The First TIME Fest

Pink Mafia sent me, Vanessa and Melania to to the first TIME Festival to get the dirt on what what the kids are up to.

TIME Fest swept into Toronto,with the goal to revolutionize the dance and indie music genres, with fast beats and hot weather.
TIME Festival was put together by Adam Gill of Embrace Productions fame, who was featured in last week’s 20 questions.
It was held at the Sunnyside Pavillion, but the weather was anything but sunny.
As 3 members of the Pink Mafia Street Team rolled in, we were greeted by rain and clouds. Sunnyside Pavillion is known for its more house/gay/raver parties but this one was the most  scenester event in recent history.

Near the entrance were some of the Oligarchy kids,

Who were pimpin` their threads for good deals and good times.

During the time we huddled under shelter to avoid the rain, Vaneska, Nasty Nav and Mario J spun some beats as some of the crowd, unafraid of rain, danced their hearts out.
We met some great kids: (L-R) SHANI, JASMIN, SABA

TARA AND SARAH

Mid afternoon, the sun came out, and the celebration was on!

With the sun finally out, everyone ran to the stage, for Fritz Helder and the Phantoms.

And I’m lucky to have seen it, because Fritz Helder and the Phantoms are losing Fierce! She will continue to pursue her DJ career as Van Helder (Check out the new release Van and Barletta dropped). See her below, wearing an awesome vintage necklace she stole from a friend and a pic of Van and her producer Barletta.

Now, I’m pretty sure I’ve never actually seen Fritz and the Phantoms live, and being front and center of the audience, made it a fantastic experience.

Meanwhile VND/LSM and Jokers of the Scene had the crowd dancing, shrieking and booty shaking their hearts out.

Also, note that throughout the day,the upstairs level featured some techno DJs including Eli Wilkie who did 20Qs last week, Kenny Glascow who was at Z last month, Heidi and more. (Check out the TIME Fest site for the full lineup)

Right after Jokers of the Scene, Vanessa, Melania and I ran into Adam Gill who gave us 5 minutes for some questions and a quick photo session.

Adam filled us in on the beginnings of Embrace, when he was a student at McGill and turned his passion for parties into a career. He’s been a strong advocate of dance and electronic music for a long time. He’s always intended to start a proper dance festival in T.O for a few years and the time was right. He told us the concept of TIME was, “to showcase what we think is on point musically right now at this point of time. “

When asked why TIME different from any festivals thrown in the city, he told Vanessa that the main difference is that “its pretty focused on the new cutting edge of electronic music. All the Toronto DJs, artists, nightclubs, promoters etc. sponsored it, and everyone worked together to create TIME, which is what made it great.“

Since Embrace has largely been known to throw gay-friendly and gay-oriented parties, some people were surprised by Embrace’s movement outside the gay community in recent history. When asked if he was still planning on pursuing gay-initiatives, he laughed a no comment, and pointed to our editor, XTRA columnist, and long-time friend Anna Von Frances, silently blaming her for throwing 3 girls at him with big questions, a tape recorder and a camera.

Since summer is coming to a close, Vanessa asked him what he does for vacation, and if he even gets one. Among his activities, he mentioned Miami, working out, and sitting in the sun.

“What’s next for Embrace?”, Vanessa asks him
“Just going to finish the year with lots of shows and start working on a plan for 2009.”

Adam made a quick escape from us back to the safety of crazy partiers and busy staff. We may be small, but apparently we can be scary.

A-Track, Erol Alkan and Soulwax closed up the night outside with a massive crowd.

Overall Opinion: The first TIME Fest seriously rocked. With another year of development, and better weather, next year’s is going to be f*cking insane.

See you later!