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Music

All Hail the Godfather of Canadian Hardstyle: James Bayliss

Heavy wobbles and vicious drops at 150 BPM are headed for the True North strong and free.

"It took seven years to get here," recounts James Bayliss. "Every time I spun a set everyone was like 'what the fuck is that?' or 'what the fuck am I listening to?'"

In the land of the True North strong and free, the heavy bassline and foot stomping sounds of hardstyle rarely make an appearance on the main stage. But within the last year, the booming popularity of this genre has reached the decks of the North American festival circuit by introducing attendees to Q-Dance.

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Cut to James Bayliss, the only Canadian act on The Sound of Q-Dance lineup. James has been identified as the founding godfather of the Canadian hardstyle movement. With the recent announcement of Q-Dance coming to the West Coast, I was curious as to why they had chosen Edmonton as the first Canadian city to be introduced to this esteemed brand. James has a highly regarded title and background, so we turned to him to find out where the roots of this hard-hitting genre lie.

Before electronic dance music had hit the North American radio waves, James picked up his first spinning session on vinyl back in '07 when house and techno ruled the underground scene.

"I started playing hard house and hard trance—the hardest styles of dance music at that time," he said. That was until the day James heard a Blutonium Boy track. "I just played the same song for three hours while driving to Edmonton. I was like 'this shit is awesome, I love it.'" At the time, James had just joined the Boodang Music Canada family and had slowly built a following and relationship with the event company.

"They helped me grow up, steered me in a lot of the right directions and got really intertwined with the music. Eventually, through promoting hardstyle and basically nagging them into submission, they brought Lady Dana—and that was the first hardstyle DJ that we brought."

For the first three years of James' DJing career, he had pushed the genre into the West Coast scene non-stop. With drum and bass becoming the prominent genre of preference at the time, James was determined to build a hardstyle scene within Calgary and Edmonton.

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With the booking of Lady Dana and creating an educated group of listeners and fans, James felt that it was about "exposing it in such a way that people aren't afraid of it."

"I needed to come at it in a way that people can connect with it," he says. "You can't just toss this completely random style of music in there and expect them to like it."

With the trust of the Boodang family, James finally brought Headhunterz to the main stages of Alberta audiences. His influence in the growth of hardstyle in Canada is plenty, but James is also well versed in a variety of international music festivals. He's played numerous sets at Defqon.1 and recently appeared at last year's TomorrowWorld in Atlanta. Although festivals have been keeping him busy, James devotedly hosts his own radio show on Q-Dance online called The Polar Express.

And with the success and overwhelming support from his shows with Boodang, it only made sense for Q-Dance to come to Edmonton, Alberta. "Canada is a lot easier for them because the market is already here. We're already doing 5000 person parties that share Boodang's name," he tells me. "I've only been in touch with Q-Dance for about four years but the ultimate goal was always to make hardstyle as big as possible and Q-Dance was definitely on the list of things to do."

To James, there are no boundaries in hardstyle. That rule even applies to major headlining acts such as Tiesto. "[He] is a very versatile DJ, he's never been bound by anything. When you get Hardwell and all those other guys playing [hardstyle], it's only a benefit. It's only going to make things better."

THUMP has closely followed the neck-breaking 140-150 BPM sound through our travels to Amsterdam, LA and now Edmonton. Expect James and the hard-hitting spectacle that is Q-Dance in Edmonton, Alberta at Shaw Center on October 10. Until then, enjoy his monthly radio show on Q-Dance Radio.   

Follow James Bayliss on: SC // FB // TW

Connie Chan is the Editor of THUMP Canada - @ConstanceChan