Excision's actual breakout was 2009's Boom EP, a collaboration with Flux Pavilion and fellow Canadian Datsik that landed right as dubstep's grimier, more aggressive strain was starting to cross over from the UK into North America — Jeff Abel, the Kelowna-born producer behind the name, was one of the first to build a career on that specific sound over here rather than importing it.
Seventeen years of touring later, five studio albums and something north of two billion streams deep, he's still chasing volume almost literally: he earned the “loudest DJ” title in 2012 by touring with a 100,000-watt sound system, then went bigger two years later with a 150,000-watt rig, an arms race against his own previous shows that hasn't really stopped.