Jim Johnston was never meant to be visible. For more than three decades, he worked behind the scenes of one of the loudest entertainment machines on the planet, composing music heard by millions while remaining largely anonymous outside wrestling’s inner orbit. From 1985 to 2017, Johnston served as WWE’s in-house composer, producing thousands of pieces of music that would come to define not just performers, but eras. He didn’t arrive through the wrestling world. Johnston’s early career ran...

(or: Why Every Rave Now Comes With Kombucha and a Mission Statement) Vancouver’s underground didn’t collapse because of lack of talent — it collapsed because it got institutionalized from both sides : the wellness-industrial complex -on the grassroots end, and the cultural grant bureaucracy on the top-down end. Somewhere between the crystal-healing DJ and the arts-funding application template, the city’s nightlife was quietly sanitized into something safe and polite. The piece breaks down...

1. Vancouver’s Underground Is Forced to Orbit Bad Institutions In Montreal, underground talent grows in basements, co-ops, lofts, illegal warehouses — places that aren’t supposed to exist but do anyway. Entire micro-scenes form inside buildings held together by bad drywall and community spirit. Montreal rewards chaos. In Toronto, talent grows through density and pressure. A massive, diverse population forces cross-pollination: hip-hop nights bleed into drum & bass; techno kids show up at...