Thanks to visits in the last year by foreign DJs such as Goldie, Paul Oakenfold and Johnnie Gleeson who floored local audiences, and -- more importantly -- schooled local DJs, it is clear that trance and progressive house are slowly losing their monopoly on Taipei's dance clubs. The success of these gigs has encouraged promoters to book more such acts for the coming months, including San Francisco-based DJ Eva Irwin, aka Moody Eva, who headlines three parties in Taipei this weekend.
Moody Eva describes her music as "deep house and funky house with juicy rolling bass lines, disco ... the opposite of trance." In layman's terms this means her music is slower and more soulful, with deeper bass lines, more of a melody and vocals. Funky house uses bass lines sampled from real bass guitars and percussion sampled from real drums, as opposed to the dark, synthesized beats of trance and progressive house.
Making women dance, she says, is her specialty.
While she's not famous internationally like some of the other DJs who have visited Taipei in recent months, Moody Eva is booked solid back home in San Francisco, with regular appearances at the Sub Lounge, Cloud 9, Snowdrift, the W Hotel and Ruby Sky. Her Taipei appearances come on the heels of the release of her new single, Ellafintitis. In 2000 she was hired to manage livedjs.com, an online music site that kicks out continuous streams of electronic music from a broad sampling of DJs.
Moody Eva started DJing nine years ago. Her resume includes a stint in Hawaii under the name Evillyn, where she had five weekly residencies and was known as: "Hawaii's first lady of the turntables." Irwin believes seeing a woman jamming at the turntables can set a positive example for other women interested in joining the industry, just as it once inspired her.
"A lot of people would come to see me spin four or five years ago just because I was a girl, and the clubs I played at would bring in other girl DJs from out of town and promote me as `their girl.' There was a lot of camaraderie [with other women] at the shows, and I started seeing more and more girl DJs."
Moody Eva will play 10pm tonight at Room18, 12am tomorrow night at Mega 19 and 3am tomorrow night at Vacuum Space. Tickets are NT$600 for Room 18. Tickets for Mega 19 and Vacuum Space are NT$500.
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