NOTE: This show is postponed, but a rescheduled date’s in the works. Refunds available at point of purchase.
When Jesse F. Keeler picks up the phone in his Vancouver hotel room he sounds exhausted. This is because he spent a few days puking last week in the most un-rock ‘n’ roll way possible: food poisoning on a flight to England. A pretty depressing end to an otherwise remarkable year which saw Keeler—who has the extremely lucky initials that make up his pseudonym, JFK—start his own record label, get reinvigourated by dance music and play a slew of shows across the world.
Keeler performs at the Paragon on January 9, but as a solo act outside of MSTRKRFT, his main outfit. “We decided we were going to take most of 2010 to decide what we wanted to do,” says Keeler about the amicable split between him and Alex Puodziukas (AL-P). “I didn’t want to not play, but I also didn’t want to be doing MSTRKRFT stuff when we didn’t have a plan for the future. We didn’t want to water it down for everybody.”
That’s hard to believe when MSTRKRFT is one of the hottest acts in electronic music. Tickets for its 2009 show at the Palace were sold on Kijiji for over $100 above face value, and many consider Keeler’s producing as some of the most important to come out of electronic music this decade. But now Keeler is busy promoting dance music with his new Teenage Riot Records. “It’s sort of a criteria for me to promote friends or people who deserve more of an opportunity than has been given.”
The hottest commodity so far on the label is Blende, an electronic duo you’ve probably never heard of. “The second record we put out by them I’ve been playing for three years. Three years is a long time in dance music,” Keeler gripes. “I tried and tried and tried to get someone to put out that record and no one was interested.”
But with Keeler at the helm of the future of dance music, you’re in good hands.
This article appears in Jan 6-12, 2011.
