Gerald Belanger
By: Jocelyn Dickey
Torontojungle.com cover story Jan. 2002
Songwriter, producer, DJ, record shop proprietor, label manager and radio show host. In the world of electronic music, Gerald Belanger has been all these things and more.
One cold and rainy Wednesday night, I ventured down to the Ryerson student center to meet up with Belanger and talk about his history in the Toronto electronic music scene. He was getting set to hose Unfortunate Sonic Casualties, his weekly radio show on CKLN 88.1 FM (Ryerson’s station), but had a few moments to reminisce about re-rave days, common and the current state of the scene and speculate on the future.
“Grade six, we had this really wacky music teacher who brought in a movie about Moog synthesizers,” he began, describing one of his earliest encounters with electronic music. “I remember watching them play these crazy knobs and buttons and twiddles and things and I thought wow that’s really future music.” From as far back as he could remember Belanger was always interested in the future, so this experience really hit home for him. When this same teacher brought in an actual synthesizer player, Belanger was even more amazed. “This old guy came in and he had something like a sampler, except it ran ,” explained Belanger. “He was playing little tape loops of an airplane taking off on his keyboard, and I was completely blown away [that] you could reproduce reality like that.” After this initial experience, Belanger said he gained wider exposure to all types of early electronic music from early hip hop and electro, to techno by pioneers like Derrick May, by tuning in to CKLN. These days the tables have turned and he is the one broadcasting his music for the masses to hear. But back then, it was shows like “Ron Nelson’s Fantastic Voyage” and “Dave’s Dance Music that caught his ear.
Then came the late ’80s and New Wave Pop. From there Belanger was hooked. “I used to go out to all night parties in the ’80s at a place called Twilight Zone where they’d play electronic music all night . . . and told our parents we were sleeping over at each others’ houses, you know, pre-rave days but essentially the same thing,” he said, describing a scenario many may remember from when they were young once too. After he started college, Belanger began frequenting the legendary 23 Hop. “This was like ‘88/’89 and they were doing weekend parties so I started to go,” said Belanger. At that time jungle was, only beginning its evolution and other sounds were dominating the speakers. “Back then the biggest thing was acid music, right, acid house,” Belanger recalled, recounting with a smile his first meeting with Alex Paterson (of The Orb), brought in for a performance at “The Hop” by the infamous Chris Sheppard. Although he had been attending the warehouse parties down in the Front St. and Spadina Ave. district, only after the first Nitrous event did the word rave figure into the equation. “There’d always been warehouse parties going on,” he said, explaining that these events were predominantly house music. “I think it wasn’t until the rave thing, companies like Nitrous or Kemistry, that I first heard breakbeats.”
With such a strong interest in the future and the evolving forms of electronic music, it is no surprise that Belanger was drawn to producing it. “I went to Sheridan college and took an audio engineering course and started to learn the basics of midi and digital music,” he said. “They had some pieces of gear we could play with, and that really caught my interest.” In 1991 Belanger founded his first record label: Death of Vinyl Entertainment. With his label he didn’t want to limit himself to releasing just one type of music. Instead, the label released some ambient, dub, down tempo, techno, house and even early breakbeat tracks. Belanger was trying to find tracks and release music that crossed a lot of borders. “In terms of music getting out there I think we were really successful,” said Belanger, also explaining some of the problems his label and other independents faced with distribution at the time. “You have to think,” he said “this is before internet and all that went mainstream - before e-mail - so sending out new release information to a couple thousand people was really difficult. You had to send post cards or you had to do a lot more radio. “We used to mail out 500 promos of our records across the world just to get the records heard. Then you’d hope people would mail in catalogue requests. I mean, it was a lot more like having a home mail order thing because that’s where most of the records were selling.” One of the label’s biggest successes came in 1993/1994 with a number of releases in England with Ninja Tune. “People really liked them and Ninja Tune really branched out into the techno world after releasing our records,” explained Belanger.
After this Belanger decided to fold the label and move on to something else, opening his own record shop at the corner of Queen St. and John St. called Modulations, the store was located right next to the renowned Xstatic. For Belanger, running the store was a way of reconnecting with the Toronto electronic music scene. “I had been so immersed in releasing records in Germany and in England, and distributing records all around the world that I sort of completely ignored what was happening in Toronto,” he explained. In the early ’90s Jungle was just starting to gain popularity in Toronto. And although Belanger confessed he did not really understand the music at the time, he was selling a lot of it in his shop. “We were one of the first stores to really carry a lot of jungle, and we were selling more jungle in that store than anything else,” he said, describing how he’d let Slip n’ Slide run through his release sheets and do most of the ordering. “I remember having so many copies of Helicopter just fly through the store . . . and Renegade Snares.” Belanger credits 4Hero for finally opening his eyes to what jungle was about, as well as an invitation to one of the first Syrous events. Just playing the music in my store never did it justice,” he said. “It wasn’t until you heard 10k of sound behind those basslines that it made any sense at all, and when you saw people completely losing their minds to tracks, which you never had seen before at raves.” With a new found appreciation for jungle and a strong interest in making electronic music, it was inevitable Belanger would start producing it.
In 1996, shortly after closing the shop, Belanger set up a new studio with three other friends/business partners, together forming Kinder Atom. To date, Kinder Atom’s biggest achievement was a track called “Illegal” done with Michael Rose from Black Uhuru. The crew released it on a compilation, Metro Breaks ‘99. The remix from Basswerk in Germany did really well for us,” explained Belanger. “It was a huge hit all over in Europe and got our name out there a lot, which was great.” Although Kinder Atom has released many different styles of music from electro to techno, they have done a lot of work with drum and bass. After a couple of years we shared out half the studio with Dave Whalen and Marcus from Visionary, just when they were starting out,” said Belanger, explaining how he learned a lot from them about producing drum and bass. “That’s what got me interested in putting together the first compilations I did on the new label.” The new label shared its name with the new studio: Nice and Smooth.
While sharing the studio with Visionary, Belanger met many Toronto producers making drum and bass who had no outlet for their songs. This was another reason he decided to release the first Metro Breaks compilation. He wanted to represent the diversity of the Toronto scene by showcasing the work of a variety of under-exposed Toronto artists. The first two compilations came out in 1998 and 1999, and were released on both double vinyl and unmixed CDs. However, while Belanger was touring with DJ Freedom in Germany, the two decided it would be a good idea to release the third installment of Metro Breaks as a mixed CD, with tracks by Toronto, German and some American producers Freedom knew from Dallas, Texas. Currently at work on the next two Metro Breaks releases, Belanger has changed the format once again. “One is all German, featuring 30 tracks from different artists in Germany,” he explained. “It’s going to be a double CD mixed by one of my favourite crews in Germany . . . the NME Click.” This crew has not released any material of their own, but Belanger believes any person who has seen their live show would know why they are mixing the CD. “They were just the most (raw), out of control crew I’ve ever played with,” he said, describing his experience seeing them perform live. “It was the first time I’d seen DJs stage diving at a jungle show.” The other Metro Breaks project will be a CD mixed by Belanger himself. Although this CD will definitely have a Toronto focus, Belanger is receiving submissions from around the world. So far, submissions have included a CD from Hungary and a tape from India. In speaking with Belanger, his love for all forms of experimental and electronic music is clear. “When I hear this great music that is under-exposed, that needs better recognition I feel obligated to get out there and work it,” he explained as we sat in the CKLN FM studio finishing up the interview. It’s never been for a financial gain,” he said, admitting they’ve always lost money on music industry projects. ‘It’s totally out of passion for and love of the music, and also it’s love for subculture.” As we were wrapping things up, Belanger showed me some new releases he would be showcasing on the radio that evening. Right away the enthusiasm he had for sharing this music with his listeners became apparent, and one could begin to understood why he is still involved in the electronic music scene so many years after hearing that Moog synthesizer for the first time.
Articles | 10.03.2007 3:55 |
