Global house music phenomenon Hed Kandi and Calvin Harris, the man responsible for the electro riffs behind Rihanna’s We Found Love, play in Taipei tomorrow and Wednesday, respectively.
Hed Kandi DJ John Jones, who will man the decks at Room 18 tomorrow, describes the UK-based music brand’s sound as accessible and appealing.
“If I had to sum it up, it would be good times, packed into a house groove,” he said in an interview. “As long as it gets the crowd pumped, I’ll be happy to cross the spectrum of house music.”
Photo courtesy of Luxy
Jones says he puts his heart and soul into his sets. “I can always remember going to gigs when I was younger and seeing DJs really enjoying themselves,” he said. “That’s where I wanted to be, playing the music I love.”
Jones will be accompanied by a live saxophonist. He used the same format at Fantasia, Luxy’s 10th anniversary party, in 2010.
“We came in all guns blazing and rocked relentlessly for the entire set,” he said.
Hed Kandi, whose parent company is Ministry of Sound, isn’t just a DJ troupe. It is also a record label that has expanded into fashion and audio equipment and recently began operating nightclubs.
John Jones performs with Aimee Jay on saxophone tomorrow at Room 18, B1, 88 Songren Road, Taipei City (台北市松仁路88號B1), tel: (02) 2345-2778. Doors open at 10:30pm. Admission is NT$1,000, which includes two drinks.
On Wednesday next week, Luxy hosts Calvin Harris, a Scottish singer, songwriter, DJ and producer who occupies the number 34 spot on DJ Mag’s top 100 DJ list.
In his short career, Calvin Harris went from recording in his bedroom to being signed by Sony BMG after Tommie Sunshine, a popular DJ based in New York, discovered him on MySpace. Since then, Kylie Minogue, Kelis, Katy Perry and LMFAO have all knocked on his studio door.
Calvin Harris performs Wednesday next week at Luxy, 5F, 201, Zhongxiao E Rd Sec 4 (台北市忠孝東路四段201號5樓), Taipei City. Call 0955-904-600 for reservations (English service available). On the Net: www.luxy-taipei.com. As advance tickets are not available, arrive early to avoid standing in a long queue. Admission is NT$500 for ladies all night, and will run gents NT$800 before 11pm and NT$1,000 after. Cover includes two drinks. Doors open at 10pm.
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
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
Over the course of former President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) 11-day trip to China that included a meeting with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping (習近平) a surprising number of people commented that the former president was now “irrelevant.” Upon reflection, it became apparent that these comments were coming from pro-Taiwan, pan-green supporters and they were expressing what they hoped was the case, rather than the reality. Ma’s ideology is so pro-China (read: deep blue) and controversial that many in his own Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) hope he retires quickly, or at least refrains from speaking on some subjects. Regardless
Approaching her mid-30s, Xiong Yidan reckons that most of her friends are on to their second or even third babies. But Xiong has more than a dozen. There is Lucky, the street dog from Bangkok who jumped into a taxi with her and never left. There is Sophie and Ben, sibling geese, who honk from morning to night. Boop and Pan, both goats, are romantically involved. Dumpling the hedgehog enjoys a belly rub from time to time. The list goes on. Xiong nurtures her brood from her 8,000 square meter farm in Chiang Dao, a mountainous district in northern Thailand’s