.  Aleem Jamal-Kabani, Zia Hirji, Rob Prison Garde Squire, Kevin Eames, Chris Long, Michael Red, Max Ulis, Scott W, Cedric Meister, are the heroes here, tirelessly putting on adventurous shows and taking risks to bring Vancouver up to speed with the rest of the world: Addison Groove, Todd Edwards, Ikonika, Jacques Greene, Lunice, Metro Area, Levon Vincent, Prosumer, Marcelus Pittman… and so many more.  The change in the past year alone in terms of bookings, attendance and organization is a sight to behold.

Conveniently, 2011 also felt like the time everyone in Vancouver started firing on all cylinders: in this once-disorganized scene, people are now starting labels, putting out proper releases, and using the internet infrastructure for distributing music to the utmost.  Monolithium released the fantastic Simon & G-Funk EP on German label Error Broadcast, Prison Garde — undeniably my favourite DJ in the city — released TWO free albums this year, one of his own genre-jumping productions and the other a heads-down house collaboration with Vancouver’s sweetheart Kevin Eames.  Vincent Parker released an amazing free album, Max Ulis started a label and spent the better half of the year honing what is an absolutely amazing live set, and his brother Self Evident kept on blowing everyone away with his wildly diverse DJ sets.  It’s a good time to be in this place for music, and the growing success of crews like subdivision is absolutely inspiring: everything feels on a constant trajectory of onward and upward, whether we’re talking music in general or music in Victoria.  Onward and upward.  I’m just going to echo Michael Red’s recap and say that Vancouver duo Evy Jane might be most exciting of all: just wait for her killer EP to drop on King Deluxe early next year.

Some of my favourite things in 2011?  The Weeknd. Machinedrum. Kowton. ASC. Drake. Kevin McPhee. M83. araabMUZIK. BNJMN. Peverelist. John Heckle. Terius Nash. West Norwood Cassette Library. Frank Ocean. Kuedo. Brendon Moeller. Andy Stott. Junior Boys. The whole Friends of Friends crew. Frite Nite. T Williams. Scuba. Sigha. Boddika. Clams Casino. Milyoo. Idle Hands. Punch Drunk. Wild Beasts. ASAP Rocky.  Everything Planet Mu released this year. A lot of other shit, and everyone in this cozy little Vancouver community.  Decibel Festival. Plastic People. Ben Klock at the fuckin’ Berghain. Dubloaded in Bristol with DJG and Vancouver’s very own Daega Sound.  And, as ever, whiskey.