After providing Ottawa’s tight-knit goth community with a home for nearly seven years, Swizzles’ Death Disco club night closed for good earlier this month.
The weekly event grew to be an institution at the Queen Street venue. Attendees could regularly hear offbeat music including gothic rock, rhythmic noise and electro-industrial – niche genres that few Ottawa locations touch.
“It was pretty heartbreaking,” says Matthew Randell, 24, about the demise of the event.
The Orleans resident had been attending Death Disco for five months before being asked to become a house DJ in January.
However, the decision to end the seven-year run didn’t shock him, since attendance had fallen by 50 per cent this past year.
Founder Ryan Cameron-Clark, says the main reason was shifting priorities. He moved to Toronto a year ago, but the remaining DJs continued running the event.
“I don’t think there’s anybody to blame. It died of natural causes.”
Cameron-Clark conceived the tradition after the bar Zaphod Beeblebrox delayed its annual Halloween party in 2007.
Death Disco started that year in December under the title Revamp. After switching names and cycling through various venues, organizers permanently settled on Centretown’s Swizzles.
“Swizzles isn’t a huge bar, but it can look absolutely rammed with 50 people,” Cameron-Clark says.
The Golden Lake, Ont., native explained that while the event was hardly profitable, it was always a labour of love for Ottawa’s “spooky” community, a scene characterized by its militaristic wardrobes, leather jackets and Mohawk hair styles.
“It’s this community of people who get each other,” added Nick Doyle, 28, who joined as a house DJ in late 2010. “They’re a group of friends who are now my friends.”
But Ottawa’s scene is far from dead.
“People say the scene is dying, but people have been saying that for 20 years,” Doyle says. “The scene doesn’t die, it morphs. It changes into something else.”