Raves are dead? “Well no one told us!”

From their humble beginnings in a gravel pit off Highway 99 in 1998 (“I think we had about 20 people total there”) to a sold-out show at UBC in 2009 (“we never had to turn people away before”), Soundproof has long been a fixture in Vancouver’s tiny underground electronic music scene. And not only have they been putting on parties for the last 12 years, they’ve also inspired other groups like Beheshto and the Listening Room.

This book is the story of present-day Soundproof, which shares few crew members with the group from the first party at the gravel pit. Those who choose party-throwing over party-going must struggle to balance work, life, and burnout. But the vibe continues to draw a crowd of both old hands and neophytes, and every few months the emails go out (mentioning only the date – never the place) and everyone starts planning their costume, guessing the location, banking their sleep, and proving that raves aren’t dead.