Vancouver Man Finally Has Balls to Unfollow Boiler Room, Now Coping With Keep Hush Obsession

VANCOUVER – After years of pretending Boiler Room was still a cultural institution rather than an overbranded graveyard of forced vibes, local electronic music fan Tyler McLean has finally unfollowed the account, severing his last, fragile tie to the once-iconic platform.

“Honestly, it just feels good to be free,” McLean said, adjusting his Carhartt beanie like a man reborn. “I don’t have to pretend to care about a four-hour minimal house set in an abandoned factory anymore.”

For years, McLean held onto hope that Boiler Room might recapture the raw, unhinged energy of its golden era—a time when the platform still felt dangerous, before it devolved into a glorified content farm for tech-house fitness influencers.

“There was a time when Boiler Room actually meant chaos,” he reminisced.“Like that Skream set? Absolute carnage. I watched his whole set. Skream was completely trashed for the entirety of his set. He cut off his own sound at least 3 times in the midst of his mixing (though after the third time he grabbed the mic and said something along the lines of ("my bad for ruining the vibes - who's with me til the end!"). He was scheduled to perform until the end of the hour and the MC came on giving everyone a 5 minute count-down at the end. When the clock hit 3am they faded out his mix and that's when he got angry.

McLean is referring to the now-infamous 2013 Skream x Ray Ban Boiler Room session, a night that will go down in history as the moment when the wheels officially came off. Sponsored by Ray-Ban (a sign of things to come), the set started with good intentions but quickly descended into complete, beer-drenched, CDJ-launching mayhem.

“Dude showed up already hammered,” McLean explained, eyes glimmering with respect. “Within minutes, he was slamming beers, slapping buttons at random, and playing tunes at warp speed. By the end, he was literally chucking CDJs off the table like a WWE villain. He stood up on top of the table and gestured that he wanted to play one more track but the organizers weren't having it. It was pretty hilarious to watch and for the most part his mixing was fantastic (aside from those 3 fuck ups).

Security attempted to intervene, but it was too late. What started as a DJ set ended in what can only be described as a one-man anti-corporate protest. Boiler Room never recovered. It was the last time the platform ever felt truly dangerous.

“After that, everything got sterile,” McLean lamented. “Suddenly, every event had a perfectly curated crowd, a brand sponsor, and some dude in a crossbody bag acting like he’s discovering garage for the first time.”

But McLean’s breaking point didn’t come until Boiler Room was sold to a faceless entertainment conglomerate, proving once and for all that underground culture was just another asset to be bought, polished, and repackaged for people who ‘love house and techno’ but can’t name a single track.

“I mean, they’ve been on a slow decline for years,” he admitted. “But when you’re owned by the same people pushing TikTok EDM compilations, you’re officially just an ad campaign.”

However, quitting Boiler Room has left a gaping hole in McLean’s algorithm, one he’s now attempting to fill with Keep Hush, the last bastion of DIY electronic music broadcasting.

“They’re still raw, still underground,” he said, clutching his rolling papers like a lifeline. “No industry plants, no influencers fake-dancing for clout—just actual heads, locked in, fully immersed in the music.”

Yet, even as he clings to this newfound hope, a darker truth lingers.

“We all know how this ends,” he sighed, the weight of history pressing down. “First, it’s secret locations and heads-only invites. Then, it’s ‘Keep Hush x Balenciaga,’ a Boiler Room collab, and a Discord server full of A&Rs looking to ‘break new talent.’”

Meanwhile, his friends aren’t convinced he’s truly moved on.

“He unfollowed them, sure, but I literally caught him watching a clip of a Berlin set at 2AM,” said his roommate Josh. “Dude was just sitting there in the dark, whispering ‘one last time’ to himself.”

Here is the mayhem from  Skream's legendary Ray Ban Boiler Room Set

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