NT007 TITLE: Necessary Pieces ARTIST: V/A CATALOGUE: NT007 - CD RELEASE: JUL.17.00 Track Listing: 1. Sea To Sky "Up Jumped The Boogie 2. Dino & Terry "2 Tha Hardway" 3. aaronz - "Making Changes" 4. Dino & Terry "FlyBall" 5. High Fidelity "Work It Out" 6. Peter Hecher "The Disco Man" 7. Rum Runners "Yello " 8. Dino & Terry "Flyball Beats 9. Peter Hecher "In These Tiines" 10. Peter Hecher K2Morrow" 11. Peter Hecher "Jus Be"

Audio Samples for NT007: "Yellow"

After a very rainy winter the Nordic Trax massive come correct with our first CD release of '99, "NECESSARY PIECES" , a compilation of deep house music from Canada -- mixed by Vancouver DJ Tyler 'T-Bone' Stadius. With so much attention and love for excellent European and American releases and so little from our fair land, it wasn't a hard decision to keep this effort All-Canadian. Here we give much needed exposure to a small taste of what's here that should be heard. The line-up: Toronto DJ/producer legends Dino & Terry (Crash Records/Vinyl Peace) with a couple of classics and a new un-released steppy house shaker; deep techish house from two NT first-timers Sea To Sky & aaronz;High Fidelity aka Sonar dj Luke McKeehan contributes a sampledelic track from the NT archives (NT004 to be exact); rounded out with Vancouver producer Peter Hecher's hefty debut for NTR -- 4 previously un-released slices of > deep house bizness. All seemlessly mixed by Vancouver DJ Tyler 'T-Bone' Stadius (Sonar/Bassix). ______________________________________________________ The Georgia Straight April 1st 1999 "An Expert Mixer, DJ T-Bone Delves Deep Into The House" By Ben Nevile Well, here we are in 1999, and I still have trouble convincing some people that the music I love most, house music, deserves to be respected. Harlan, one of my oldest, closest friends, is probably the most frustrating case. "I don't understand what this music does for you", he tells me from the couch in the living room as I pull more beer from the fridge. In school we spent hours together listening to fusion and indie rock, and because he has come to trust my taste, the gap frustrates Harlan as much as me; he knows that something is eluding him. "When I hear this stuff I can't identify with a performer. Who is performing? The producers who make the tracks? What does a good DJ really do, other than have good taste in records and make sure they're always in sync?" An accomplished trumpet player, my good friend needs to be able to connect the emotions of the music with someone performing before he'll be able to appreciate the genre. "Who can I see that will convince me that a DJ can be a musician?" he asks. If there's anyone in Vancouver who might be able to convince Harlan, it's Tyler "T-Bone" Stadius. His smooth, consistent style of mixing deep house, a subtle, understated form of dance music, has earned him the respect of DJs and promoters across North America and Europe. Stadius has been playing records for Vancouver crowds since 1991, when he his sound system made the good move from Toronto. His involvement with Vancouver's dance-music community began almost immediately, thanks to a friend who arranged for him to play at a party two days after he arrived. "Parties were always great right from the start here," he tells me from across the table in a nearly empty Robson Street food court. "Not a lot of people were playing house music when I first got here. Back then I played more of a variety of things- a lot of reggae and a little bit of hip-hop. For one of my first Djing jobs, they said, 'We don't want any house, we don't want any soul'. They named all these things, and the one thing they didn't really name was acid jazz, so I've been buying what they called acid jazz right from its conception. My focus was always on housebecause of the parties, and it progressed into a thing where you know, you just end uphaving to specialize. It's such a gradual process." Soon after its arrival, Stadius started Romper Room, a popular club night that ran at Madison's for a little more than a year. Out-of-town DJs would occasionally play; California's Doc Martin made his first BC appearance there. "From then on in, things just progressed." That's for sure. Stadius is part owner of one of the city's premier record stores, Bassix Imports, and he is also a partner in Sonar, the bustling club on Water Street where he spins every Saturday night. "Having the club has allowed us to bring in acts and DJs that never would have been there otherwise." The list of musicians that have performed at Sonar in its two-year lifetime is long and impressive: Coldcut, Goldie, UFO, Josh Wink, Mike Huckaby and Carl Craig, to name just a few, have all either played live or performed DJ sets there. "Some of the shows have not been revolutionary but a large percentage of the shows we've done have never been done before, especially the house ones that I try to focus on." For his latest project, Necessary Pieces, a mixed compilation CD for the Vancouver-based Nordic Trax label operated by Sonar partner Luke McKeehan, Stadius selected tracks exclusively from Canadian producers. "It wasn't, 'Can I do a mix house CD?' I wanted to put out a Canadian CD. The thing is, it's not as though it's anything new- it's been happening for years, Canadian house, and it's just never really gotten any recognition." Stadius put out the word to some producer friends, and soon he had more tracks than he could use. Not all the selected music was immediately available on record, so a 12-inch single with four of the tracks was released (also on the Nordic Trax label), and one-off vinyl pressings, or dub plates, were made for the remaining songs that weren't otherwise available in that format. A track order was worked out when all the music was finally ready and Stadius recorded a mix to DAT. "At first I thought I needed to do it again, because I thought, 'No, no, I could do it better,' and I tried a different order and then the same order again. I tried all these different things, but the first one was the best because I was in the best frame of mind. I was the most focused at that time." The result is more than 60 minutes of beautiful, slinky, expertly mixed deep-house music that will work just as well in your car stereo as it will in the clubs. Established Toronto producers Dino and Terry Demopoulous contributed a number of tracks, but they don't sound out of place alongside the work of lesser-known local producers Aly Neghji and Vernell de Long (Sea to Sky), Aaron Quist (Aaronz), Luke McKeehan (High Fidelity), and Peter Hecher. On Saturday (April 3) Sonar is hosting the CD release party, which will feature Stadius and McKeehan spinning records as well as live sets from Aaron Quist and another Nordic Trax recording artist, Gavin Froome. The unpressured instrumental feel of the mix and the live performances of these producers should give a good representation of the house sound that is increasingly becoming identified with Vancouver. "(Necessary Pieces) does represent our house scene, I think, which is maybe a little different than anywhere else, I'd say," Stadius concludes. "This is a sampler of Canada's house sound, and specifically of Vancouver's because that's what I've been influenced by." Harlan, are you listening? JB **** ______________________________________________________ MONTREAL MIRROR May 6-13 1999 "Northern Under Exposure" Nordic Trax put Canadian house on the map Why is it that we Canadians are forever looking stateside or to the U.K. to find out what's happening in the world of electronic music? Why do we assume that because it comes from London or New York, it must be good? Why do we refuse to see what's right in front of us? In the past year alone, Montreal has seen the birth of at least four new record labels, like Bombay and Haute Couture. Toronto has, among others, the highly respected Vinyl Peace and Stickman imprints, and now that western manifest is coming together with the fruition of Vancouver's Nordic Trax. "I don't think that clubs and labels should get props just because guys from New York and California have played there or done tracks for them," says Nordic Trax owner Luke McKeehan. "It's just as good if not better right here." It was McKeehan's partner, DJ T-Bone, who saw the potential for the Necessary Pieces mix CD, boasting an all-Canadian roster of artists. "I knew of so many people around town who were making tracks and not doing anything with them, so I said why not? As soon as I put the word out that I was doing the CD, people started sending me stuff from all over. I had enough material to make three or four CD's." As is with most label owners, Nordic Trax frontman Luke McKeehan has a pretty strong "scene" background. He moved out to BC from Toronto several years back, opened the Chameleon night club, began DJing @ parties around Vancouver and started a label called Mo' Funk, geared toward promoting a more downtempo and trip-hop oriented sound. Then he and fellow ex-Torontonian Tyler "T-Bone" Stadius (owner of Bassix record store) got together and opened Sonar. As Vancouver's house scene burgeoned, so did the influx of material for the newly-formed Nordic Trax label, and the rest is, well, making history.