In the Summer of 1993 I found myself handing out flyers for my own rave called Syrous with a date set in September of 1993. How I got to this point is a little crazy considering I only experienced my first rave a year earlier in 1992.

It all started at a friends house in Newmarket, Ontario on September 26, 1992. Someone heard from someone’s friend’s brother’s cat that there was a big rave happening in Toronto that night, but the location was secret and the only way to get there was to catch a special shuttle bus at Union Station. We all piled into a car and headed downtown. When we arrived at Union Station there was a school bus parked out front with some guy wearing a jokers hat. The shuttle bus was full. It took us to a warehouse off of Cherry Street in the Industrial area. The Rave was called Nitrous 015, or later known as “The Swing Rave”. It had a number large swings down the main corridor that could fit 2 people, there were chill out rooms with old TV’s playing weird psychedelic footage rest on uneven floors with fake grass as carpet, people lounging just chilling out, It was awesome. I have vivid memories of that night. The outdoor chillout area was surrounded by giant rusty old Industrial vats and pipes everywhere, the smell of industrial oil filled the air, it was amazing. I can honestly say that night changed my life. The music, the people, the atmosphere, the vibe. It was incredible. I was hooked!

After that first rave I started going every weekend. I got involved as a promoter and started handing out flyers for various rave companies like Pleasure Force and Sykosis, Destiny. I fell in love with Toronto’s underground rave scene and was addicted to Drum’n Bass music and still am. I wanted to help grow the Toronto Jungle scene and thought maybe one day I could put on a rave of my own. In the spring of 1993 I met this kid named George, he was handing out these cheap postcard size flyers with the name Syrous and an event date of August 7, 1993. I met George when I was dating this girl named Trisha, and Trisha’s best friend was dating this guy.. George. He was promoting this party, hyping it up and talking a big game. He was a real character. This went on for several weeks, maybe months, and I guess I got to know him better. Trish and I were a thing and we would all meet up every Saturday at the next rave. At some point I decided to invest in his Rave. I designed the flyer (below) and borrowed money from my parents to get them printed. I even got them printed at the place where all the rave companies got their flyers done, Candor Printing. Then about 2 months before the event, George was getting shifty, saying he doesn’t have the money to throw the event. He went completely MIA, avoiding me at all cost, I was pissed and the biggest problem was he had the entire box of flyers I got printed. Then, one day I went to his parents house, convinced his mom to let me In, went into his room and took the box of flyers without him knowing. From that moment on, George was no longer part of Syrous.

On September 3rd 1993, at the age of 18, with financial help from my parents, and huge support from the Toronto Rave community including Captain B. Mental and the X-Static crew, I held my first Rave at Cinespace Film Studios on Eastern Avenue in Toronto. I organized the entire thing on my own. The night ended up being a success but we had some drama throughout the night. The party was bringing in lots of people, i think we peaked at about 800 people at one point but unfortunately we lost power early on because of some asshole who worked on the Cinespace grounds that night. He was pissed with all the people parking their cars where they shouldn’t be so he pulled the power to the building. I remember calling Nick (The owner of Cinespace) completely freaking out. It wasn’t cheap to throw a rave and rent a space like this, you relied heavily on sales at the door so people were showing up and there was no music or power so people just left. Nick eventually told the jerk to restore power and I remember going with security to force him to comply. As soon as the power came back, the laser system turned on and you heard all the cheers and whistles from the crowd. It had been turned off for almost 2 hours at that point. The party continued til about 8am the following morning. We had a Spaceball for people to spin around in, Dave’s Smart Drinks and a live Performance by a drum’n bass producer known as 1.8.7 who drove all the way from Pittsburg. Here’s a recording of his live performance that night. I still have vivid memories of that whole experience. The incredible argon lasers and the insane sound setup by Myron’s Sound System. I ended up loosing about $4000 that night because of the power failure and lack of ticket sales at the door.

Syrous would return a year later when I partnered with brothers Rob & Vito Lisi. Two good friends that I met while raving and visiting the X-Static Clothing Store. It was located at the corner of Queen & John Street right across from Speakers Corner and City-TV. There was a bunch of indie clothing shops on the top floor above the corner coffee shop at Queen and John Street. We all shared our love for Jungle & Drum’n Bass music and would become great friends and business partners. One day Alan (Owner of X-Static) brought in a bunch of new tapes to be sold at the store, one of them was a double cassette recording from A.W.O.L with Dj Fabio and MC GQ live at Club Paradise in London 1993. This tape was a turning point for me, Robbi and Vito. It changed everything! This double tape set became so popular for X-Static, I listened to it religiously, but little did we know Alan bootlegged all of his tapes! We had no idea and Alan had some explaining to do years later to MC GQ and others.

I designed almost all of the flyers and the Syrous logo until 1998. There were a couple exceptions like the New Years and Renegades parties. I started doing graphic design by directing the designs at Candor Printing working with their resident Graphic Artist, Terry Leung. I was eventually doing all the work on my computer at home. Here are all the flyers I designed for Syrous. Many were with the help of Terry at Candor. The Bryce 3D software was used in many of the designs. It was a program I had been playing with for awhile. I ended up using it for all my flyers and website layouts. The first Syrous flyer was actually a collage I made with pieces of magazine clippings from some Omni Magazines. The Syrous logo was inspired by combining my obsession with drawing skulls as a kid and adding the electric waveform from my favourite label at the time, Basement Records out of the UK. I remember Vito Lisi was a fantastic artist and good friend at the time and helped with some of the pre-flyers, stickers and VIP passes, he primarily did the Renegade flyers. Those events were some of the biggest raves the city ever witnessed at the time. The 1st Renegades in 1994 saw up to 6000 people in attendance. Held at a vacant Lumber City facility in Mississauga. The building still stands today.

Newly scanned version of all my Syrous Flyers below. Pick up some rare copies on my Etsy page soon! Limited quantities.

In the summer of 1994 after the huge success of our 2nd rave, Judgment Day, I flew to London with Dj’s Sniper & Mystical Influence to promote Syrous, meet a bunch of DJ’s and promote the Toronto Jungle scene. Luckily I brought a cheap Kodak camera along for the trip. We met up with the Lucky Spin Records crew, Slipmaster J and Darren Jay, hung out at their shop one day and got a bunch of records. We met up with Kenny Ken and hung out at his house for a bit (Photo of Pat playing with Kenny Kens kids toys) We attended A.W.O.L at the Paradis Club and got to see Dj Mickey Finn and MC GQ perform live, hung out backstage until the sun came up. It was amazing. We also got a chance to visit Music House where DJ’s and Producers got dub-plates pressed. In the pictures below you will see a younger me next to Dj Nut Nut on the left and Dj Kookoo on the right, inside Music House. Rob B from Quayside Records also hooked us up with huge amounts of new Drum’n Bass promos after visiting his apartment. I returned to Toronto with 2 record bags packed full. I was feeling very lucky. What a trip! I recorded a few pirate radio stations while staying in London and will be digitizing them for my Soundcloud page. I had been buying records since ‘92 and at this point my record collection was getting pretty big. I bought my first record at Traxx on Yonge Street but I usually got all my records from Play De Record and then Bee’s Wax on Queen Street. Bee’s Wax Records was wicked, run but Jungle PHD, Medicine Muffin and Stinger.

Photos from my trip to London UK in the summer of ‘94 with Mystical Influence & Sniper. Shot on a cheap Kodak film camera.

Some film photos taken in 1995 at various events by an unknown photographer. Renegades 2, The Empire Strikes Back and Deep Blue.

When the internet started around 1994, I started building my own website and promoting Syrous, started The Vault forum. This was the early day, geocities, netscape and 28k to 56k modems. I still remember the url to my first website http://home.istar.ca/~sigma7. Below are some of my early designs for my first website. These were actual web pages with rollover animation ect. Early html and CSS I had to setup in code.

In 1998 I departed ways with Rob & Vito. We suffered our first canceled event in 1997, the rave was called Higher Sense. It was a big set back and I thought it was time for me to move on. It was always about the music for me, the experience, the vibe, but things had changed and I couldn’t focus on that anymore. The following year I decided to go back to school and pursue a career in the Video Game industry.

To learn more about how I got here, visit my History page.