Head of Blueprint discusses Squamish, FVDED, M.I.A. and much more in this exclusive interview

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Alvaro Prol, the Co-Founder and Principal of Blueprint, the largest promoter in Western Canada, is a busy man. His company owns some of the hottest nightclubs in Vancouver and holds over 300 events a year. This year has been especially busy for Alvaro and Blueprint as they are planning their brand new FVDED In The Park at Holland Park, Surrey, B.C., managing their brand new underground club called M.I.A., renewed their involvement with the Squamish Music Festival, and much more. With a rock solid home base in Vancouver, Blueprint has expanded to Alberta in the past year and had a successful Northern Lights Festival with the 2nd night completely selling out. 

In this interview we discuss Blueprint's involvement with the Squamish Music Festival, their new FVDED In The Park festival, their latest club M.I.A., his views on the current festival scene and much more. Enjoy: 

Can you tell me a bit of history with Blueprint's involvement with the Squamish Music Festival?

Alvaro Prol: Squamish Festival is run by Brand.LIVE, who are partners with Live Nation. They've been at it for a long time and we have good relations with them both, especially since we're also partners with Live Nation. Last year they invited us to do our own stage, so we curate and book our own Blueprint stage and help with any other electronic acts that will play at the festival. We also help with marketing and promotion. But our big thing is to curate our own stage.

Besides the lineup, what will be different at Squamish this year versus last year?

I think every year you do an event you just get better at it. You fine tune the product, to make it more comfortable, to be better run logistically. I think Squamish has really come a long way, matured a ton, and has become the destination for Western Canada seeking a contemporary festival. 2015 will be the best year it's ever had and I'm just really excited about the lineup. I just think it's going to be a great even overall. The product and experience is just going to come up.

Before Blueprint's involvement in Squamish – were electronic artists booked at the festival?

Yes, those guys have always been dance music fans. There's always been a good touch of dance music at Squamish. But last year was the first time they've given it a dedicated stage. This year we've got a deeper lineup and we've also added Kaskade to one of the larger stages. We want to throw some of the dance guys onto the bigger stages and that's something that we'd like to explore for next year.

Your stage has a deep underground feel to it, just like last year's. Is that something Squamish wanted from Blueprint or it was Blueprint that wanted to bring that feel to the festival?

When you think about what kind of music you want to bring to a festival, what kind of vibe you want to bring, these guys who run Squamish trust me to do my thing. But we collaborate, we talk, we throw ideas around. Putting Odesza on to headline is something I targeted from the beginning because I feel like they're just a great act that's growing so much. Adventure Club is an act that we go way back with... Bringing acts like Gorgon City, Tchami, Kaytranada, Porter Robinson to the lineup - we feel like we have a diverse lineup filled with young talent. We also have up and coming acts like Peking Duck, and Slow Magic.

We have A-Trak, who is just a full on great DJ and a legend. We feel like that we have a good diverse lineup of guys and we really want them to stand out on their own. We're also bringing local favourites like The Funk Hunters, Mat The Alien – we always try to bring love to local talent.

Is the competition heating up in terms of festivals in B.C./Western Canada?

I think the festival market is growing globally, just not in Western Canada. Festivals have been big business in Europe for a long time, and I think North America has woken up to it a bit later. We're seeing different brands going into different markets. I think it's busy but we believe that festivals must have a localized connection, with the right idea and concept. There's a lot of noise happening with festivals globally, but that will fade out because I think people will have a rough time because it's a difficult business to be in. It's very difficult to fight for the talent with the amount of festivals that will be happening. Only the strong will survive long term, and it will only be about quality over quantity. Today there's a lot of quantity out there right now.

So you believe that in a few years there will only be a select few festivals that will remain at the top?

I think the strong will survive. You take a festival like Shambhala which has been around for a long time and have been always true to what they do. Stuff like that will always work. But when a promoter wants to put together a festival because they have a lot of money to spend on a lineup, that's okay. But that's not as important as a festival that commits to something like Squamish has. Squamish has a long term plan they have been building towards a festival that is being globally recognized.

Will Blueprint ever establish their own summer festival in Vancouver?

We have. We just started this year with Fvded In the Park.

You've expanded it this year. Last year it was only 1 day.

Last year it was a party, so we don't even look at the past for this event. This festival is something new to us and we're launching it as a new event. It will be a 2-day outdoor festival with 2 stages. We really see it as our summer event and we didn't want to do what everybody else is doing.

We didn't want to put together a festival that based off of social media numbers, but rather to put together a festival that felt like a party in the park. We wanted Fvded In The Park to be a little more accessible as we didn't want people paying $400 for a ticket to camp. It's more about jumping onto the Sky Train and checking out hip hop, RnB guys, and electronic acts. Fvded In The Park will happen on July 3-4th at Holland Park. That is our summer festival.

It will be a yearly event and the capacity is 22,000 a day. Being that this is the first one, we wanted to build it as big as possible and make it an awesome open format event. We wanted to open it up to fans of all kinds, not just dance music fans. I am a music lover of all kinds so I want to be able to see the Weeknd and see Deadmau5. I love them both. We want to get out of that bubble that Blueprint is “EDM” because we really are more than that. We are a very diverse company with an eclectic taste.

Fvded already had a great response from the community with strong sales, and we are very happy about it. I feel like in an environment where you have to pay a lot of money to go to Coachella, Squamish, or Pemberton – you also have the option to go to a park in Vancouver to party and then afterwards go to a nice restaurant and stay in a hotel. We're pumped about holding an urban festival. Money is tight out there and we want to make things more accessible to more people because it's difficult to get people to go to everything.

Do you think the Vancouver nightlife scene is in a good place?

I think Vancouver has always got a great scene. We have educated fans and they know their music. Things are growing, and within sub-genres we're seeing growth within the growth. Is every trance show selling out? No, but maybe they're into deep house or techno now. There's a lot of content out there right now and it's hard for a promoter to get that many acts through because there's too much.

But you're trying your best.

We do our best and we try to bring them to all of the clubs we operate, and we put on as many shows as we possibly can. We're busy as we have 120 acts coming through Vancouver in April.

M.I..A is your latest venture – do you aim for it to be the new hot underground spot in Vancouver?

We bought Shine some years ago, and when we bought it we knew it needed renovation. But we wanted to operate it ourselves, feel it out, and see all of the little corners and things that needed to be different to make the space better. Shine is situated on a legendary corner of Vancouver, at Water and Cordova, an iconic corner of the town. It's also just below our offices as we're on the top floor.

So we took our time designing the concept of this club and I'm really happy at the way it turned out. We gutted the whole place, started from scratch, got rid of the entrance as you now have to enter it from the back in a tunnel that opens up to a lush high-end room. It has a crazy funktion one sound system and it sounds like you have headphones on. We put this L.E.D. install all across the whole club that look like lines that cut across the entire space. It's turned into one of our favourite clubs that we own right now.

It's in intimate club so our thing here is that we’re encouraging people not to use their phones to take pictures or have photographers. So when you're there, you feel that intimate vibe. You feel like you're at this amazing house party where you don't want to pull out your phone because you'd be a jerk. I'm stoked and I just want to hang out there all of the time. I can't wait to see what kind of music that will flourish in that type of room. I feel like it will be a nice little cultural hub in the city.

Did you try to model M.I.A. based on famous underground clubs like Berghain or Verboten?

There were inspirations but I didn't want it to feel like you're in a techno club on the weekends. I want it to feel like you're a techno head grown up that knows all kinds of music, where you might hear some techno but you also might hear a Drake track. It doesn't matter because you're at such a cool party. We're not trying to pigeonhole ourselves into an underground sound but instead give them a sense that you're in a club that gives you a different vibe. We want people that get music, are cultural, and are underground in a sense that they can roll with anything.

Does M.I.A cater to VIPs with table/bottle service?

Yeah we have all that. Shine was a very uncomfortable nightclub, so what we did was add seating everywhere. When we organize an underground night everybody knows that they can sit wherever they want. But if groups want to take sections and lock it down, we provide that service.

Blueprint was busy expanding to Alberta by bringing two promoting groups into your fold – how's that transition been going?

It's been great to go to a new market. I think Albertans have been really receptive of Blueprint the brand. Every time we do a show we sell out of merch as people are buying hats and tank tops. It's been a really really great welcoming feeling from the people of Alberta. We want nothing more than to continue by giving back and growing organically. It's definitely working out that way.

We just did Northern Lights in Edmonton and Saturday was sold out, which was great. We first started arena shows with Arrival, then we did Get Together, and now with Northern Lights. Things are going well. We're slow and steady, just like what we did here. We want to continue to build it and build it right. We want to give people good experiences at a good value. We want people to know that what we're putting out in Edmonton is just as good as what we're putting out in Vancouver. We are continuing the build the business and the family across Western Canada.

Are there any other big plans set for Alberta?

The most important message I want to get across is that we're trying to build the business properly by giving them the best product that we can.

Is Blueprint happy with just the west coast, have you ever considered expanding further East?

No. We have a great relationship with the Ink guys in Toronto and other people out in the east. We are as busy as we could be and happy where we are. We have no plans in going past where we are now.

Anything else you'd like to announce?

We have our 18 year anniversary coming up this year. The Mad Decent Block Party and Life In Color are coming in September. Contact is going up in capacity this year and it's going to be bigger than it has ever been. We sold 14,000 tickets a day last year.

My thanks to Alvaro Prol for this interview. 

FVDED In The Park will take place from July 3rd until July 4th at Holland Park, Surrey B.C. -  just minutes away from downtown Vancouver. If you want to grab tickets - click here. 

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Squamish Valley Music Festival will take place from August 7th until August 9th at the Centennial Fields. If you want to grab tickets - click here. 

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If you live in Vancouver and want to check out what Blueprint is planning, then click here to check out the Vancouver calendar.

 

Meet the man who brought Hardstyle to Alberta

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With Q-Dance's first event in Canada set for this October, I figured it would be the time to take a closer look at someone who helped bring hardstyle to Alberta/Canada and turn it into one of the most sought after genres in Western Canada. Enter James Bayliss, who through his tireless work and determination played a major part in introducing hardstyle to thousands of now devoted fans in Alberta. He's the only Canadian artist to have his own radio show featured on the coveted Q-Dance radio roster, and remains one of the go to acts that perform in all of the hardstyle massives in Alberta. If you're a hardstyle fan in Canada then you've got to read this interview on how the path to success isn't always straight as an arrow, but when you've got passion and determination, anything is possible. Enjoy: 

Who is James Bayliss?

James Bayliss: He is a 26 year-old, 6'6 tall DJ from Alberta who loves hardstyle.

What's your style in the genre?

I don't know man, I play everything. It all depends on the mood. A lot of people think that hardstyle doesn't have a lot of styles to it, but honestly it's a pretty diverse style. You can play anything from really melodic to super raw, or really clubby. I don't stick to one style as it depends on the night and who else I'm playing with.

You're a DJ and not a producer?

I'm a DJ but not a producer, not yet. I am working on producing but it just takes time.

Hardstyle has taken off in Alberta in a big way, what was your role in making it the scene that it is today?

7-8 years ago I got brought on with Boodang spinning hard trance back in those days. That was the tail end when hard trance was truly king and then everything went house music. That was the time when I found hardstyle and fell in love with it. I became good friends with the owners of Boodang and was an active member of the team. I just kept on begging them and begging them that hardstyle was going to be the next big thing. I told them that they had to jump on it and be at the front of it. Eventually they put their faith in me we brought Lady Dana to our afterhours in Edmonton at the time. It did really well. Then the guys at Boodang put me right after Cosmic Gate at one of their big raves in Edmonton. I was put on the mainstage and that was the first time to my knowledge that hardstyle had ever been played anywhere in Canada. This happened around 6 years ago. Some fellow promoters told me to tone it down so you don't turn fans away. To be honest I had to change my dynamic because I didn't play the same way back then versus the way I play now. I played it with the intent to attract people to hardstyle. So I slowed it down a bit, played at 145 bpm instead at 150 bpm. I stayed away from the raw stuff, where at that point it wasn't around.

After I finished my set, the owner of the building came up to me and asked “What the f*ck was that? That was nuts!”. Prior to that I only played in the third room where it had only a couple hundred people capacity. Everytime people came to me asking what they were hearing and everytime I told them it was hardstyle. I was making 2,000 – 3,000 Cds every month and was handing them out to big raves and was getting people involved. I was making them aware of what hardstyle was. As time went on, the guys at Boodang continued to have faith in me and the bookings and shows continued to get bigger and bigger until we started doing Shaw Conference parties. They decided to bring in a hardstyle act to finish the night at one of the huge parties. I believe it was Headhunterz and it did extremely well. I kept pushing, Boodang kept having me back, and together we created the largest, most dedicated Hardstyle community in North America. Blackout 2013 was single-handedly the largest Hardstyle party in North American history, beating SOQD in LA. And now in 2014 - Q-Dance has seen our potential and is joining Boodang Music Canada and doing The Sound of Q-Dance right here in Qanada on October 10th in Edmonton. Its crazy if you think of where it started and where it is now. I'm beyond proud.

As it stands, Alberta has the biggest hardstyle scene in North America as far as I'm concerned. Really I was just a guy with a lot of passion for hardstyle and wanted to see it grow. Nothing's changed in that regard but now I understand the business side of it a lot more now. I'll still keep on going until we start doing massive shows at least somewhere in Canada. We'll have to wait and see.

Is there something special about the Alberta crowd that really allows them to prefer hardstyle?

If you were to ask Paul, who is one of the owners of Boodang, he'll tell you that Alberta used to be all about hardcore. Now this is way before my time so I have to take Paul's word on it. So that might explain why Western Canadians might be more attuned to it. I think what it was that it was presented to people in a certain way that appealed to the general audience that listened to electronic music. If they like trance then they're going to listen to hardstyle because that is how I presented it to them. I didn't just show up and pound their faces into the ground with a heavy beat and expect them to like it. I played sets that appealed to them and get people involved. I made them wonder what they were listening to and asking what song was being played. They might have not liked the entire set, but they might have liked that one song. You give tracklists, and you get them involved. I think that's what built it out here. You need to have a company that's at least willing to throw their back into it and start working to build it. I don't think you can walk into a city and immediately have a hardstyle scene.

I think L.A. is one of the best bets for Q-dance and it's going exponentially there. But it proves that it's going to take time to build. It's a rough style and not everybody is going to like it right away. It's very appealing once you get used to it and more than likely people won't be able to handle it for long periods of time. But we're building a scene that's going to get very very large and hardstyle is going to be one of the contenders in the realm of electronic music when it comes to big festivals. We're pretty close to it.

There is success in hardstyle in Alberta and Vancouver, but what will it take to bring hardstyle to other big markets like Ontario and Quebec?

You gotta have a good promotions team that has the know-how and connections in the city to do good events. If you look at the parties held here in Alberta, these are top-tier parties. You will not find better parties anywhere else in North America, short of 150,000 person festivals. They are high calibre productions, the sound is exponentially good and the experience is there. What you need is someone able to do that, to create an experience. It doesn't have to be on such a big scale, but their standards must be extremely high to attract people to go to these events to begin with. Regardless of what style of music you have, if the production sucks and the company has a bad rep for throwing crappy events, nobody is going to go.

You need a good venue and you need people to work for that style of music. Get the hardstyle fans going out and promoting the events. I didn't have that luxury when I started, it was just me and Boodang, who was reluctant at first to do anything with it. It took a lot of work, a lot of promoting, and a f*ck ton of Cds to make it happen. You also have to book DJs that people want to see. You don't want to be booking B class DJs to build a scene because people want to see A class DJs. It's also important for promotional companies to know how to do the basic social media stuff. The success of a company rests in the fact that they know how to reach their fans.

If there's a company that's currently throwing house and trance shows, put a hardstyle on at the end of the night which will build people's attention towards hardstyle. Eventually the interest will grow but it won't happen overnight. Calgary and Edmonton are the biggest hardstyle scenes as far as I'm concerned, Vancouver is definitely right up there with us. But all of them took time to develop. It took patience and you gotta know what you're doing.

Q-dance coming to Canada for the first time, got any advice for them?

I think they know what they're doing. They've got enough experience, especially dealing with L.A, New York, and TomorrowWorld – they've got a good grasp on what they need to do. They're going to bring the heat.

For ticket information: Click on the poster. 

Tell me about your radio show on Q-dance.

There was a guy who was a close colleague who works with Q-dance that came over to Canada for one of Boodang's shows when we booked Technoboy. I kind of nagged him to see me play because I was so excited to see that I was there. So he saw me play and he said it was really good. Technoboy was even there sitting down having a beer. They thought it was phenomenal
and I had a decent crowd and they were pretty impressed with it. So I got to talk to this particular gentleman, and got to know him for about 1-2 years. The next time I saw him I got talking about doing a radio show and how it would help build the North American scene. So I
flew out to Holland, went to their headquarters, and sat down with the people that did their radio stuff to give them my spiel and that was it.

I've nothing but benefited from that show and it's vaulted me into the stratosphere. Once I start producing it's going to change dramatically as well. Before I went to Holland I created a bunch of demos and they just weren't good enough. My buddy kinda turned me down and told me
“Yeah man, this isn't going to jive bro”. I was pretty let down but I didn't give up and I went on and perfected it. Finally I sent him one after spending 6 months working on it and he told me that it was really good. He then sent it off to Q-dance and that's when I went there. So I sat down in Holland and tell them about my concept of bringing a progression into hardstyle within the show. So people who aren't fans of hardstyle will have a chance to warm up to it, get used to it, and tell themselves that hardstyle isn't so bad. I don't expect people to go on listening all the way to the end of podcast on the first listen but they will listen to it 2-3 times and by the third time they're really going to get their taste of hardstyle. They're going to become fans.

My aim with the podcast is to please hardstyle fans and most importantly put the people who aren't hardstyle fans and start attracting them over to hardstyle. It doesn't benefit the scene to
attract fans that already into hardstyle. I need people that aren't fans, who aren't aware of it, and to slowly integrate them into it. That's the exact same business model that I used with Boodang to build the scene over here.

Did you fly over to Holland on your own coin?

Yeah. I don't mind spending the money to put myself forward.

What can we expect from James Bayliss in 2014?

You can expect me to push Hardstyle into the f**king sky is what you can expect. I'm beyond excited for Q-Dance to come and experience what it is we as Canadians have built. Im not convinced who's going to be more satisfied by the end. The partiers or Q-Dance? Cause they haven't seen f**k all yet. Just wait and see!

I'm in the process of getting the Polar Express onto Youtube. I know that doesn't sound too exciting but I want to do it differently than the other hardstyle podcasts on Youtube. I'm not saying that it's going to be better, but it will be different. I'm really looking forward to it. It's been a long process because I had to find the right reliable people to do the right things.

Besides that there will be a lot more shows coming up, and producing is going to be my main focus besides promoting and DJ'ing. I'm in the studio almost everyday getting better and better. I'm in talks with some artists to do some collabs, But the Polar Express on Youtube is the big one because I'm going to take the show which is already doing extremely well and it's going to propel it into an entirely different market.

When can we expect to hear your first release?

I'm hoping sometime this year, if not, it will be early 2015. I have alot of shit going on right now. I do have a few collabs setup in the near future, with some bigger names and also up and coming stars. I'm super excited for these projects. But all in all, I'm not to concerned about it yet. My career has a habit of just taking me where I want it to. I just let things unfold as they should. I just focus on my love for Hardstyle, and it focuses on me.

My thanks to James Bayliss for this excellent interview! 

Make sure to check out his monthly radio on Q-dance radio as it's an excellent way for newer fans to dive into the hardstyle genre: 

Blueprint expands to Alberta and introduces two huge parties in late August

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Blueprint, one of the biggest promoters in British Columbia, has decided to enter the active Alberta scene with a bang. With their sights set on Calgary and Edmonton, Blueprint has teamed up with Aqua Audio and Connected Entertainment, two established Alberta promoters to join this new venture. According to Mikey Da Roza, the head of Aqua Audio, this new partnership "had to happen": 

"Over the years, we've seen Blueprint grow leaps and bounds and have great respect for the organization. I've always been an admirer of their drive, determination and brand presence, so it was with great excitement and elation when Alvaro reached out to me to talk about future business. When we really got down to the nuts and bolts of the relationship, I knew that this was something that had to happen. I'm very ecstatic to become part of the Blueprint family and join a team with vast knowledge and resources,"

To start off this new expansion on the right foot for fans, Blueprint had announced a brand new event series. It's properly titled "Arrival", a 2 day massive that will take over the Shaw Conference Centre and BMO Centre in late August. The lineup is filled with big names including Knife Party, Martin Garrix, Afrojack, Nervo, and more.

This new move by Blueprint, Aqua, and Connected can only mean good things for Alberta fans. It's only speculation for now, but this new venture virtually guarantees fans to expect big announcements in the future as Blueprint intends to make its presence felt in the province. 

Tickets are on sale now, and for more information please click below: 

Alberta promoters are throwing so many free shows this month that would make any non-Albertan jealous

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How would you like to see Gabriel & Dresden, The M Machine, Sharam, Wildstylez, Frontliner, and Arty all for free this month? Well if you live in Calgary and Edmonton you can! The two major promoters in Alberta (Connected Entertainment and Boodang) are giving back to their fans by organizing multiple events that are either give you free entry before 11 pm, free for the first 750 people, or an entirely free cover event. This is a pretty amazing gesture to Albertan EDM fans which will be sure to create a lot of goodwill between fans and promoters in the new year.  Seeing this makes me wish that other promoters across Canada would do the same.