Nice touch

Halifax’s DJ Cosmo makes a move to make
moves in Montreal

GIVING WHAT HE GOT: DJ Cosmo

by DARCY MACDONALD

There’s a good reason DJ Cosmo’s new mixtape, Soul Travellin’ Vol.1, is so titled. In the span of two weeks, Nova Scotia’s freshest export to Montreal has rocked the Molson Hockey House in Vancouver during Canada’s gold-winning game, defended his 2009 Best Party Rocker title at the Red Bull Thre3 Style national finals, flashed back to Halifax to pack his stuff in a trailer and hauled ass to la belle province in time to kick off his new hip hop weekly, Get Nice, this weekend at Blizzarts.

“I’m moving to Montreal partly because I need to be near a better hub,” Cosmo, née Antoine Larochette, says via phone from out east, where he has just returned after ranking third place in the 2010 Red Bull finals. Winning last year’s competition got him gigs in every province over the past year, and now he’s ready to try something new. He has recently launched a website where you can grab the mixtape.

Cosmo, who credits Halifax homies Scratch Bastid and Jorun Bombay for mentoring him and putting him up, is no stranger to town. He attended McGill in the late ’90s and early part of the last decade. “That was back when Soundbombing and stuff like that was big everywhere,” he recalls.

At the time more of an observer and a fan of the art of scratching, Larochette recalls going out and hearing guys like Blast and P-Love at the legendary Tableturns showcases. “That was cutting-edge music at the time, and Montreal was at the forefront. You could go out and your scratch heroes from the U.S. would come up and do a showcase. It was amazing to be there.”

As for the new residency at Blizzarts, with which he intends to prove that technology need not make for lazy DJing, he is excited by the challenge of a bar set high by the many legacy weeklies the bar has hosted in all of its incarnations. “I’m honoured, but it’s gonna be baby steps. I’m not gonna try to take over Montreal. I want to contribute, in the way Montreal contributed to me back then.”

AT BLIZZARTS ON FRIDAY,
MARCH 19, 10 P.M., FREE BEFORE
11 P.M., $5 AFTER