I had my first encounter with Hugsnotdrugs two years ago at the Holy Trinity Church in Toronto while my guy friend made out with a goth chick and I pretended not to see. This being my first electronic show, I wasn't sure what to expect. One DJ? Two DJs? How many DJs is a reasonable amount? Obviously, I was a novice at the time.Fast-forward to earlier this month when, while browsing THUMP, I came across a photo of HND group member Christian Poulsen in Skrillex's Cherry Beach Toronto photo diary. I realized then that we must all be Torontonians.
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The next appropriate action was, of course, inviting them all (Christian, Andrew D'Amato, Patrick Murder and Lucy Lovesick) to a rooftop in Toronto… to ironically smoke a J.
As he was the first member of Hugsnotdrugs to encounter my ironic joint experiment, I gave Christian the choice between my pineapple or watermelon papers. He opted to smoke his own joint because the ones I rolled were too small. I then remembered that this was supposed to be an interview and asked him how it all started."My dad had a lot of weird early '60s experimental electronic music," he told me. "I would play with his records and was always excited when new music would come out. If you bought records of bands like New Order or Depeche Mode, in those days the B-side was always a dub version, which was basically just house music. So when I started DJing in high school I would just play all the B-sides. Then I started throwing raves in the '90s."While Christian got his start throwing raves and DJing with the likes of Frankie Bones, Chris Liberator and Omar Santana, Hugnotdrugs' second DJ, Andrew D'Amato, started his career as a drummer in a punk band with their friend Matt (now HND's manager).
"We played Warped Tour… we did pretty well until it went to shit," Matt explained.Andrew elaborated, "I was the one bringing a computer to the band practices, being like 'guys, we need to play this electronic stuff.' One of the band mates absolutely hated it. After that, I started listening to Crystal Castles. Christian booked our band for a show—it was probably one of our last gigs. I asked Christian if I could DJ at a jam and we started making tunes together. That's how we got here."
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Christian and Andrew may be the core of members Hugsnotdrugs, but what really sets them apart from the herd is their bass player, Patrick Murder AKA "Cool Ritchie." Patrick grabs a watermelon rollie and began to explain."While they were doing raves, I was at McGill for classical music and playing in the national orchestra. I loved it but I was really beginning to hate how my life was starting to look. I dropped out of school, moved back to Toronto and started making electronic music in my room. Then, years ago Andrew and Christian played at a Skrillex afterparty under a bridge near Ontario Place. I had my guitar and ended up just saying to Christian, 'hey man why don't I just plug in the bass and improvise?' It went so well that Grid Magazine called it the best party they'd been to all year."When I asked for their favourite venue, Christian and Andrew quickly jumped in to say, "We want to play somewhere that people would never expect to hear that kind of music or see that kind of show, somewhere you'll never be able to party again."Their performance isn't the only thing that holds a live component. Many samples in their tracks could be mistaken for the sound of a synthesizer but will often be the vocals of Andrew or Lucy Lovesick—their vocalist in the studio and during live performances, who according to Christian, is too talented to be a member of HND.
"My vocal teacher was an electronic music producer and a singer," Lucy recounts. "She taught me from when I was five to fifteen years old, so she was a big inspiration for me to get into the scene. Then I came here and these guys have continued to inspire me."
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I explained to them that I have a difficult time explaining their music to people who don't listen to electronic music. Christian attempts to clarify; "We have tracks all over the place on Beatport. Some in glitch-hop, some in jungle and techno.""I think we are incredibly immersed in the electronic scene," Patrick said, "but because of that eclecticism we've sort of evaded being one specific thing. We get booked to play all kinds of events around Canada and we don't just get shelved as EDM artists, we've played at country music festivals. I think for us to be doing what we're doing is really great."
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