For some people, the color black represents evil, darkness, or even depression. Brian Tsai (蔡家偉), head of the party promotions company Spunite, which is throwing the Black Party tomorrow night at the Kaohsiung Business Exhibition Center (高雄工商展覽中心), thinks differently.
“Black really does have a bad reputation, but in our definition black is the most forgiving color,” Tsai said in an e-mail interview with the Taipei Times. “In physics and science, black is made up of all colors in the spectrum. The reason why it’s black is because it absorbs all colors. Hence our motto for the Black Party is that black is the unity of all colors.”
Tsai has a strong resume in the promotion business because he has been involved in the organization of the Masago beach parties (馬沙溝音樂派對), as well as the Galaxy and Danceport events. He believes that like the color black, his parties don’t discriminate.
Photo courtesy of Soha
“We looked closely and found all different types of colors at our events,” Tsai said. “We are hoping the people who will wear black to this event keep their minds open and leave all the prejudging, egocentric and ethnocentric behavior behind for one night.”
The Black Party lineup spans the spectrum of electronic music, including trance from Dash Berlin, drum ’n’ bass and dubstep with Rich, and hardstyle by Eros.
Also featured on the bill is progressive house DJ Soha (real name Soha Radjpoust), who got his start in music by taking piano lessons at the age of six. At first he was just interested in learning how to read and play Beatles tunes.
“My curiosity in music took me into all genres and styles of music as my palate got a bit more sophisticated, from rock, funk, jazz, blues, R ’n’ B, and electronic music and taking on all sorts of different instruments as well,” Soha said in an e-mail interview with the Taipei Times.
Soha went on to get his jazz diploma from Humber College in Toronto, Canada.
“Jazz is what I listen to after being in the studio all day listening to the monotonous beat of house music, as great as it is, but balance is very important to me,” said Soha.
One of the highlights of Soha’s career so far was when influential BBC radio host Pete Tong named Twilight, one of his collaborations with Adam K, the “essential new tune of the week.”
“That was very gratifying,” said Soha. “Not only because it was on an international scale, but because it was for a piece that I truly felt satisfied with as an artist. We got a hell of a lot of production work out of it because people really dug our sound. It took us all the way to working with guys like U2, Tiesto, Kaskade, Benny Benassi, Mark Knight, Natasha Bettingfield and the list goes on.”
A few weeks ago, Soha played in Tainan at Tin Pan Alley. He lives in Thailand with his girlfriend and hopes to spread his sound around Asia.
■ Spunite’s Black Party tomorrow night from 11pm to 6am at the Kaohsiung Business Exhibition Center (高雄工商展覽中心), 274 Jhongjheng Rd, Greater Kaohsiung (高雄市中正四路274號). Admission is NT$1,200 at the door. Wearing any other color than black will incur an additional charge of NT$1,800. More details can be found on Spunite’s Web site at spunite.com/black/english
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