​House Proud is special in that it's a monthly club night that doesn't feel like one, but rather a packed party filled with a family-and-friends vibe.  Factor in DJ/producer Gene Farris as headliner on April 6 for the sixth installment, and you're definitely going to leave Honey sweaty at 2 a.m.

Farris a former Minneapolis resident, a Chicago house music mainstay, and founder and CEO of Farris Wheel Recordings, which was recently named in the top 20 of underground house labels. 

Gene says he can't wait to get back to his home away from home, so we talked to him today about house, favorite local haunts, and what Minneapolis was like when he lived here.


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​ Grammy award-winning hip-hop producer Prince Paul is known as much for his material with De La Soul, Handsome Boy Modeling School and Gravediggaz as he is for being kind of a jokester. So when Paul's people hit me up about his new "Negroes On Ice" project and were vague in their description, I pictured him directing some kind of wacky hip-hop Icecapades.
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The man... the myth

​Bryan Gerrard has been a fixture on the dance music scene since the '90s in Minneapolis, starting out as one fourth of the Minneapolis Soul Music collective that gave the former VIP Room its reputation for raucous dance parties. Today, Bryan is best known for his Celebrity Records imprint and, most recently, one of the most underrated, good-time dance nights in the Twin Cities: House Proud. 
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Photo by Nick Patton

​The Twin Cities electronic music scene is having a bit of an age crisis, and Minneapolis' own dubstep boy-wonder Vaski is right smack in the middle of it. A bassy lo-end sound made up of skittery, planetary beats, dubstep has produced an entire second generation (or third, depending on your perspective) of dance fans who go out to hear this kind of music over all other genres. They don't care to join the old-school ravers at techno gigs or the college kids at Too Much Love. They come to the Skyway Theatre on Hennepin in droves for shows by local promoters TC Dubstep, and they're very young.

Vaski, who headlined and nearly sold out the theater on Thanksgiving Eve, is himself only 21 years old. Off the steam of his first hit "Get Down," he traveled the country's club circuit before could even legally enter the venues.
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Photo by Dave Eckblad

​When it comes to the local dance music scene, you'd be hard pressed to find a guy who's been around longer than Steve "Centrific" Seuling. When he's not warping minds with his renowned marathon sets of deep techno at Midwest clubs and campouts or throwing his own off-the-grid parties with his Intellephunk tribe of bad-ass producer/DJs, he's usually found supporting local music and dancing up a storm in front of the DJ booth. 

This Saturday night, just a few weeks after what was an exceptional set at Too Much Love, Centrific returns to First Avenue to play a four-hour birthday set in the Record Room to an inevitably packed house of longtime friends, new fans and party people looking to sonically hitchhike to another dimension. Before we take the trip ourselves, we caught up with him for a quick Q&A about his expectations for the night, family life, and of course, old-school memories.  
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Vaski doin' his thing

​ DJ Vaski is Minnesota's own slice of the dubstep phenomena. Just 21 years old and from Savage, Minn., Alex Brouwer traveled the world over the last several years as a budding producer before most kids even think about finishing college. In short, Vaski's doing big things -- and he's about to catch us up via a homecoming set on Friday after a year-long hiatus from the Twin Cities club circuit.

The event takes place in what could be considered a new venue for Minneapolis: Studio B inside the Skyway Theatre on Hennepin. This week, Vaski took time out to give us the lowdown on the space, where he thinks dubstep is going, and his unreleased new album. He also passed us a fantastic remix of that unstoppable Foster The People song, "Pumped Up Kicks",  and it's here for you to download for free.  
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Photo by Dave Eckblad for City Pages

​Dance nights are big on Thanksgiving Eve. Everyone has the next day off, and there's probably more than a few people who anticipate a massive caloric freefall and want to get their bodies moving before the tryptophan coma. This year, there's a fantastic option for us all: One of the city's finest disc jockeys -- both in clubs and on the radiowaves -- is teaming up with this here paper for a big dance-a-thon. Jake Rudh and City Pages, along with The Current, are proud to announce 'Seconds' at the Varsity.

We touched base with Jake late last week about what makes him excited for the event. It's hard to believe Thanksgiving is right around the corner, so mark your calendars...
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We all Skream for (or about) dubstep

​Dubstep. Just say the word around a music lover and watch them gush about their favorite producers or scorn its unstoppable rise to popularity. Considering the genre's chokehold on the western world's twentysomething culture, the polarizing effect isn't so surprising, but if you're looking for a man to blame -- or high-five, depending on your preference -- look no further than London-based dubstep producer, Skream.
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Photo by Benjamin Grimes

​Gigamesh is on deck to be your next favorite producer, having already remixed the likes of Foster The People, Radiohead, Lykke Li, Estate and so many others. He's also the guy who's responsible for the ever-so-danceable Mike Posner hit "Cooler Than Me," and recently spent some time in Miami working with his other projects, DiscoTech and Señor Stereo. 

In short, Matt Masurka is pretty much a club music whiz, his sunny, vocal dance music melding French disco flair with a little indie rock grit to peform the perfect dancefloor balancing act. 

We profiled Matt in this week's issue of City Pages and offer up our full interview with him here. In it, he talks about the move, growing up in Waconia, shopping his EP to labels, and what will inevitably be his bright future in dance music.
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Photo by Denis Jeong Plaster for City Pages

​Minneapolis was in an imagined game of tug-of-war with Miami over DJ Gigamesh's affections throughout the last several years. The celebrated house producer from Waconia moved to the Sunshine State in 2009 in the middle of his rise to the top of the Twin Cities club circuit. He officially said goodbye to us via his Moving Cities mix in August of 2010, but the lusty shores of South Beach weren't where it's at for Matt, and he moved back to Uptown this spring.

After our interview for this week's music feature about Gigamesh (coming out today), we asked him to list his most prominent reasons he's happy to call Minneapolis home.
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