Mateo Murphy

The way I saw it, as a DJ, was a sort of quality control. Because I played some really bad parties. Warehouses in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the winter without any heat, and we’re wearing gloves and there’s, like, 20 people. Then there were places that were super hot, sweaty and dirty. It was interesting to play at a club, because you had a guaranteed quality set-up, a guaranteed crowd. You had these longer sets, you had three or four artists, rather then a bunch of kids playing an hour each. It just felt like a step up in every way. But it lost a little bit of its charm in terms of its underground nature

Christian Pronovost

Then Stereo got built. It was basically Angel Moraes coming to Montréal. Angel played a couple of times at Playground and loved the city. Eventually, he’s like, “Okay, let’s do a club here,” Mark Anthony being his contact. Mark was always playing better music than most of the DJs in gay clubs. He was the underground gay DJ. Too underground to play in a good place, not ready to do the real compromise. He didn’t want to play certain sounds. He wasn’t interested, so he got lost there. That’s why, I think, Stereo happened, with Angel being from New York, having that background of underground New York gay scene. Mark, after that, took that sound, that bass-heavy sound, moody – gay-friendly, too. Very Sound Factory.

G’nat

By that time, I think the clubs figured out that early ’90s house sound – which was a lot of vocals, a lot of organ, a lot of piano – it wasn’t really bringing people in. They had to adapt, and that’s when the after-hours club happened and it started moving into the clubs. At the same time, the sound got harder – the house sound got harder. Hard house became quite popular – drum-heavy hard house, techno house. In that sense, I guess the techno scene influenced the sound that became popular at those places, as well. By the time you got Sona, it had changed quite a bit. It didn’t quite have that crazy energy. It was a little bit more the cool thing to do.

Christian Pronovost

Aria was opened in an old theater by these guys from Québec City who had a club there called Le Dagobert. They had tons of money. They did two rooms. One main room downstairs. Upstairs, they did a room called the deep room. Aria was my answer to what Body & Soul was in New York, playing very Joe Claussell, Afro-centric, a bit of François Kevorkian kind of more technical music, soulful disco edits. Danny Krivit played, DJ Spen, Karizma.