“If deep house were an animal, it would be a unicorn,” says Matt Ward, promoter of tomorrow night’s Return to Paradise at China White. “No that’s not realistic ... maybe a whale or a dolphin. No, forget it. A curvaceous woman wearing diamond-studded stilettos and nothing else.”
And with that the mood is set for a trip down musical lane with Ward, SL (劉軒), and king of the late night finish, Hooker.
“Everyone who grew up listening to trance and progressive eventually gravitates towards deep house,” says SL. “We all gotta grow up sometime ... There isn’t too much of a club scene for deep house in Taiwan, but what people should realize is that this music sounds great when it’s played loud.”
Although deep house is a classic genre, SL will be bringing something entirely new to the party.
“Recently I’ve developed a new system of deejaying, which uses a lot of live rearrangement and layering that is much more like remixing than straight-up deejaying. I’m going to give the crowd a little taste of this on Saturday. In fact XUAN is my new DJ name under this new performance system and believe me, it’s worth a name change.”
“You know that familiar expression ‘something for your mind, your body and your soul,’” says SL, “deep house is just that … not as hard-hitting as electro and doesn’t have that hands-in-the-air happiness of disco house, but it works in subtle ways.”
Return to Paradise, tomorrow from 10pm until 5am at China White, 2F, 97-101, Dunhua S Rd Sec 2, Taipei City (台北市敦化南路二段97-101號2樓). Admission is NT$350 with a drink.
On the Net: SL’s new Web site can be found at
www.xuan-music.com.
It’s colorful, extravagant costumes and island rhythms at the The Wall (這牆), as DJ production team Islandjam is throwing its first ever Caribbean carnival tomorrow night.
The baby of O-Brothaz Sound System, a four-strong group of DJs and MCs from as many countries — Fyah B, aka Henry Wade from Belize, Oliver “Lion” Harley from Jamaica, Thierry “Taili” Cuvillier from Martinique and Katzu Saruyama from Japan — the night’s music is “what you would hear at any Caribbean carnival: soca, soca and more soca,” says Harley. “With some sprinkles of dancehall, some compas for the Haitians who are here and special Belizean punta ... anything to make the crowd sweat, dance and sweat some more.”
The organizers are holding the carnival to promote Caribbean music and culture in Taiwan and hope it will become an annual event.
“The [Caribbean music] scene is definitely growing,” says Harley. “More and more DJs and bands are putting some reggae or dancehall, even some soca, into the mix of a song even though they might not know it ... so it is getting out there.”
With a performance by live percussion ensemble Pan Africana Cultural Troupe, known for its intense and rousing gigs, this promises to be a colorful party of calypso hedonism.
“It will be an indoor carnival that we will try to make as street as possible by putting the Caribbean vibe in the room,” said Harley. “Costumes and music atmosphere will be like St Vincent or Trinidad or any other Caribbean culture.”
Expect to see local reggae fans and Caribbean expats decked out in their carnival best, donning feathered masks and headdresses and waving the flags of their home countries.
Caribbean Carnival, tomorrow from 10:30pm until 4am at The Wall, B1, 200, Roosevelt Rd Sec 4, Taipei City (北市羅斯福路四段200號B1). Admission is NT$450 with a drink, and NT$350 with drink for students with ID.
On the Net: www.panafricana.blogspot.com.
Sept.16 to Sept. 22 The “anti-communist train” with then-president Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) face plastered on the engine puffed along the “sugar railway” (糖業鐵路) in May 1955, drawing enthusiastic crowds at 103 stops covering nearly 1,200km. An estimated 1.58 million spectators were treated to propaganda films, plays and received free sugar products. By this time, the state-run Taiwan Sugar Corporation (台糖, Taisugar) had managed to connect the previously separate east-west lines established by Japanese-era sugar factories, allowing the anti-communist train to travel easily from Taichung to Pingtung’s Donggang Township (東港). Last Sunday’s feature (Taiwan in Time: The sugar express) covered the inauguration of the
The corruption cases surrounding former Taipei Mayor and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) head Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) are just one item in the endless cycle of noise and fuss obscuring Taiwan’s deep and urgent structural and social problems. Even the case itself, as James Baron observed in an excellent piece at the Diplomat last week, is only one manifestation of the greater problem of deep-rooted corruption in land development. Last week the government announced a program to permit 25,000 foreign university students, primarily from the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia, to work in Taiwan after graduation for 2-4 years. That number is a
This year’s Michelin Gourmand Bib sported 16 new entries in the 126-strong Taiwan directory. The fight for the best braised pork rice and the crispiest scallion pancake painstakingly continued, but what stood out in the lineup this year? Pang Taqueria (胖塔可利亞); Taiwan’s first Michelin-recommended Mexican restaurant. Chef Charles Chen (陳治宇) is a self-confessed Americophile, earning his chef whites at a fine-dining Latin-American fusion restaurant. But what makes this Xinyi (信義) spot stand head and shoulders above Taipei’s existing Mexican offerings? The authenticity. The produce. The care. AUTHENTIC EATS In my time on the island, I have caved too many times to
In a stark demonstration of how award-winning breakthroughs can come from the most unlikely directions, researchers have won an Ig Nobel prize for discovering that mammals can breathe through their anuses. After a series of tests on mice, rats and pigs, Japanese scientists found the animals absorb oxygen delivered through the rectum, work that underpins a clinical trial to see whether the procedure can treat respiratory failure. The team is among 10 recognized in this year’s Ig Nobel awards (see below for more), the irreverent accolades given for achievements that “first make people laugh, and then make them think.” They are not