It’s Not Just Good House Keeping… It’s Getting Back To The Bassix!

Posted on February 4, 2015 by bettyandkora in Events, Interviews // 2 Comments

We are SUPER pumped to be supporting the Good House Keeping Vol 11 party going down at Fortune Sound Club this Sunday Feb 8. Basscoast co-founder the Librarian is headlining the main room along with Mr Wu, Vinnie The Squid, Blisstex and Vancouver’s finest the Slow DJs.

In the back room there is a big ol’ reunion happening with the Bassix crew taking over, living the nostalgia of the no longer existent record store’s hey days. To celebrate that said reunion Tyler Stadius, Tyler Lewis, Jesse Hills, Sean Dimitri, Andy Clockwork, Jay Dabbler Tottle, Scott Forbes, Mike McSuede and Owen Taillefer will be playing strictly vinyl for your listening pleasure! Kora sat down with Tyler Lewis a previous employee of Bassix to gain some insight on how the store impacted Vancouver’s DJ scene at the time, and the relevance and resurgence of vinyl culture.

What does this Bassix Reunion party mean to you and what was Bassix Imports all about back in the day?

Bassix was much more than a Record shop. It was a social gathering. A place for local DJ’s and party goer’s to catch up, make connections, check out flyers and posters. Bassix Imports was also a tastemaker as Tyler “T-Bone” Stadius (Co-owner with Don Vincent) ordered most of the music that was brought into the shop. When you came in and grabbed a stack of records, listened to them and picked out your favourites for purchase (often paying around $18.00 per record), You were going through a stack of music that Tyler personally picked out for the shop. At the time, he and other dance record shop owners and employees were setting the sound of the cities underground music scene. For this, Bassix was special and thankfully everybody knew that. I think by coming together on February 8th to play the music of that era, we are hoping to re-capture that sense of community!

You guys still spin on vinyl in a digital era, what are your reasons for this? Funny enough, aside from this upcoming parties “Vinyl only” rule, I don’t think most of us play vinyl “out” regularly. Many of us, including Tyler Stadius were / are quick to embrace new technology. Once Pioneers CD-J line launched and offered a new and efficient way to play music, it was only a matter of time before vinyls reign came to an end.

Is spinning ‘records’ becoming a lost art? Like painting, true art forms like properly DJing with records will never be lost. It has a sense of romance and will always be a novelty of sorts. When I started playing vinyl in the late 90’s it was a novelty to me as CD’s were the popular format at the time for the average listener.

How do you feel that it changes the energy of a show? Vinyl has an uncontested richness of sound. The lows are lower and the highs are sweeter. Most people can feel that. Mixing records feels like you are truly blending two separate sources of music together as there is definitely a greater sense of depth. I feel like a “good” vinyl DJ set back in the day was more of a practice in patience, as opposed to the “drops” of today. The subtlety of just sneaking in or bringing up a new baseline through the mix was enough to make people cheer. It’s pretty amusing to me to see the drastic steps that some *Cough.. EDM* DJ’s have to take nowadays to get people involved in the music.