Sapporo Live: featuring Felix Da Housecat, Kiinjo and sadstab!

This event is part of a week long series in Toronto and Vancouver to launch the new Sapporo Lemon Sour. Early guests are invited to participate in a complementary tasting experience.

Arrive between 8pm-10pm for a complementary Sapporo Lemon Sour Tasting Experience.

It's become a truism to say Felix Da Housecat has nine lives, but honestly he's probably experienced a lot more than nine times what the average person has-even if he can't remember large sections of it. He was present and participating in the birth of house music while still a kid, made anthems for multiple musical movements, remixed everyone from Madonna and Britney Spears to Nina Simone, recorded with Lee "Scratch" Perry, partied withTommy Lee-and is somehow still standing, older and wiser perhaps, but still as funky, as fired up and as articulate as he ever was. It's almost four decades since he first recorded an electronic bass line, but as his newest material amply demonstrates, his love for the groove is absolutely undimmed.

Felix grew up in the Chicago suburbs with a yin and yang influence on his life. His mother was "the educated, responsible one who whooped my ass to keep me in line", while his father was "street educated", hustling odd jobs and playing saxophone in a band. His dad encouraged him to play clarinet in the junior high school orchestra, which Felix did with aplomb, never reading music, just playing by ear, but graduating to playing lead. When he moved up to high school, everything changed:house music took over the whole culture of Chicago. "WBMX, The Hot Mix 5, Farley Jackmaster Funk,Mickey Mixin' Oliver, Mike Hitman Wilson-they was being played non stop on the radio. Every lunch hour, every night, being blasted out on big speakers and boomboxes. House was everywhere. These were our rock stars.

And so Felix emerges blinking out into the wider world with a truly extraordinary body of work to share. After such a long absence, expectations and scrutiny will obviously be intense, but this music is going to blow a lot of minds. Everything from his previous work is present and correct: the funk, the80s alienness, the cinematic presentation, the evolving song structures that aren’t beholden to any formula, yet make instant sense whether on headphones or club system, and underlying it all the elemental, eternal house pulse of Chicago. It’s as weird, funny and potent as ever. But somehow it’s bigger, brighter, shinier, sharper, completely ready to compete with any state of the art production.

This isn’t just a return to form, it’s a revelation.