Garbage Daze: En Route To Becoming The Premiere Festival For Electronica In Calgary
Since 2013 Calgary festival Garbage Daze has been hailed as a showcase of underground punk and metal, so this year’s booking of United Kingdom techno heavyweight Shifted sent a clear message about what the future of the festival holds.
It sent a clear message that at the centre of their philosophy are words like reinvention, evolution, and expansion.
As festival co-founder Jason Scharf explains, Garbage Daze has essentially been a carte blanche since the beginning, meaning its mandate was never intended to be tied to specific genres.
“When we started there really wasn’t a goal, it was just we wanted to book a few bands that we had wanted to book for a while,” says Scharf.
The initial Garbage Daze in 2013 was titled “The Last Hardcore Shows.” Scharf was planning on moving to New York, and the event was meant to be a swan song for “Spirit Of Truth,” the promotion group he created with longtime friend Elijah Carnat-Gronnerud.
“We didn’t really have any goals for Garbage Daze in the future, and I think that’s really been beneficial,” says Scharf.
“It’s kind of left the festival to be more open ended, and we can do whatever we want with it because we never really had any expectations from the start.”
Garbage Daze began branching into electronica with last year’s lineup, however this year it’s been cemented into their repertoire with local electronica artist Evangelos Lambrinoudis being brought onto the team as a co-curator.
Lambrinoudis attained notoriety as a DJ with the FFWD “Best of Calgary” award-winning club night Modern Math, celebrated musical projects like Sanctums and Corinthian, and the founding of the left-field oriented record label Deep Sea Mining Syndicate.
“We’ve actually known each other for a really long time, so I feel like in some sense, having that connection from a very long time ago, there was kind of a natural synergy between the three of us,” says Lambrinoudis.
“When Jason and Elijah started messaging me about shows that they were putting on and telling me to come check them out, I was really enthusiastic and really excited that they even thought of me.”
The vision that the pair had was the first time Lambrinoudis saw anyone local aspiring to give a festival-style platform to the avant-garde edge of the electronica spectrum.
“I was like wow someone’s actually doing something different, someone’s actually doing something really wild and risky, and not the average thing that comes every single year. “So when they wanted to meet up with me I knew I wanted to help out in any way I could because this is such an important project for Calgary.”
According to Lambrinoudis, the new sounds being brought to the lineup aren’t that far removed from the festival’s traditional fare.
“I think just the vibe of the scene has changed a lot, and there’s a lot of electronic groups that are operating in a very punk way,” he says.
“When you think of a band that has like five people, that’s like a very maximal sort of concept.
“A lot of really talented punk and hardcore musicians are doing, now, smaller projects with fewer members, so the addition of electronic instruments seems like a natural progression.”
Scharf agrees.
“It seems like it’s a very DIY punk approach to making music, and it seems to just really fit well with the whole idea of the festival and the aesthetic that we stand behind,” he says.
This wasn’t a view that Scharf has always held, however. Until recently he primarily associated electronica with the braggadocio of club culture, or what Lambrinoudis jokingly refers to as “dress shoes house.”
“That’s what really scared me off of electronic music,” says Scharf.
“Then I realized that there was actually really interesting electronic music that kind of aligned with what I liked about music.
“As soon as I started discovering that, that’s where my interest started from.”
The genres that initially sparked his interest are similar to the ones currently being showcased in the festival, namely techno, EBM, and industrial.
“I honestly didn’t know very much about industrial music until probably the last couple years, but just learning about it, I realized the roots of it are very punk, a lot more so even than hardcore,” says Scharf.
“I’m not necessarily saying it’s more punk, but in some ways it is, just the whole approach to it.
“It’s grown along punk since the very beginning.”
Although the two may sound substantially different, Scharf notes that the methodology behind how the music is created is essentially the same. It’s something he knows firsthand, having spent the last few months making his own electronic music.
“It can be made at home with very cheap crude instruments, just with whatever,” says Scharf.
“I like the fact that it’s open concept, you can just make whatever and it’s industrial music. The whole idea of that seems very punk to me.”
As for the roots, he also points out that the two initially had similar goals. It’s another reason why he sees electronica as a natural fit for the festival.
“The roots of techno at least are very political, and very underground, which I really appreciate,” he says.
“The whole idea was supposed to be promoting dissent, the idea that people weren’t happy with their society or things going on around them, and we’d really like to see it going back to its roots, at least for a little bit.
“Some of the artists we booked connect with that.”
This philosophy is also present in the milieu that Garbage Daze tries to cultivate.
“We’re white dudes, we fall into a very mainstream category, but if you go to our shows the people who feel comfortable, or the most welcome, are all of the marginalized people,” says Lambrinoudis.
“It doesn’t take long being at one of Jason or Elijah’s shows, or one of my shows to find that out.
“As a mission we want to make people who feel marginalized feel welcome in an environment that they can express themselves in, and the type of music that does that really well is punk DIY music.”
Lambrinoudis also notes that Scharf isn’t alone in his recent discovery of industrial electronica, having witnessed a resurgence of the genre’s popularity in recent years.
“I think it sort of had a really powerful movement in the late 80’s and early 90’s,” says Lambrinoudis.
“And then sort of in the late 90’s, 2000’s, it kind of went through an awkward phase where there was a lot of bad shit, which is associated with the type of electronic music that neither of us really jive with, very toxic raver.
“That stuff’s cool too, don’t get me wrong, but I feel like that was a very awkward phase for the genre, and right now it’s sort of come out of that, and it’s more mature, and it has a lot more interesting things and interesting people working around it.
“So it’s not like the interest has faded, or people are just getting into it now, I think the actual genre has developed into something that’s more interesting than what was going on previously.”
Despite the rising popularity of the genre it still remains largely obscure. There’s still a large segment of people in the same position that Scharf was in two years ago, completely unaware that there’s an entire cross-section of music that speaks to their values and tastes.
For both Lambrinoudis and Scharf this is one of their driving motivators, and why they view the festival as being so important for the city’s musical landscape.
“We just think it’s important for Calgary to be exposed to new and interesting things,” says Scharf.
“It’s a growing city, and there’s always been a lot of interesting and worthwhile things happening here, but at the same time it also has been really closed off to a lot of things happening in other parts of the world. So, we just want a bit more exposure for things that we find interesting happening in Calgary.”
“The world’s a really big place right now,” says Lambrinoudis
“The club owners and venue owners and booking agents of the city do a really good job at bringing what they’re really into, but there’s so much more going on.
“If we can even just crack that a little bit, just to show people an alternative to what is normally here, I think that in itself is one of the missions of the whole project.”
If Garbage Daze does have a mandate, it’s to promote outsider culture regardless of whatever musical form that takes. Although “boundary defying” is a word that comes to mind when hearing both Lambrinoudis and Scharf describe the acts, it becomes apparent that the festival ultimately showcases music that had no boundaries to begin with.
“With Garbage daze, Jason and Elijah basically hand picked bands who would never ever have a reason to come here,” says Lambrinoudis.
“A lot of these artists are flying out for this festival, and it’s only this reason.
“This isn’t just somebody called the club up and said we have a touring DJ we need a show. For most of these artists, without people to actually put it out there they’d never ever come here, and that to me is special because you know, it really goes outside of what people are doing.”
Buy tickets for Garbage Daze at https://www.myshowpass.com/garbagedazeiv/
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