Last Saturday’s Reggae Beachfest at Cianshui Bay (淺水灣) marked an impressive beginning to the summer outdoor party season. With a turnout exceeding 600, it was a big thumbs-up to Island Jam, a group that’s been striving to make all things reggae-related happen for the last five years. Hopefully there will be more fantastic outdoor events like this to come — especially the ones with venues as sweet as (if not sweeter than) this one.
This weekend, if you are a sunshine-lover who fancies making a splash, be sure to check out this season’s first Oasis Pool Party at Taipei Country Club, a beautiful hillside spot that’s easily accessible from the city. Their spring-water swimming pool is just simply amazing, and the music is going to be more on the hip-hop side of the dance music spectrum.
When: Tomorrow from 1pm to 9pm
Where: Taipei Country Club (台北鄉村俱樂部), 1 Qingyun Rd, Taipei City (台北市青雲街1號).
Admission: NT$350<
Tonight, A State of Sound at Luxy is bringing Manchester’s Tribal Session DJ Iain Taylor for a spin. Taylor is a renowned specialist in break beat, techno, house, hip-hop and funk, and he’s no stranger to the Taipei scene — he played at MoS four years ago on the Tribal Session tour with Yoda. After the success of the last A State of Sound, Hooker, the event’s organizer, says that “the party is more of a cutting-edge take on music and less dependent on sticking to the tried and true classics.”
When: Tonight from 10pm to 4am.
Where: Luxy, 5F, 201 Zhongxiao E Rd Sec 4, Taipei City (台北市忠孝東路四段201號5樓).
Admission: Free before 11pm, NT$600 after<
Dance Rock Taipei is celebrating its first anniversary today. Having hosted and co-hosted 10 indie-dance events — including last year’s memorable gig with Steve Aoki and Uffie at The Wall — Spykee says he’s excited that the scene is finally coming together. “The Wall is really a great venue — the decor is minimal with no frills and it definitely has a unique kind of vibe. Most of our following are hipsters who are open to new music but frustrated with the music at the ordinary dance clubs.” Besides residents Spykee and F Dragon, this bash features Clash The Disko Kids (Singapore), as well as Taiwan’s very own veteran indie-dance turntablist Mykal (林哲儀).
When: Tonight from 11:30pm to 4:30am.
Where: The Wall (這牆), B1, 200, Roosevelt Rd Sec 4, Taipei City (台北市羅斯福路四段200號B1).
Admission: NT$800.
Tomorrow evening, there will be a small outdoor party named Sunset at Siam House in Ximending. It’s a free event, but it’ll have all the essentials and even a VJ. The lineup: Shelter, 5on (Revox Records) and A-Tao (Species Records) playing progressive and minimal techno.
When: Tomorrow from 6pm to 11pm.
Where: Siam House (暹邏紅樓), 179 Xining S Rd, Taipei City (台北市西寧南路179號).
Admission: free
And lastly, if you’d like to learn more about Latin music and culture, don’t miss out on the Latin Festival that’s going down at Riverside Live House tomorrow. What exactly is this party about musically? There will be a live Latin band, Mandinga (曼丁家拉丁團), and dance music from Zulu, who says they “will try to offer a different view of Latin music in order to cover a wide spectrum of what ‘Latin music’ really means all over the world.” Expect to hear “Latin-jazz, boogaloo, salsa vieja, nuyorican roots, Afro, Caribbean, Brazilian, Latin hip-hop, Latin house and good fusion.”
When: Tomorrow from 7:30pm.
Where: Riverside Live House (河岸留言西門紅樓展演館), 177 Xining S Rd, Taipei City (台北市西寧南路177號).
Admission: NT$750.
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Ahead of incoming president William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on May 20 there appear to be signs that he is signaling to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and that the Chinese side is also signaling to the Taiwan side. This raises a lot of questions, including what is the CCP up to, who are they signaling to, what are they signaling, how with the various actors in Taiwan respond and where this could ultimately go. In the last column, published on May 2, we examined the curious case of Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) heavyweight Tseng Wen-tsan (鄭文燦) — currently vice premier
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Last week the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) released a set of very strange numbers on Taiwan’s wealth distribution. Duly quoted in the Taipei Times, the report said that “The Gini coefficient for Taiwanese households… was 0.606 at the end of 2021, lower than Australia’s 0.611, the UK’s 0.620, Japan’s 0.678, France’s 0.676 and Germany’s 0.727, the agency said in a report.” The Gini coefficient is a measure of relative inequality, usually of wealth or income, though it can be used to evaluate other forms of inequality. However, for most nations it is a number from .25 to .50