This past five-day weekend was full of parties: a 1,000 person strong rave out in Jinshan, a Hat Jam at Club Crystal, as well as the usual assortment of happenings in Taipei's busy club scene. But for the highlight of the Moon Festival celebration, one had to return to the classics. The jam that blew the rest away was Kevin Saunderson's Monday night gig at Luxy. Hailing from Belleville, Detroit, Saunderson is, alongside Juan Atkins and Derrick May, one of the Belleville Three, the unofficial group widely credited with creating techno music in the 1980s. Since then, he's had a long, storied career in the techno underground.
As part of his Elevator World Tour, his set on Monday night showcased the best of that twenty-year career. The music: pure, visceral techno. Low, punchy bass lines, stuttering 808 drums, and short, repetitive vocal samples set to a hurtling rhythm kept the crowd dancing until 5am. All the while, Saunderson scratched and mixed his Elevator Tour graphics using Pioneer's DVJ technology, transporting the Luxy crowd to the industrial zones of Detroit. The trip left the packed house sweaty, shattered, and desperate for more.
Another long-time member of the dance community, Junkie XL, drops into Taipei tomorrow. Starting with nu wave pop, then moving onto industrial, XL finally started producing his famous blend of big room house and trance in 1997, with his debut CD, Saturday Teenage Kick. Throughout his journey, XL continued to make music for commercials, films, and video games, where he's found the most success. His reworking of Elvis' A Little Less Conversation for a Nike 2002 World Cup ad reached number one in 24 countries.
As a live act, he's no slouch either, having played alongside such luminaries as The Prodigy. Fun, lively, animated, and equipped with huge records, Junkie XL knows how to work a big space. The show starts at 7pm at Nankang 101 (南港101) at 71 Xingnan St, Nangang Dist, Taipei (台北市南港區興南街71號). Tickets cost NT$1,200 each.
A prolific DJ on the local circuit, Junior celebrates his birthday this weekend at J.A.M. Session's Wig Out party. The bash will be held at Deluxe tomorrow (behind Taipei Arena). Junior and Megan, Hooker and Marcus Aurelius will man the decks.
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby
April 22 to April 28 The true identity of the mastermind behind the Demon Gang (魔鬼黨) was undoubtedly on the minds of countless schoolchildren in late 1958. In the days leading up to the big reveal, more than 10,000 guesses were sent to Ta Hwa Publishing Co (大華文化社) for a chance to win prizes. The smash success of the comic series Great Battle Against the Demon Gang (大戰魔鬼黨) came as a surprise to author Yeh Hung-chia (葉宏甲), who had long given up on his dream after being jailed for 10 months in 1947 over political cartoons. Protagonist
A fossil jawbone found by a British girl and her father on a beach in Somerset, England belongs to a gigantic marine reptile dating to 202 million years ago that appears to have been among the largest animals ever on Earth. Researchers said on Wednesday the bone, called a surangular, was from a type of ocean-going reptile called an ichthyosaur. Based on its dimensions compared to the same bone in closely related ichthyosaurs, the researchers estimated that the Triassic Period creature, which they named Ichthyotitan severnensis, was between 22-26 meters long. That would make it perhaps the largest-known marine reptile and would