A lot of the parties in Taiwan demand that attendees wear special colors on certain nights, or give females a discount if they wear a bikini. So it’s a rarity that someone who is having a party tells you what not to wear.
Enter James Ho (賀捷明), one of the promoters for tonight’s Night Zoo at Revolver in Taipei.
“Leave your high heels at home, you might hurt yourself,” he said in an e-mail interview. “We only play the music that we truly enjoy and hope to make you jump like there are teams of snipers shooting at your feet.”
Photo courtesy of Vernadies Heili and Steffen Oliver
Ho began his musical journey at the age of 16 when he used to hang out with his friends at record shops. “We spent the whole day listening to hundreds of records only to pick out two records to buy,” he said.
Soon, Ho was jamming with friends to underground hip-hop, funky house and electro, but in 2005 he found a certain strain of music that really caught his ear.
“When glitch-hop and the whole bass music scene came out I just dove right in. I would mash Janis Joplin into glitch-hop, slow that down and drop some cheeky dubstep or speed it up into electro,” Ho said. “It’s all fun. I am super ADHD when it comes to mixing, and just want to mash in tracks after tracks within minutes.”
Photo courtesy of Vernadies Heili and Steffen Oliver
While Ho mainly plays glitch-hop, dubstep and drum and bass, he describes his style now as “the whining bass moaning noise of a Funkadelic glitched out robot making grimy love with an early 1990s boombox transformer.”
One of the other DJs that runs Night Zoo with Ho is amSTEREO (also known as Steffen Oliver). This 26-year-old Cape Town native arrived in Taiwan four years ago, went home for the World Cup, and then came back two years ago to start a wine importing company.
South Africa has had a big influence on his musical tastes. “The music scene in Cape Town, whether it’s hip-hop, trance, electro, drum and bass or rock and roll, is very high energy,” said amSTEREO in an e-mail interview. “I like the attitude and explosiveness of electro. I love watching crowds go nuts and electro is perfect for this.”
He threw a few Night Zoo parties before he met Ho, who was doing an event with similar sounds called Bass Attacks (重低音逆襲). Eventually the two parties combined under a new name.
Both DJs say that the key to the success of their parties is the mixing of musical styles and the progression to harder music as it gets later.
“It’s all about mashing up genres,” said amSTEREO.
Night Zoo with James Ho, amSTEREO, Chamber, Adam Bombthreats and Charles is tonight from 10pm to 4am at Revolver, 1-2, Roosevelt Rd Sec 1, Taipei City (台北市羅斯福路一段1-2號). Admission is NT$250, which includes a drink.
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