Friends jump off

>> Peer Pressure celebrates two years of
getting more fly with its honey

PEER, PAS PIRE: DL Jones (with flag)
and the Peer Pressure posse

by JACK OATMON

To chill out and sip on a brew with the members of oft-lauded Montreal productions group Peer Pressure is to understand how they’ve mushroomed into nothing less than a phenomenon in the two years of their partnership. The fact that they have a remarkably synergistic, non-competitive relationship with numerous local party-promotion contemporaries, a ravenously devoted crowd of attendees at their events and a killer roster of guest artists comes out in the good vibe and focused drive they clearly display in any encounter.

“The thing that makes it special is that for each and every party, our friends are at the core,” says DJ A-Rock, aka Adam Hummell. “It’s rarely a project where we’re trying to move ahead on our own terms for our own gain. We have a collective or a friendship that’s striving for a common goal. And we seem to do it together and we seem to do it pretty well, unlike with other crews I’ve worked with before where you’re just another DJ or a visual artist.”

Fellow DJ Hatchmatik (Matt Morein) chimes in, “Because it’s the same group and everybody has their own predetermined role within that framework, things start to work better and develop more. If you were to work with different people every time, you might not find the same depth of development.

Shadi Assadi, host of Tuesday night’s weekly jam, Teen Wolf, adds, “I think another thing is that we all have genuine fun at our own events whereas some people that throw parties, you’ll notice that they’re just watching the crowd, not really having their own fun. We actually have tons of fun ourselves and I think that translates into a better atmosphere. Even if there’s nobody in the room, we’ll have a blast, and anything from there is just a plus.”

Co-founder, host and promoter DL Jones then joins the stream of thought that naturally bounces around the room like a well-played game of catch. “It’s also that a lot of people actually come out to party with us. A lot of other parties, people won’t go if it’s not a DJ they already like on the flyer, so it relies on the booking. Whereas with us, they’re like, ‘These guys are going to be there and they’re my friends, I want to go party with them.’”

Couch commandos

When queried about how their decidedly personalized approach gels with the decision-making process surrounding bookings and venues, all eyes shift to DL Jones with a chorus of easy laughter. “I book the venues and acts, but usually it’s something that everybody’s down with. It will be people that these guys are stoked to play with. Whether it’s Chromeo or the guys from Spank Rock or Tittsworth, it’s usually people that we can all hang with. So we build a personal relationship with each artist. I don’t think there’s ever really problems with deciding how to throw an event because we’re pretty much all on the same page.”

Their 24 months in action have naturally involved a few landmarks and conceptual pinnacles for the burgeoning crew, and for Peer Pressure, that feeling harkens back to their primordial roots at the club Vinyl and the transition away from it to accommodate the growth of their popularity.

“The couch at Vinyl is it for me, to tell you the truth,” Hummell interjects. “There are tons of different ways of looking at it, but that couch played a huge role in giving a personality to a lot of the jams that we played or DJed or booked. Just the whole idea of climbing up and getting on the actual furniture of the place and just going off, as close to the speakers as we can get. That’s to say, there have been many other great times, and I could talk for however long naming them, but the first thing that came to my mind was that couch. That thing was a big deal.”

To which Jones responds, “I think for me it was backstage with Hatch at the Spank Rock and TTC show [Oct. 5, 2006]. That was my first time being involved with a show that had such a huge crowd. It was our first time booking a big act like that and doing a really large production. That set a precedent for Showtime and everything else—we saw that there were a lot more kids in the city who were interested in it.”

Peer Pressure second anniversary party with Pase Rock,
Ghislain Poirier, Omnikrom, Thunderheist, Claass, Bonjay,
A-Rock, Hatchmatik, Merk Meny and Nu-Ravers on the
Block at SAT on Friday, Aug. 3, 10 p.m., $20