ARCADE FRIDAY'S PRESENTS

PROXY & MILANO
Friday, April 9, 2010 - The Mod Club
722 College Street, Toronto

From the ashes of the Soviet empire, from the flames of history, rises PROXY. Post 9/11 rave vibes cloaked in Muscovite angst. A line drawn in smoking rubble along the border dividing East and West, Stüssy and Spetsnaz.

1997. The Year of Tar and Horses. The Prodigy plays Red Square in Moscow. Hundreds of thousands of people attend the show, but only one is truly changed. By the crushing sound. By people absolutely losing their shit to synths and sustained aggression.

The experience causes PROXY to question the quality and purpose of Russian “electrica” acts like Nu-Lag Xpressions and Sweatislav. There was simply no scene from which to emerge. “Whatever a fool does, he does it wrong. A poor dancer is impeded even by his own balls,” he recalls.

In a decade’s time, PROXY would be remixing Prodigy and opening for them on a massive tour of Russia.

2004. PROXY grows interested in the increasingly punishing sounds of the electro scene, as he hears Tiga sing “Hey You Little Children of Glasnost” at the W Hotel in Anzhero-Sudzhensk.

2006. PROXY reaches out to Tiga via his MySpace page. Thomas Von Party intercepts the message and is stunned by fully formed landmines like “Destroy”. Masquerading as Tiga, he signs PROXY to Turbo Recordings, beginning his own deceit-fueled ascent up the biz-ladder of the music ladder-business.

2007 to present. PROXY earns respect and awe from such heavyweights as Justice, Soulwax, Boys Noize, Erol Alkan and Mr. Oizo with astonishing, severe tracks like “Decoy”, “Dance in Dark” and the massive “Raven”, which merits special mention not just because of its ubiquity, but because it illustrates in full the singular power of PROXY MUSIC.

Recall, if you will, the first time you were ever caught in an explosion. Close enough to the blast that the only things that register are a light beyond blinding and a sound that arrives too soon. Now imagine that as you lose your body to the fire you are reassembled, better, your self subsumed by something far greater (for many, this experience seems to manifest itself as sitting in obedient unison). The sound now commands you, transmuting you into the screaming, searing blare.

PROXY has also produced remixes for Peaches, Prodigy, Tiga, Boys Noize, Chromeo, Digitalism, Moby and a host of others willing to pay him in Kocmoc cigarettes. The coming months will see him co-headline a huge New Year’s Eve show with Soulwax in Australia and embark on his first North American tour, which will include shows at major festivals.

As rumor fills the Earth of the impending release of his debut album, PROXY demurs, “I hear it, and it’s mine, and you stay away from me,” before reluctantly conceding that it will drop in 2010.

“My music tells you what to do, but never why. Your ear may be afraid, but your body completes its labor.”