Luxy scrape at the bottom of the barrel of cheap innuendo once more this evening, with a night entitled 3P which stands for '3 People', which in Chinese refers to threesomes. At least they are a smirk or two more original than the several dozen promoters across the island who between them can only dream up nothing more imaginative than sticking a pair of breasts on their flyers. Luxy instead have opted for facial shots of people with their eyes either blacked out or whole faces pixellated, a la Japanese porn, although we always thought that it wasn't usually faces that were obscured. We are promised raucous on-stage activities.
However, the club redeems itself in quite a big way tomorrow by sticking on UK DJ and producer Solarstone. He's most often billed as playing trance, but don't let that pigeonholing put you off, as he does have an impressive pedigree, having released his first track on the Hooj Tunes label in 1997. Solarstone's also released a new anthology, entitled, er, Anthology One.
For those still iffy about the word 'trance,' it's electro house a-go-go as Vice deliver their May installment at Hips tomorrow night. Resident Schism will be on hand as always, and the United Nations of Funk people are keeping it fresh yet again with two new guests. DJ Fratzuki will need little in the way of introduction to readers of this column, famed as he is as Taipei's favorite after-hours captain of the decks; Elements has been on the scene for a while but hasn't been playing out all that much of late.
PHOTO: COURTESY OF LUXY
Tonight, Hips will be hosting a Foam Party which may sound like the dullest form of cheap titillation, especially given the flyer has the standard picture pair of breasts on it, nipples cunningly concealed by foam, along with pictures of people at a foam party that is most definitely not at Hips.
No tawdry pictures on the flyer for G-Meet at Club Jump, no sirree. Just cartoons of quite frighteningly well-built guys and it's a men-only night, no less. Party starts at 11pm, with DJs Michael Hsu, Steven, and Stone keeping the music "happy and dark" which sounds like an oxymoron to us, but there we go. B1, 8 Keelung Rd Sec 1, Taipei (台北市基隆路一段8號B1).
Elsewhere tomorrow serious hip-hop heads have a choice of either the O'Brothaz's night at The Wall, while Baby Yu obviously liked Plush so much that he decided to come back this week.
The latest addition to Taipei's nightlife, Babe18, got off to a less than auspicious start last week. The little sister to Room 18 is reportedly aimed at the same clientele who frequent Lava, particularly the crowd that prefers to frequent drink-all-you-can nights. It's in Warner Village, at the former Barcode location, B1, 18 Songshou Rd, Taipei (台北市松壽路18號B1). After opening on Wednesday night a fire in the kitchen on Saturday forced the basement night spot to close. The Vinyl Word understands that the joint will reopen within the next month or two.
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
The following three paragraphs are just some of what the local Chinese-language press is reporting on breathlessly and following every twist and turn with the eagerness of a soap opera fan. For many English-language readers, it probably comes across as incomprehensibly opaque, so bear with me briefly dear reader: To the surprise of many, former pop singer and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ex-lawmaker Yu Tien (余天) of the Taiwan Normal Country Promotion Association (TNCPA) at the last minute dropped out of the running for committee chair of the DPP’s New Taipei City chapter, paving the way for DPP legislator Su
It’s hard to know where to begin with Mark Tovell’s Taiwan: Roads Above the Clouds. Having published a travelogue myself, as well as having contributed to several guidebooks, at first glance Tovell’s book appears to inhabit a middle ground — the kind of hard-to-sell nowheresville publishers detest. Leaf through the pages and you’ll find them suffuse with the purple prose best associated with travel literature: “When the sun is low on a warm, clear morning, and with the heat already rising, we stand at the riverside bike path leading south from Sanxia’s old cobble streets.” Hardly the stuff of your
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