How did you come to music, and what is the first moment you remember knowing this was what you would do? What did that younger version of you not understand yet?

I was basically born into music. It’s kind of like the family business. Both of my parents are musicians and have made a living off of music for most of their lives. I didn’t play sports as a kid, I wasn’t pushed in my academic ability. Instead I had piano lessons, guitar lessons, sang in choirs, got music software for Christmas and spent a lot of time sitting backstage at my parents shows. I kinda grew up in the green room.

Electronic music came to me very early as well. EDM and especially Dubstep were immensely popular when I was 9 or 10 and I immediately fell in love with the music. I would spend hours discovering weird artists, scouring Newgrounds and listening to the new Monstercat release every day in the computer lab at school. Hardstyle was one of the genres that I got pulled to very quickly, even though most of my friends growing up didn’t like it. Metal and Emo music came to me later once I got to high school, and that became just as important to me as electronic music was almost instantly.

I honestly can’t tell you when I knew. I’ve known, as long as I can remember. I started producing when I was 11 years old. As soon as I realized I could take ideas in my head and turn them into art, it was all I wanted to do and I’ve never known any different. Music was in every aspect of my life, I couldn’t escape it even if I wanted to.

What I didn’t understand yet, was how hard and difficult the path would be. When you grow up with music all around you and are told you are going to be successful because you are talented, you believe it and think nothing can stop you. The reality was a lot could stop me and I had to humble myself and really dedicate my life to this. Just being talented and writing good music does not give you a music career. You have to do the stuff you don’t like. You have to bleed and break and give everything you have to the dream no matter the cost. All while learning to navigate a complex and soul crushing industry that does not care about you until you force it to care.

Angel Cannon is a name and a brand. What does that persona give you that you would not do as yourself?

Angel Cannon is barely an alter ego to me. Music is how I express myself, its how I experience emotions and how I relate to others. It’s just me with a little more sauce and branding, cause as an artist you have to be marketable at the end of the day.

There was a nickname from an earlier stage, when I was figuring out how to brand myself, that I never really identified with. Yes green is my favourite colour and my hair is green, and that makes my brand consistent and memorable. However, that is not “who I am” and I don’t need to further separate myself from my brand. It’s taken me a while and a lot of mistakes to get to the level of consistency and personal expression I feel now, but I still have so much to learn every day and I am not where I want to be. You just gotta keep evolving.

Your voice is part of what makes you Angel Cannon. What value has it given you as an artist, within your genre, in your career and in your projection as a DJ? What doors has it opened, and what does it demand of you that other artists do not have to face?

EDM is an industry that is focused around music production, but vocals can add so much emotion. Lyrics can add more meaning and you can really make your music more widely relatable to more people. However, I use my voice in my music as a tool. It is an essential part within the sonic landscape of each song I make, but it isn’t the focal point of every track and it isn’t there to overshadow my production. This is one of the amazing upsides of electronic music. You can write a beautiful hook with minimal words and sing it 10 times in different ways almost as if it’s an instrument with a place in the symphony. It doesn’t always have to be the reason you’re listening to the song.

When it comes to value, it has been immense. Not a lot of DJs and producers can sing. Even less of them can also scream. ESPECIALLY in hard techno and hard dance. This has opened so many doors for me, because famous artists may be hesitant to collaborate with a small producer, but a good vocalist doesn’t need to have clout to get a collab. I would open the door with my voice and build relationships with more successful producers, and then introduce my production into the relationship to properly collaborate. It has also helped me stand out to audiences in general because of how rare it is in the genre. Singing live vocals while I perform is something that is challenging, but feels so rewarding when I get off stage and people tell me they have never seen a DJ do that before.

Something some fans may not know though, is that I am a baritone. I can sing pretty deep but I cannot sing in the “regular range” of popular music. It affects how I write tremendously. I have to really think about the key I’m in and how I build up that intensity with higher notes. Having a low singing voice is challenging because it’s generally not as desirable in the genres I create, unless you know how to build around it in a way that works. When you listen to my music, you don’t always hear my voice and assume it’s really low, but once you hear me sing along to any pop song you’ll notice I’m always an octave lower. It isn’t all bad though, because I can hit some wild low notes and do some cool things with that on tracks. I did this in the first drop of my track “Dance Until You Die.”

Every post, every set and every release is a decision about who Angel Cannon is. Which of those decisions do you make by instinct and which do you calculate, and have you ever regretted one?

So the way I have learned to see things is, you have to have a balance of pure expression and a bit of calculation. That goes for music, sets, posts and cover arts. Although, I trust my instincts much more now. This is a struggle for so many artists when you are in an industry with no rules or real path to follow. I still struggle with this so hard. The usual: “should I do this weird thing I want to try, or should I do this instead because it’s more palatable.” The reality is, sometimes the weird thing is right, and sometimes making it palatable is right, and you rarely ever know which one to choose. The question you have to always ask is, “does this feel true to me?” If it feels authentic, it’s a valid choice. If it is inauthentic to who you are, never ever do it. I have made this mistake so many times and I regret so many posts I’ve made, changes I’ve done to my tracks, and even a couple entire releases I look back at now with shame even though they may have been successful and helped me grow. It is a double edged sword with a lot of things. Everything is a lesson though, and if you look at mistakes that way, you will be a lot more content in your life.

How does a track begin for you, and how do you know when it is finished?

A track always begins 1 of 2 ways. A melody or an idea comes to me at the worst possible time, like when I’m in the shower or about to sleep. I usually record myself singing that idea into my phone and then when I have time and motivation, I get on Logic Pro and start producing it. The second way is I’m listening to music, or scrolling on my phone and I see something that inspires me a lot or gives me an idea. Sometimes I start with the drop, sometimes its the vocal, and sometimes its a melody. There isn’t really a “right way” to start a song. Although I’ll say that starting with the vocal or the intro gives me the easiest flow state, because unlike starting with a drop, I don’t have to go back in time with the songwriting. I am just moving forwards off of my initial idea.

None of my songs are ever finished. Any musician will say the same thing even if they don’t want to admit it. You will never ever ever be satisfied with your creation. Eventually you become more sentimental about it, but you still find the imperfections and conjure up ways you could have done it better. I have thousands of unfinished projects and random ideas I never followed through on, a lot that I want to come back to and finish, but I have NEVER deleted a project. Unless it is literally just a sound design or kick design project, I will never ever delete an idea I had. You never know when you’ll find the right moment for it. I often will randomly look through old projects and get inspired or find little parts of them that can be repurposed into something new. Never delete you projects, buy 100 external hard drives and label them by year. Trust me.

How would you describe your sound?

My sound is me. It’s how I feel and whatever I want it to be. That’s the real answer. However, if I was going to categorize it sonically off of my tropes, I’d say its a nostalgic mess of a thousand genres and inspirations shoved onto the skeleton of a popular genre. It is a balance of emotion, beauty, violence and power. I don’t like sticking to one side. I struggle to write songs that are all anger or all calm. My personal favourite kind of art is when you can build a story, moving between the two.

I recently released a track called: “Hold Me Closer” that has clear inspiration from 2000s trance, 2010s newgrounds music, hands up, frenchcore, rawstyle, metalcore, hyperpop, dubstep and schranz all in the shell of hard techno. That shouldn’t make sense at all, but to me it does, because all of those things are me and I don’t draw lines between them. That’s basically what I do 90% of the time now.

How do you prepare a set, and what changes between a room that knows you and a room that has never heard your name?

I prepare a set in a pretty linear way nowadays. I have clumps of tracks I know work together and I can move those clumps around, reorganize them and add new tracks to them. I mostly play my own tracks, but I do a lot of soundcloud digging to find bangers and I often throw in some off genre tracks because who cares. The way I like to play sets is very different to how I write music. Writing music is so sacred to me and I have so many expectations for myself, but when I play live I just want to drop bangers and go insane and put on a fun show. I am not the best DJ in the world, and I don’t try to be. I want to play music I love and drops that make me lose my mind on stage, so that you can feed off of my energy and have a good time.

That energy is the most important to me. I’m not the biggest name in the genre, sometimes people in the crowd don’t know who I am or just discovered me. I cant just stand there and play recognizable tracks. I need to give people a performance they won’t forget. If I do, 9 times out of 10, the crowd will throw that energy right back at me, and I’ll see the same faces in the crowd when I play there again.

What music, art or experience outside hard techno has shaped your sound the most, and what part of it have you never let into a track for fear it would not fit your genre?

The two genres that are the most important to me are metalcore and electro house. These are my favourite genres alongside hard dance. I have been experimenting with pulling things from these genres into my music for a while and I’ve had a lot of success with it. Committing to those genres ALONE however, has been a struggle for me to actually commit and release. It feels so risky and scary to drop something that isn’t 160 BPM and doesn’t have a hard drop. I can’t say this about metalcore anymore, because I just dropped my first full metalcore song with no Hard techno in it and 0 drops, but releasing a full on 130 BPM electro song that sounds straight out of 2011 is something I have been too afraid to do as angel cannon. I started a side project called “Fear The Robots” to release music like that, but I haven’t been super consistent with it because my main project keeps me so busy.

If tomorrow you could release a project without thinking about promoters, the algorithm or the audience, what would it sound like? What would it say about you that Angel Cannon cannot say today?

If I had a dream project I could release right now, it would be an album where pretty much every song is a completely different genre and style that attempts to blend all of those things together. I ask myself why? Why can’t you just do that. The answer is I don’t know? I’m a coward I guess. But the reality is, this is my job and livelihood. I’m still making a product I have to sell to make money to survive. You can’t have everything. NOT until you’ve really made it. I am getting somewhere with my current vision though, and I am very happy with it.

But when it comes to what I feel like I can’t say, there is a lot. So much more I want to express. But there are only so many releases I can drop in a year successfully, only so many things I can make work when a certain sound is expected from me. Its a very existential and debilitating concept to linger on. These days I try not to dwell on it as much and focus on what I am already expressing and the things I am so lucky to have because of the work I’ve put in. Things are ramping up for me right now and I need to really focus on where I’m headed. I also am lucky in general, because my music has always been genre bending, the box I am in is much larger than a lot of artists I know who really really struggle with the crushing weight of their inability to stray from the norm.

You come from Vancouver, far from the capitals of hard techno. What did your city give you that a bigger scene would not have, and what did you have to leave behind to be heard elsewhere?

It gave me hunger, insatiable hunger to be accepted. A strong need to prove myself constantly. When you live in the US or Europe, Your path is so much more straightforward. But when you live in a place where nobody is doing what you are doing, in an entire COUNTRY that barely has any hard dance scenes or infrastructure, where you need an expensive visa to play in the US, and you need to fly for 10+ hours to play in Europe, you have to really really improvise and push yourself. Nowadays, Vancouver has a much better scene with hard techno and hard dance becoming a lot more popular, but it is still a struggling city when it comes to music.

I think it also gave me a different perspective to how I write and how I play. I didn’t grow up seeing hardstyle or techno DJs play, because there wasn’t any. I saw dubstep DJs play and Metal bands perform. I learned how to put on a show from them. A lot of how I write my music is based off of my own inspirations, and local producer friends who all made completely different genres. I didn’t have anyone to teach me how to make a kick or a screech. I just had to figure it out. Before I started getting successful, If I wanted to play a hard set, I had to run my own DIY show to do it.

“So Alive” with Oguz and GRAVEDGR and “Why Was I Chosen” with Nico Moreno put you next to established artists. How do you stop being the name on that track and become the name people travel for, and what do you need that a collaboration cannot give you?

This is kind of a tough question to answer, I am constantly figuring out who I am and what my art means to me. So Alive getting as big as it did was something neither me or Gravedgr expected. It was big for him, but absolutely unbelievable for me. Yet it came too early. I was still very much trying to figure out what I was doing and where my sound was even going.

I struggled with the weight of “big collabs” for a while. Especially because they came so early. I hadn’t perfected my sound, vision, or really established myself into hard techno at all. Then suddenly I had tracks with millions of streams. Imposter syndrome really overshadowed the reality of the situation. Once the dust settled on those earlier tracks, I took what I learned and kept going. My sound has evolved since then, and I now am getting known for the things I want to do and the sound I create, rather than just the big tracks I worked on when I was figuring things out. Big collabs can motivate you, get you seen and push you into the spotlight. However, they wont just make you successful. You have to have a foundation, you have to build your confidence and know what the next steps are after you have a big hit.

Hard techno has more artists, more releases and more algorithm than ever. When did you last feel invisible?

Feeling invisible as an artist is a consistent plight because of social media. One day you are on top of the world because one video hit the algorithm and everyone is talking about you. Then you get nothing for a week after that. It’s a cycle of emotions that goes on and on. I think a lot of artists deep down really just want to reach a point in their career where the bottom of that cycle is high enough for you to have stability. however, I don’t think the cycle will ever go away unless you are truly a household name or a genre mainstay. It is something we all have to live with now in the current landscape.

You have to learn to accept the volatility of social media, roll with the punches and push yourself even when no one cares. It is the hardest part of my entire career for me and has taken me a lot of time to get somewhat good at. If anyone reading this knows this struggle, trust me you will learn to cope with it. It is a harsh reality you have to face, but when this is really what you want, you will face it and overcome it.

Labels such as BLACKWORKS have put out your music. What did it take to get through the first door, and what did you learn about how releases and bookings really get decided?

At this point I have released music on so many labels I dreamed of releasing on. Scantraxx, Dirty Works, Innergated, No Mercy, Gearbox, Circus, Dogfight, Barong Family, etc. Blackworks was the first label to trust in my hard techno sound though. I learned to navigate the EDM label landscape from the start when I was making wave and trap music, it was difficult at first but it’s been years now and it’s an ecosystem I am used to.

I guess when I think back to that point early on when labels would reject my music left and right and it felt hopeless, my mistake was thinking it was because my music wasn’t good enough or my mixes were bad. It was usually because It just wasn’t the right track for the right label at the right time. Or because I didn’t have motion back then hahaha. Once you realize that labels are generally denying your tracks because it isn’t what they want in that moment, or your name isn’t big enough for their brand yet, it hits your confidence much less when they say no. You can always ask a label why they passed (if they respond) as well. A lot of the time, they will tell you what I’m telling you now.

What has this career cost you so far that nobody sees on the flyer?

This is the hardest question ever to answer. Being a musician and chasing a career in music is something I would never ever want to give up. Something that gives me some of the best moments in my life and the most fulfilment in myself. Yet at the same time, it tears you apart. It is a merciless grind to learn, overcome, push yourself to be better and create better. You have to constantly be learning and adapting and working yourself to death while you see zero results, zero dollars and sometimes feel like you are constantly failing. Until something works, and you will ride that high as long as you can before its gone, because it will always go and then you have to figure it out all over again. I am very lucky to be in the position I am now in my career, but the work I had to put in was immense.

The cost to your mental health is crazy. It’s this way with any “non traditional” career path. You are basically screaming at a wall and waiting for the wall to move. Everyone will tell you its impossible to make the wall move with just your voice, but you can never stop screaming at it. Because once one brick falls loose, it’s all the motivation you need to never stop screaming no matter the cost. At least thats how I’d explain my experience.

What has been your proudest moment so far, and what were you thinking when it happened?

This is also hard, I have multiple moments that I think about to keep me going. One would obviously be performing at EDC Las Vegas. Playing on that massive stage in front of so many people made my dream feel real to a degree it never had felt before. Second one would be tactical nuke hitting a million streams. I’ve had millions before, but they were all collabs. I made that track all by myself in my room in one night off of a stupid idea that came to me. Seeing my creation be listened to by that many people was unbelievable. Lastly, performing in europe for the first time was crazy. I played in Paris for 1200 people and it was surreal. It was my first time travelling outside of north america in my entire life. I got to travel so far away to experience a different world and immerse myself in it, because of my music career. That is wild to me and will never stop being wild, no matter how many times I travel for shows.

If in two years you are not where you want to be, what do you do? And what is the one thing you will not trade for relevance?

I will keep going. Whether I have to reinvent, evolve, push harder or just try something different. Angel Cannon is not my first music alias, I have been through a lot chasing this dream and I will never back down from it.

The one thing I will never ever trade for relevance is the creation of my art. Whether it’s ghost production or the use of AI in my music. Neither of those things will ever happen no matter what. To me, they are an admittance of defeat and a loss of expression. Can you imagine, whenever you are upset and are about to break down, you hire someone to cry for you? Or you ask a robot to explain to you why you are upset? That is exactly how I view ghost production and AI. I will never utilize them no matter how popular and busy I get.

Hard techno has unwritten rules about how to look, sound and behave. Which one are you quietly breaking?

Honestly, that doesn’t worry me. I don’t have a buzz cut, I’m not jacked as hell, I don’t have 1000 tattoos and I don’t dress like cyberpunk blade. I am me. I love the culture and I immerse myself in it, but I don’t try to blend in or act like anyone else. The more artists who try to be one another leads to a genre becoming stale and boring. The more people are unique with their sound, style and personality, the more the scene will grow and evolve.