Medley, Mr Maqs, and Mario J. It was truly a beautiful night for the art of playing music, loud, deep, powerful music. Matt Medley has been talked about a lot on this site already, but seeing him at Circa gave me a greater appreciation for this great artist. He says “I love music but I’m not a musician I’m a Dee Jay”. While he does do some remixing, re-editing and mashing up, he admits that he produces as a DJ mostly to create tracks that are perfectly prepared to be dropped into his and others sets.

Seeing Medley, Mr Maqs and Mario J helped me come to a profound realization. DJs who perfect the art of spinning records may not always get the same popular recognition as producers who DJ, but their skills on the ones and twos often dwarf their colleagues. Mr Maqs ability to get the crowd moving with frantic energy, drop into calm and the work them back up into a frenzy was extraordinary. I have heard Mario J spin many times before, the man is a legend in the Toronto electronic music scene after all and by far one of the best this city has ever produced. The best moment in his set was when he dropped A Millie. That is a sentence I had never hoped to say, let alone post on the internet. Regardless, by dropping arguably the biggest hip hop club anthem of 2008 after very deep electro, Mario set the crowd afire and was praised as a god by his friends in the booth.

Check out pics from the night in our Events Photography section, as well as this awesome remix of Love Lockdown, it is probably my favorite thus far, definitely sounds better in a big room though!