Photo by David Thai

Earlier this summer I had an opportunity to catch Thunderheist at the Virgin Music Festival out in Toronto, except for one thing, I was busy reviewing and taking photos of another act, a small group by the name of MGMT. So suffice to say I was a bit bummed, but then was totally stoked again when I ran into Thunderheist in the backstage tent area, where the good peoples of Bacardi were serving us lots of free booze. I immediately jumped at the chance for an introduction. During this meeting of the minds, Isis performed a freestyle with my online magazine name, Killahbeez, that went on for a good minute at least and drawing a crowd. Then we were on stage dancing during MSTRKRFTs set. Definitely one of the dopest highlights of that weekend. So when I heard they were finally hitting the West Coast I was giddy like a 12-year-old schoolgirl.

The evening started off with the ½ Alive DJ crew which consists of: Tyler Fedchuk, My! Gay! Husband! and Tony X. These guys held it down and warmed the crowd up nicely as everyone was shaking it to their sets. They dropped some old school and I mean like Planet Rock type old school, hip-hop, New Order, MGMT and Breakbot’s remix of Pnau to name a few tracks.

Just shortly after 12:30, Isis made her way to the stage first and shortly after Grahm aka Grahmzilla joined her. Immediately the crowd was wildin’ pretty hard, those at the front, this includes yours truly, were getting squished against the stage. It was all worth it once the first track, “Bubblegum”, dropped. The energy that Isis had was pretty incredible and throughout the night she would maintain this frenetic pace. Showing some love to the crowd she at one point pulled a girl up on stage to dance with her, this said girl from the audience went buckwild and as she left the stage basically tripped over a chord and almost did a face plant onto the floor, luckily she was caught by a whole lot of people. Throughout the night both Grahm and Isis dove into the crowd to do a little surfing, very cool that they were keeping it mad real like that with the fans in the house.

Photo by David Thai

Also in the house for the night was director That Go and model Ana B, whom were both involved in the video / visual delight for the song “Jerk It”. During the song “Jerk It”, which was the last jam of the evening, Isis pulled Ana up on stage and the crowd went wild, then home girl basically threw Ana to the wolves for some crowd surfing, all of it was pretty hilarious to watch.

Thunderheist went on to perform jams that any fan would recognize, hitting “Horny”, “Little Booty Girl”, “Peer Pressure” and “Sueos Dulces”. At one point during the evening Grahm threw on MSTRKRFT’s song “Bounce” and asked if everyone recognized the voice. Of course! It was Isis. She went on to let everyone know that they had her do the track and never gave her any credit or form of payment, pretty wack considering both crews are from Toronto and that song blew up.

The performance was high energy and had yours truly and everyone else from the looks of it, sweating like a mofo. Grahm providing the ill beats while Isis slayed the mic all night long and provided some comedic relief, commenting on how unsexy she felt with the amount of sweat coming off of her and randomly making comments like “OBAMA BITCH!”. The show was great and the audience was dope as you could tell everyone was there to shake their asses to some good music, I would definitely have to recommend that all music heads experience a Thunderheist show as they bring the muthafuckin’ heat. How much heat you ask? I woke up with broken glass in my hair, bruised knee caps and sore calf muscles, wtf??? Much love to Tyler Fedchuk and the ½ Alive crew for hooking Killahbeez up with some tickets for a wicked show. Check out their website for upcoming shows and info: www.halfalive.ca. Stay tuned to the first quarter of the new year, as Thunderheist will have some goodies dropping.

If you like this review vote for me here.

For pictures of the event hit up my flickr page here.

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MSTRKRFT (read as “Master-Kraft”) is an electronic group out of Toronto. Actually this year at the Toronto Virgin Music Fest they replaced SebastiAn, when he missed his flight and they didn’t disappoint. The group came together in 2005 and consists of JFK (Jesse F. Keeler) and Al-P (Alex Puodziukas). The group has remixed over 30 songs of various genres including the latest remix of John Legend’s song “Green Light”.

On Friday I attended Fist Of God, which is the official name for the MSTRKRFT tour as well as their upcoming album, which is expected to drop in January of 2009. The stop I was at had Felix Cartal opening up, but there will be various openers throughout the tour such as DJ A-Trak, DJ Aoki, LA Riots, Congorock, DJ Assault and the aforementioned Felix Cartal. Blueprint Events, which is known as one of Vancouver’s best electronic promoters for a minute now, was hosting the event as well as the after party.

The event took place at Celebrities Night club and was fully packed, in fact this show could have easily taken place at Commodore Ballroom to accommodate more folks, but nonetheless the vibes were good as people were ready to dance their fuckin’ asses off. The duo came on at around 1am and they immediately had the crowd going crazy, as their sound is fairly distinct with that 4/4 beat and heavy heavy synths.

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So it’s been just over a week since the Toronto Virgin Music Festival occurred and I’ve had a bit of time to digest the whole festival. Overall the I have to say the experience was pretty f**kin’ unbelievable, Virgin treated us folks in the media pretty great by giving us access to certain areas that the general public couldn’t enter. My favorite and where we spent the most time was the Bacardi B-Live Tent, as there was a special VIP / Media tent that served…well, what else, Bacardi drinks. I’m not sure I’ve had that many mojitos ever in a span of a weekend. Oh and I tried my first Maple mojito, quite sweet and interesting, not sure if I’d ever have another though.

Highlights:

• Sitting beside The Kooks for the longest time and not realizing and then Melissa stalking them for a picture.
• Meeting with Thunderheist and having Isis incorporate “Killahbeez” and such into her freestyle, which drew some attention.
• Dancing on stage with Thunderheist while MSTRKRFT was djing.
• Seeing Richard Branson backstage at the Bacardi B-Live Tent.
• Sitting across from Moby and not really realizing who he was until I actually looked, yeah that was embarrassing.
• Autographed CDs from MGMT, HELL YEAH!

And much more off course, but if I list anymore it could classify as bragging and that ain’t my steez.

So in case you’re wondering how I made my way there or why I was at the Toronto Virgin Music Festival, here’s the back-story. One day I was sitting around bored and came across a link where Virgin Music wanted writers to submit reviews that they’ve done in the past, so after some debate on which review I was going to send, I decided to submit my Stevie Wonder review that I wrote for Killahbeez. Then came the waiting game, but I hadn’t heard anything for months and to be quite honest totally slipped my mind and I forgot about it. A day after my birthday in the morning I get an email and phone call telling me I won this contest, I was still sleeping and thought I was a) dreaming or b) a friend was playing a joke on me, but then I remembered I never told anyone about entering this contest. After a few exchanges on email, I decided to take a chance on believing this was legit and dove head first in making arrangements.

The prize was 2 VIP / Media pass to the Toronto Virgin Music Festival and an opportunity to write on http://music.virgin.com, where after an allotted time fans/readers would vote for their favorite article / writers. This lucky winner would then win a Global VPass, where you would essentially travel from festival to festival. Currently that’s where I am in the process, writing on Virgin Music’s website and hoping to get enough votes, so hit up http://music.virgin.com/author/David%20Thai/ and vote for my articles if you feel that they’re worthy of your votes as that would be hella appreciated.

I definitely have to thank Virgin Music for selecting me as it’s definitely an honor.

To view all of our pictures from the V-Fest, check out our Killahbeez Flickr page.

Last Thursday on September 11th a few of us Killahbeez members were hooked up by Blueprint Events, definitely props to Alvaro for hooking us up with some VIP passes. The event took place at Caprice, which has been noted as having quite poor sound quality, but I have to say Blueprint Events did a great job in promoting the event as there was a great turnout showing support. The night started off with a dj set from Expendable Youth, but we had arrived a bit later than expected so we really only heard about 30 mins of their set, which actually was decent. Their vibe is a little bit darker and harder then my taste, but the crowd was loving it and that’s all that matters.

Digitalism came on shortly after we arrived and started their set at 12:30am and wow! They killed it from beginning to the the end. Playing remixes of their hits as well as originals, they also played some Midnight Juggernauts and Treasure Fingers to name a few. There was definite love between the crowd and Digitalism as the crowd would cheer louder and dance crazier with every track that they played. The party would continue on until about 3am or so. Overall the dj set was pretty fantastic and everyone easily left satisfied. For those that want to hear more from these guys, you need to go out and pick up the Kitsuné Tabloid compilation that’s mixed and compiled by Digitalism, props to my man AJK for introducing this mix to me.

For more information on upcoming events by Blueprint Events, hit up their website at www.blueprintevents.ca. Definitely looking forward to their October 3rd event with MSTRKRFT.

If you’re liking these reviews and posts vote for us here: http://music.virgin.com/author/David%20Thai/

Aight so some may have been wondering where the hell I’ve been with my posts and updates and may have possibly noticed a slow down in content. Well I’m back folks. So what took me away in the first place? Well, I had submitted a Stevie Wonder review that I wrote for Killahbeez, seen here, and submitted it to Virgin Mobile Music for shits and giggles. What ended up happening was that Virgin liked it, called up ya boy and told me what’s good. For those that just didn’t understand that (myself included), I apologize as I have barely had any sleep in the last little while. Basically Virgin told me I won their contest and wanted me to represent the festival out in Toronto and write about my experiences.

So after some debate, my ass jumped onto a plane and off I was to Toronto. What ensued from there was a whole lot of fun and some craziness, more then this once small town kid could ever imagine. So bear with me over the next few days as I am blogging for Virgin Music’s site as well. I’ll post all of my experiences here at Killahbeez for all of y’all to follow along, including some pretty sick pictures, including the one above of MSTRKRFT djing, and yes I was literally beside them, behind them, dancing around them and taking pictures. All of this for you, so stay tuned.