PEER PRESSURE at the Drake Hotel (1150 Queen West), Saturday (August 4). $5. www.thedrakehotel.ca. Rating: NNNNN
DL Jones, co-founder of Montreal’s Peer Pressure crew, is exhausted. He’s spent an entire day helping Parisian hiphop crew TTC shoot a music video.
“It’s a video about poutine, oddly enough,” he laughs. “I guess the concept is that they’re leaving the club and trying to track down some poutine, and along the way they end up at a Peer Pressure after-party.”
So what’s a hyped-up European group doing paying tribute to a Canadian hipster party anyway? Well, one of the hallmarks of this new era of club music is how connected all local micro-scenes are to their counterpart communities across the world, even if there still isn’t a decent word to describe the sound or scene.
No, “hipster hop” isn’t going to cut it. Neither is “indie dance.”
“I’m not quite sure what to call it,” Jones admits. “For a while, people tried to call it B-more, but that’s a specific kind of music that’s been around for way longer than everybody here has known about it.
“It’s almost as though there are people in each city waiting for this kind of party to come along, something not so segregated. People are becoming more open-minded about what they want to hear, not only in their homes but at the party, too. A lot of kids are just calling it club music these days. That kind of works.”
Whatever you call it, in the past two years Peer Pressure have done it extremely well. Recently voted the number-one club night in their Montreal hometown, they’ve also been making significant inroads in Toronto they’re currently here at least once a month.
While some might look at this kind of scene as simply the result of people reading up on Philly DJ Diplo and downloading whatever he’s been plugging, it seems more connected to a different kind of approach to throwing a party. The idea is to bring different types of people together and provide a place and soundtrack that includes them all.
Or maybe it’s just about playing the new hot shit for people who want to hear it. After all, trendhoppers need a place to dance, too.
