THUNDER BAY - Local musician, DJ, and producer, Joanne Hill, better known as Sydney Blu, has built a career around the energy and passion that comes with performing live but with the pandemic halting in-person shows, she has returned to the quiet and isolation of her hometown to finish her latest record.
“It was a really good time to be here because I was trying to finish the album,” Hill said. “When you are writing music you need quiet, you need to focus and think. This is a good place to do that.”
Hill has been back in Thunder Bay since last spring and has been putting the finishing touches on her latest album Conviction, which will be released on March 12.
The first single, Monologue, was released on Feb. 26 and features Canadian singer, Fritz Helder.
“He’s an amazing singer,” Hill said. “I’m really excited this is the beginning of the release of the album.”
Originally from Thunder Bay, Hill has spent the last 20 years touring the world playing nightclubs, stadiums, and tours in the electronic music scene.
While Hill was growing up in Thunder Bay during the 1990’s, the electronic music scene was still in the early stages of becoming a mainstream sound with acts like Daft Punk, The Crystal Method, and The Chemical Brothers paving the way. But it wasn’t until she moved to Ottawa for school that she really discovered her passion for the genre.
“I had always heard electronic music while I was living here growing up, but I wasn’t fully exposed to it until I left,” she said. “Once I left, I got really into it, I started going out to the clubs, watching DJs, I studied them, and I was really inspired by them and I wanted to try it myself.”
Hill, as a self-taught artist, moved to Toronto and purchased her own turntables and started moving higher and higher up in the club scene.
In 2008 she had a record on Daedmau5’s Mousetrap recordings, which went to number one on a platform called Beatport.
“Because I had that big hit, I started to tour in the United States and different cities around the world,” Hill said. “I moved down to Miami and I got signed to an agency and I started touring around everywhere.”
Just before the pandemic hit, Hill was living in Berlin, which has always had a thriving electronic music scene. While there, she was working on writing a new album.
“I went to Berlin in 2019 because I wanted to be re-inspired musically,” she said. “The Berlin music scene is regarded as one of the number one electronic music city’s in the world.”
Hill was planning on a tour in March 2020 and when things started to shut down, she decided to return to her hometown to finish work on her new album.
“For the next three months nothing was going on, everything was shut down, so I just decided to stay,” she said. “I hadn’t been here for a long time for a long period of time and it was a nice way to get reconnected to the city. It was a nice way to reconnect to the city and my family.”
“I made a makeshift studio in my old high school bedroom. I shipped all my equipment up from Toronto and I finished the album here in Thunder Bay. I’m really excited for the release of the album because it’s finally here.”
Unfortunately, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, musicians have been unable to connect with fans during live performances.
And it’s the time on tour that really motivates Hill because being on stage and seeing the crowd moving to her music is what she lives for.
“It’s definitely what motivates me,” she said. “I love watching the audience feed off of what I’m doing. It’s why I do it. I live for it. I love playing in front of people. Especially electronic music, it’s such a high energy sound and high energy music. It’s my favourite thing to do. I miss it.”
During the pandemic, Hill has spent a lot of time live streaming performances with local clubs, including Atmos, and while it is not quite the same as performing in front of 35,000 people, it is still important to connect with fans.
“It was the only way we could connect with our audiences because the night clubs had been shut down,” she said. “A lot of people I played for around the world asked me to do live streams and the guys at Atmos were kind enough to let me go in there and let me play a whole bunch of sets virtually. They really cater to authentic electronic music.”
And while being unable to tour has been challenging for Hill and all other musicians, the pandemic has allowed her to focus on writing new material.
“Fifty per cent of making my living is also writing music,” she said. “When all the venues shut down I was able to focus my energy on writing the album and getting that done and finishing it and live streaming and staying in contact with my fans that way.”
Conviction is available on March 12 for download and streaming on Spotify, Apple Music, and Beatport.
