There is a lot of fluff being played and overplayed in clubs these days and songs seem to all be made from the same template. But electronic DJ and producer Tom Stephan offers something a little different, and tomorrow night he brings with him a pure house music sound that resembles something you would have heard in the ’90s in New York.
Stephan’s music career was born in London, but he himself was born in the Big Apple. In the 1990s, Stephan was spending his time at Sound Factory falling in love with house music. The scene and sound had not yet spread to every corner of the planet as it has today, and feeling inspired, he took it to London.
But he didn’t just play records — he made music, too. “Making music came first,” he said in an interview with the Taipei Times. “But I feel the two fit perfectly together. It wasn’t an obvious combination when I started, but now it’s almost expected that DJs produce their own music as well.“
Photo Courtesy of Climax! Taipei
It might be expected, but many DJs have never stepped foot in a studio. Stephan on the other hand, spends as much time as he can in the studio and has developed an extensive remix and production catalogue, which is limited to no particular style. He listens for anything that has a hook, or something that catches his ear, and then takes the song in a whole new direction. He’s reworked songs by the Pet Shop Boys, Seal and even Tom Jones. “Sometimes, I find the less like my music the song is, the easier it is to remix.”
He even says that the Pet Shop Boys are his biggest inspiration, besides his music education in New York.
“NYC in the ’90s will inspire me for the rest of my life … [The experience] couldn’t happen again now. Everybody knows every record DJs play now, and if they don’t they can Shazam it and download it right on the dance floor! That’s a lot different from me going around all the record stores trying to sing MK’s Nightcrawlers!”
Staying true to his old-school roots, Stephan considers himself an underground DJ, even though his own productions are getting regular play by DJs like Tiesto and David Guetta. But don’t expect to hear anything that resembles EDM when Stephan plays tomorrow night. According to him, EDM sounds a lot more trance than anything else. That sound may be what the masses love right now, but it just doesn’t appeal to him.
“The music that makes me dance is more about rhythm and drums. Beats that move your body.”
Stephan said one of his most memorable gigs happened right here in Taipei, at the now defunct club Texsound. “A friend said to me — do you think they’ll know your music there? I had no idea. But I played my track Revolution and people began to sing along. I’ll never forget that.”
DJ Tom Stephan plays tomorrow night at 10pm at ATT Show Box, 7F, 12 Songshou Rd, Taipei City (台北市松壽路12號7樓). Tickets are NT$1,300 at the door and can be purchased at www.walkieticket.com. More information is available at www.facebook.com/climaxtaipei.
In the mainstream view, the Philippines should be worried that a conflict over Taiwan between the superpowers will drag in Manila. President Ferdinand Marcos Jr observed in an interview in The Wall Street Journal last year, “I learned an African saying: When elephants fight, the only one that loses is the grass. We are the grass in this situation. We don’t want to get trampled.” Such sentiments are widespread. Few seem to have imagined the opposite: that a gray zone incursion of People’s Republic of China (PRC) ships into the Philippines’ waters could trigger a conflict that drags in Taiwan. Fewer
March 18 to March 24 Yasushi Noro knew that it was not the right time to scale Hehuan Mountain (合歡). It was March 1913 and the weather was still bitingly cold at high altitudes. But he knew he couldn’t afford to wait, either. Launched in 1910, the Japanese colonial government’s “five year plan to govern the savages” was going well. After numerous bloody battles, they had subdued almost all of the indigenous peoples in northeastern Taiwan, save for the Truku who held strong to their territory around the Liwu River (立霧溪) and Mugua River (木瓜溪) basins in today’s Hualien County (花蓮). The Japanese
Pei-Ru Ko (柯沛如) says her Taipei upbringing was a little different from her peers. “We lived near the National Palace Museum [north of Taipei] and our neighbors had rice paddies. They were growing food right next to us. There was a mountain and a river so people would say, ‘you live in the mountains,’ and my friends wouldn’t want to come and visit.” While her school friends remained a bus ride away, Ko’s semi-rural upbringing schooled her in other things, including where food comes from. “Most people living in Taipei wouldn’t have a neighbor that was growing food,” she says. “So
Whether you’re interested in the history of ceramics, the production process itself, creating your own pottery, shopping for ceramic vessels, or simply admiring beautiful handmade items, the Zhunan Snake Kiln (竹南蛇窯) in Jhunan Township (竹南), Miaoli County, is definitely worth a visit. For centuries, kiln products were an integral part of daily life in Taiwan: bricks for walls, tiles for roofs, pottery for the kitchen, jugs for fermenting alcoholic drinks, as well as decorative elements on temples, all came from kilns, and Miaoli was a major hub for the production of these items. The Zhunan Snake Kiln has a large area dedicated