Taiwan's top DJs will be converging on Luxy tonight to hear the man they call the "god of House." The arrival of Derrick Carter, who started dance music over 15 years ago with the Chicago house sound, is a defining moment in the country's musical development.
Two years ago it was difficult to attract any international DJs to these shores, so Carter's appearance represents the culmination of an intense period of development in the local dance music scene.
PHOTO COURTESY OF MOST WANTED DJS
Carter's show confirms that dance music has come out of the shadows and has moved away from its association with a hard-edged industrial techno sound and drugs, toward a more varied and international sound that encompasses popular dance culture (clubbing) and electronic musical innovation (as shown by the Fourtet gig last weekend).
"Taiwan has matured as a dance market," said Canadian DJ Coffey, of Connect, one of four promotion companies that banded together to bring Carter to town. "There's definitely a larger acceptance of dance music. People now think it's more than just head shaking to head-shaking music. There's the jazz, the fusions, the lounge nights and a lot more different kinds of artists."
"Carter is the guy we grew up with, he was our favorite on the scene in Toronto 10 years ago. Here, in the last two years, there has been rapid development. It's gone absolutely crazy, so we wanted to do something special, to give back to all the people who have been coming out to listen to us," Coffey said.
"We went to the kingpin because he's still at the cutting edge of the scene."
DJ Edmund, one of the country's top five DJs and playing tonight at Luxy, said that anyone who knows anything about dance music recognizes Carter as the master.
"He's an inspiration to all house DJs. All the DJs [in Back 2 Back, his promotion company] agree that he's the man. I think that people who only know Tiesto in the trance area should open their minds and find out who is the man in the house arena," Edmund said.
"Tiesto may be the god of trance, but Carter is the god of house."
Edmund said that most people in Taipei have got used to the darker sound that was a feature at the long-running and influential club TeXound (sadly no longer).
"Carter is funky, the groovier side of house music. The fact Carter has come here means that the dance scene has arrived in Taiwan. ... We're still learning and developing as DJs but this is an important part of that process and
inspiration."
Dominik Tyliszczak, who has been helping run Citrus promotions for the past two years, said the first club to put on international DJs was @live (which later became 2nd Floor).
"When we started there weren't really many different international DJs unless they were on the trance side of the house scene. Nowadays you can get people like Derrick Carter and we get the whole spectrum of dance music,"
Tyliszczak said.
"With Derrick Carter we've got the classic classic. We're putting this show on not just for dance fans, and everyone else, but for ourselves as well, to validate what we're doing, to show that Taiwan can have a full range of music, instead of just popping pills and listening to hard house.
"It used to be just cranked-up music for cranked-up people, in places like Sonic Lemon. Now we have a choice of what we like, what suits our mood and the quality is higher."
Tyliszczak said Luxy, Ministry of Sound and a "whole bunch of new clubs" illustrated the fact that "dancing has come out of the woodwork and into the spotlight."
Tyliszczak said he hopes the local scene keeps developing until it produces quality music of its own.
Alan Hsia, a part owner of Luxy and in charge of Loop Productions, said that Asia and Taiwan in particular was becoming a part of the international dance scene.
"For me, I think this is a pretty big deal. It opens a gate to the DJs who are DJs' DJs. On a commercial level it's not such a smart thing to do but I think it helps the scene progress and that's why we're doing it."
Carter is expected to play a two- to three-hour set starting at 11:30pm, with songs from his latest album, in addition to the standards which have moulded house music since day one.
The year was 1991. A Toyota Land Cruiser set out on a 67km journey up the Junda Forest Road (郡大林道) toward an old loggers’ camp, at which point the hikers inside would get out and begin their ascent of Jade Mountain (玉山). Little did they know, they would be the last group of hikers to ever enjoy this shortcut into the mountains. An approaching typhoon soon wiped out the road behind them, trapping the vehicle on the mountain and forever changing the approach to Jade Mountain. THE CONTEMPORARY ROUTE Nowadays, the approach to Jade Mountain from the north side takes an
Last week Joseph Nye, the well-known China scholar, wrote on the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s website about how war over Taiwan might be averted. He noted that years ago he was on a team that met with then-president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), “whose previous ‘unofficial’ visit to the US had caused a crisis in which China fired missiles into the sea and the US deployed carriers off the coast of Taiwan.” Yes, that’s right, mighty Chen caused that crisis all by himself. Neither the US nor the People’s Republic of China (PRC) exercised any agency. Nye then nostalgically invoked the comical specter
Relations between Taiwan and the Czech Republic have flourished in recent years. However, not everyone is pleased about the growing friendship between the two countries. Last month, an incident involving a Chinese diplomat tailing the car of vice president-elect Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) in Prague, drew public attention to the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) operations to undermine Taiwan overseas. The trip was not Hsiao’s first visit to the Central European country. It was meant to be low-key, a chance to meet with local academics and politicians, until her police escort noticed a car was tailing her through the Czech capital. The
April 15 to April 21 Yang Kui (楊逵) was horrified as he drove past trucks, oxcarts and trolleys loaded with coffins on his way to Tuntzechiao (屯子腳), which he heard had been completely destroyed. The friend he came to check on was safe, but most residents were suffering in the town hit the hardest by the 7.1-magnitude Hsinchu-Taichung Earthquake on April 21, 1935. It remains the deadliest in Taiwan’s recorded history, claiming around 3,300 lives and injuring nearly 12,000. The disaster completely flattened roughly 18,000 houses and damaged countless more. The social activist and