About Strobe Records

Revered as one of the most influential and credible underground independent ‘house music’ labels to help shape the burgeoning house music scene of the early 1990’s, Toronto’s Strobe Records set the gold standard for solid ‘deep’ house music blueprint production, from it’s very first releases back in 1991. As a flagship imprint representing high end, polished, deep, jazzy house and cross over techno productions, the label shone out among a wave of emerging labels, at a time when a fledgling house music scene was still finding it’s way in terms of soulful musicality, production depth, and sound dynamics in production.

From Strobe’s very first humble releases back in 1991, tracks were consistently finished to such a remarkably a high dynamic standard, that landmark soulful deep house cuts such as Subculture ‘The Voyage’, Infra-Red ‘Luv Me Luv Me’, Hayden Andre Project ‘Tribal Life’ and many others, still stand shoulder to shoulder, with the production depth and quality we have come to expect from today’s best studio producers. Chuck a 1991 classic 12” Strobe pressing such as Kingdom Com ‘Groovy Baby’ on your SL1200 Mk2 and stand back and admire the loud, board, crisp, punchy dynamic assault you are awarded.

Ron and Hayden were producers way ahead of their time. For this alone, Strobe Records is a label credited and celebrated by long standing house music connoisseurs the world over, and is rightly an imprint which enjoys deserved reverence and veneration as Holy-grail, scene shaping house music mainstay in the hall of fame of house music history.

he Strobe style was unique for it’s time, boasting solid deep house productions like Infra-Red ‘Love Honey’ and Kingdom Come ‘Groovy Baby’, which offered a subtle fusion of eloquently sparse, rich, jazzy chord progressions, accompanied by deep, bold, minimal beat constructs and complimentary percussion, along with other releases that nodded respectfully to the more techno influenced scene of the time, with tracks like the infamous Infra-Red ‘Metamorphosis’ EP and Transcendence ‎’Concepts Of Higher Dimension’ to call out two cult examples… both of which are the work of label founders Ron Allen and Hayden Andre.

Strobe’s Toronto based founders, Ron Allen and Hayden Andre Brown, are both independently and jointly a-credited with a great many accolades and are highly respected figures in the house music scene, with *Ron, a JUNO Nominated music producer/songwriter/DJ, who has had countless Soulful House, Deep House and Techno releases on Strobe Records since 1991 and also has many features on labels such as Strictly Rhythm, Plus 8, Stickman, Definative, DNH, Poker Flat, ClubStar, Soul Candi, Tresor, Crosstown Rebels and Defected + more…

Whilst his counterpart partner in Strobe, *Hayden Andre Brown credits his accomplishments in the music industry to early formal piano training with renowned classical Vietnamese pianist Chung Ngo and Music Theory lessons with Humber College teacher / faculty member Cathy Mitro. This combined with a solid music Business education at Fanshawe College’s Music Industry Arts Recording Engineer 2 year Program. He also attributes acquired expertise in the music industry to collaboration with his business partner & co-founder of Strobe Records Ron Allen.

With many of Strobe’s early releases a direct outlet for pair’s own high calibre productions, the label is also credited with braking house music mainstay producer Nick Holder with his debut house techno cross over  release in 1993 The digital age EP , Featuring a personal favourite track of ours ‘Erotic Illusions'

Check out this Strobe Records ‘The Early Years’ Tribute Mix below: