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Just over 10 years ago, Evan White was working for a financial investment firm in Luxembourg with a positively European amount of free time.

“I didn’t know anyone there—I was playing ice hockey a little bit, but I had a lot of time on my hands,” says White, who grew up in White Rock.

He had a digital audio workstation and started putting remixes of songs together.

“It got to the point where I was like, ‘Oh, okay, some of these sound kind of cool,’ maybe I should put them on Spotify or SoundCloud.’ ”

But if you were a music enthusiast on the internet during that time, the place you really wanted to be featured was Hype Machine, an MP3 blog that puts individual songs on its platform and lets users favourite the things they love and build playlists.

“It became my goal to get a song on there, and the only way to do that was to have a blog write about your song,” White says. “So I started sending this Jurassic 5 remix around to blogs. No one responded, and finally, a blog named Indie Shuffle was like, ‘Oh, this is kind of cool; we’re going to write about it.’ ”

The song rose up the ranks and made it to the top of Hype Machine’s popular list.

“I was in Luxembourg in my apartment freaking out, like, ‘Let’s go!’ ” White recalls.

On SoundCloud, Marc 7 of Jurassic 5 commented on the song, and White sent him some more remixes. Six months after that, the two collaborated on an album, Futureproof.

“He ended up being a huge mentor to me and introducing me to the industry and telling me what to look out for and all that kind of stuff,” White says. “I think that was probably the first moment where I was like, ‘Oh, maybe I can start taking this a little more seriously.’ ”

The first thing DJs need is a name, and so Vandelux—a combination of the places he’s lived (Vancouver, DeLand, Florida, where he went to school, and Luxembourg)—was born.

White took piano lessons as a kid and trained himself in drums and guitar growing up—his home studio, where he’s talking to me over a video call, is filled with instruments. He takes a DIY approach in today’s AI age, when digital tools are so readily available.

“Everything’s starting to sound the same,” he says. “When I was getting into electronic music, [Australian DJ trio] RÜFÜS DU SOL was a huge inspiration for me. They have these melodic songwriting elements, and I thought that was really cool because I’ve always been into songwriting.”

It didn’t take long for Vandelux to catch on with electronic music fans. His 2023 album, When The Light Breaks, had multiple hits, including the smash “Matter Of Time”.

In fact, he’s dealing with a different problem than many of his Canadian compatriots have when it comes to developing a fanbase.

“A lot of Canadian artists break in Canada and then try to figure out a strategy on how to get fans outside of the country, where I’ve almost had a bit of the opposite experience,” says White, who has lived in San Francisco for several years now. “As a Canadian, I want to connect with my Canadian fans, so it’s been a bit like, ‘How do we engage with people in Toronto and Vancouver?’ ”

It’s a bit strange, given that his family still lives in Vancouver and he visits all the time.

“They all live within five blocks of each other, so I’m the outcast, and I feel guilty about that,” he says with a laugh.

But he’s starting to develop that base in his hometown. Some of that is through live shows (he’s sold out headlining gigs at the Commodore the past two years), and some of that is via social media, where he does videos picking apart songs of his and by other artists and remixing them live.

“As an electronic artist, you sort of pick a lane,” he says of his live shows. “You’re either doing a DJ set or you’re trying to do more of a live set, and because most of my music is recorded live and I’m singing on a lot of the tracks, it made more sense to me to sort of really try to perform as much of it live as I can.”

This weekend, Vandelux plays his biggest Vancouver show yet.

“The past few years in general, everything has been kind of a surprise,” he says. “I can’t really believe it’s happening—Malkin Bowl is one of my all-time favourite venues. I haven’t really processed it yet, but I have a couple days left to figure it out.” 

Vandelux plays Malkin Bowl on September 4. Tickets here.