In the Summer of 1993 I found myself handing out flyers for a rave I was throwing 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.

It all started at a friends house in Newmarket, Ontario in the fall of 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 the 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 with some guy wearing a funky bright hat like a joker. The shuttle bus was full and it took us to a warehouse off of Cherry Street in the Industrial area. The Rave was called Nitrous 015. It had a long row of giant 2 seater swings down the main corridor, chill out rooms with old TV’s playing weird psychedelic footage and fake grass as carpet with 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. 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 Destiny. I fell in love with Toronto’s underground rave scene and was addicted to Drum’n Bass music. I wanted to help grow the Toronto Jungle scene and thought maybe one day I could put on a rave of my own. Then, in the spring of 1993 I met this kid named George, he was handing out these postcard size flyers with the name Syrous and an event date of August 7, 1993. I don’t know how we ended up talking but I think it was because 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 player. This went on for weeks 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 (above) 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 missing in action, 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 a little help from my parents, and lots of 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. 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 that night. He was pissed with all the people flooding the place, parking their cars where they shouldn’t be so he pulled the power to our building. I remember calling Nick (The owner of Cinespace) freaking out. It wasn’t cheap to throw a rave and rent a place 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 7am 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 from Pittsburg who flew in for the event. Here’s a recording of his live performance that night. I still have vivid memories of that whole experience. The 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 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 from about a coffee shop. 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 new double cassette recording of Dj Fabio and MC GQ live at Club Paradise. This tape was a truning point for me, Robbi and Vito. It changed everything. This double tape set became so popular for X-Static but little did we know, Alan bootlegged it. We had no idea and Alan had some explaining to do years later when MC GQ visited.

I designed all of the flyers and logo designs up until 1998. It began by directing all the designs at Candor printing through their resident Graphic Artist, Terry Leung, who was responsible for many fantastic Toronto rave flyers back in the day, including Pleasure Force, Better Days, Atlantis and many others. Eventually I was doing all the computer work myself, building 3D landscapes for my flyers and starting my own Graphic Design service for the Toronto Rave scene.

Here are all the flyers I designed for Syrous. Many were with the help of Terry at Candor printing. The Bryce 3D software was used allot. The first Syrous flyer was made with magazine clipping from Omni Magazines. The iconic Syrous logo I created by combining my obsession with drawing skulls and adding the electric waveform from the Basement Records label out of the UK. I remember Vito Lisi was a fantastic artist and friend at the time and definitely helped with some of the flyers especially the incredible Renegades parties where we teamed up with Pleasure Force. Those were some of the biggest raves the city ever witnessed at the time.

Im currently rescanning all the flyers below. Will add clickable links shortly.

In the summer of 1994 after the huge success of the 2nd event, Judgment Day, I flew to London, England with Dj’s Sniper & Mystical Influence to promote Syrous, meet a bunch of DJ’s and promote the Toronto Jungle scene. Luckily I had brought a cheap Kodak camera along for the adventure. We met up with the Lucky Spin Records crew, Slipmaster J and Darren Jay. We attended A.W.O.L at the Paradis Club and got to see Dj Mickey Finn and MC GQ perform live and hung out backstage until the sun came up. We also got a chance to visit Music House where DJ’s and Producers got dubplates pressed. In the pictures below you will see a younger me posing with Dj Nut Nut on the left and Dj Kookoo 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 stuffed 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 and uploading to my Soundcloud.

When the internet started to become a thing in 1994, I started building my own website, this was the geocities days with 28k and 56k modems. I still remember the url to my first website http://home.istar.ca/~sigma7 that was my Dj name, sigma7. It was always about the music for me and that’s why I decided to start djing. I have memories of listening to radio stations like CFNY when they had Chris Sheppards live to air broadcasts or even earlier with the Danny Ellwell show. It started with industrial music like Ministry, and Nine Inch Nails then into more electronic music Skinny Puppy and then eventually Trance and then Jungle Techno. Prodigy was a favourite in High School and definitely pushed me into raving. I even worked at a local record ship in Aurora called The Record Bar where I discovered new and interesting groups like T99 and Delerium. So many different things influenced me, even my sister used to go to the Twilight Zone night club in Toronto.

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 departed ways with Rob & Vito in 1998. Sometimes working with friends and not knowing each other well from the start can turn sour after awhile. I lived outside the city, they lived near downtown. Rob & Vito became the face of Syrous, trust started to become an issue. Things would happen, new investors got involved. I remember a moment during a night at Ground Zero or maybe it was Renegades 2, I can’t remember the event but It was bad, people shouting over money, no one trusted each other. It was always about the music for me, the vibe, the experience, and that love started to fade. In 1999 I decided to go back to school and enrolled in a Computer Animation course at the International Academy of Design located at Bay & Wellesley Street in Toronto.

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