Toronto’s Rhythm launches Rhythm Open Air with minimal and tech house edition

Toronto’s outdoor club landscape is getting tighter, and Rhythm is responding with a three-part series built around the space it can still control. Rhythm Open Air will run this summer at 131 McCormack St, using a warehouse setting to give independent electronic music a rare open-air home in the city.

The series opens on June 20 with a house and disco bill, returns on July 25 for electro and ghettotech, and closes on August 29 with the most scene-specific night for minimal listeners: a minimal and tech house edition. That final date matters because it places stripped-back club language inside a larger infrastructure story, not as a niche add-on but as part of how Toronto’s summer dance ecosystem can still function.

Rhythm launched in 2024 as a venue, record shop and studio in downtown Toronto, and the new series extends that identity into programming. The space now operates as a hybrid hub with more than 1,000 records, two fully equipped recording studios, a performance area, a curated retail section and a cafe-event component. Its stock runs from techno and dub to electro, progressive, minimal, UKG and house, which makes the August night feel less like a one-off booking than a natural extension of what Rhythm already is.

Founder Chloe Janicki has framed the project in explicitly local terms, saying she wants Toronto artists to “see value in remaining here and feel inspired to build their brands, labels and projects here.” That line lands with extra weight in a city where outdoor space, affordability and venue logistics continue to shape which parties can exist at all. Rhythm Open Air is not just another summer announcement. It is a claim that small, durable operators can still build something useful for DJs, dancers and artists without asking the city to hand them a ready-made scene.

The physical scale of 131 McCormack St also gives the series a practical edge. Event listings describe the York, Toronto warehouse as a 20,000-square-foot industrial space with room for 1,000 people, the kind of footprint that can support a proper summer run if the weather and the permitting line up. For minimal and tech house heads, the August 29 date is the clearest sign that the scene’s future may depend as much on adaptable local infrastructure as on the records being played inside it.