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

It all started at a friends house in Newmarket, Ontario in the fall of 1992. Someone heard from someone’s friend’s brother that there was a 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 raver hat. The shuttle bus took us to a warehouse off of Cherry Street in the Industrial district. 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 for carpet with people lounging, 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 grease and 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 in September. I don’t know how we ended up talking but I suspect it was because I was interested in a 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, then at some point I decided to invest in his rave. I designed the flyer and borrowed money from my parents to get them printed. Then about 2 months before the event, George was getting shifty, saying he doesn’t have the money to throw the event. He went MIA, avoiding me at all cost, the problem was he had the entire box of flyers I got printed. Then, one day I went to his parents house, convinced them to let me In and I took the box out of his room without him knowing. 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, 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 out lots of people, i think we peaked at about 800 people at one point but unfortunately we lost power early on because of some jerk who worked on the Cinespace lot at night, he was pissed with all the people flooding the place, parking their cars where they shouldn’t so he pulled the power to our building. I remember calling Nick (The owner of Cinespace) freaking out. It wasnt cheap to throw a rave and you relied heavily on sales at the door so people were showing up and there was no music or power so they just left. Nick eventually told the asshole 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 the lack of ticket sales at the door.

Syrous would return a year later when I partnered with brothers Rob & Vito Lisi. Two 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 at City-TV. We all shared our love for Jungle & Drum’n Bass music and would become great friends and business partners. I designed all of the promotional flyers and logo designs up until 1998. Initially 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. We mainly used Bryce 3D software.

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. 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 visting his place. I returned to Toronto with 2 record bags stuffed full. I was feeling very lucky. What a trip!

When the internet started to become a thing in 1994, I started building my own website, this was geocities days and 28 and 56k modems. I still remember the url to my first website http://home.istar.ca/~sigma7 that was my Dj name, Dj sigma7. It was always about the music to 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, the Danny Ellwell show. It started with industrial music like Ministry, then into more electronic like Skinny Puppy and then eventually Trance and then Jungle Techno. Prodigy was a favourite in High School