Toronto's CrateryCon not your typical music festival and record fair
· Toronto Sun
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A niche vinyl collecting festival in Toronto featuring rare and obscure music is not your typical record fair.
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Likeminded diggers and DJs from near and far are set to converge at venues across the city for the annual CrateryCon , which celebrates the culture of collecting various styles of music and sounds.
The event kicks off Thursday and runs through to Sunday.
Rare music on vintage wax
This fest is not merely about the vinyl revival. It is actually rooted in people who collect rare soul, funk, disco, jazz, psychedelic rock, reggae, rap, and latin music on vintage wax.
In fact, many collectors of these genres were actually drawn to the music as hip hop fans due to samples and drum breaks used by producers dating back to the 1980s.
“With that kind of mentality and that growth from being hip hop kids into this new realm of looking for songs, looking for records, looking for music, and collecting records, we get to Cratery,” said Dave Yan, one of the organizers of the event.
Yan, a Toronto-based producer known as Dave Serious and DJ Serious, and Rana Chatterjee, also known by the moniker Arcee, are the duo behind CrateryCon.
Yan’s musical tastes have grown from searching for sections of songs to loop and drum breaks to appreciating and collecting many genres including Brazilian music and library records, short instrumental compositions recorded exclusively for TV, radio and film.
While the festival is in its second year, CrateryCon sprung as an event replacing Live Convention.
“Live Convention (was) a group of friends trying to do a music festival,” Yan said. “We didn’t even think about it as a music festival. We just wanted to do some events and were able to pull some cool things together.”
Collecting records and celebrating music
Live Convention began in 2016 among four friends, including Yan and Chatterjee, as a way to celebrate music that was usually not available at mainstream record fairs.
According to Yan, Chatterjee is the main catalyst who has connections to record selectors, producers and artists to spin their wares and talk music during the four-day gathering.
In 2020, COVID-19 restrictions shut down the fest like any other event in the city.
However, it came back and ran for a few years before the group ultimately decided to call it a day.
“It was just a little too taxing,” Yan said. “A group of friends trying to operate a business, conflict, not seeing things eye-to-eye, and moving in different directions. So we decided to stop it.”
The decision was made public in June 2025 in a heartfelt note posted to the festival’s Instagram page .
While life changes put an end to Live Convention, Yan and Chatterjee still discussed doing something to continue the record collecting long weekend.
It didn’t take long for the friends to come up with and quickly launch CrateryCon, which follows the same formula as Live Convention.
“There is that inherent communication and it’s interesting,” Yan said of learning about obscure music through people with similar tastes. “(It) is very community and is very akin to being able to understand (one another).”
Event lineup
The party starts Thursday with a free event featuring Chatterjee and local DJs Jason Palma and Gil Masuda at The Little Jerry.
On Friday, seven-inch record wizard DJ Koco flies in from Japan to headline an intimate and exclusive set at BSMT 254 alongside Mr. Thing from the U.K.
Saturday features an interview with U.S. record dealer Gene Brown about life as a vinyl seller along with host Shom Ghosh and special guest Jacob Dutton, a Grammy-winning American hip-hop record producer and songwriter also known as Jake Uno.
The evening sees San Francisco-based vinyl label, record store and DJ crew Discodelic play Latin favourites for the local monthly party La Rumba Buena.
On Sunday morning, CrateryCon features vinyl slingers near and far selling wax on two floors at arts hub It’s OK.
The final party goes Sunday night with funk duo Mayer Hawthorne and Jake Uno of Tuxedo alongside collectors Jonathan Kirby and Dante Carfagna playing soul steppers, ballads and other vinyl curiosities.