Last week I wrote about how quickly small clubs come and go in Taipei, and I couldn’t have been more right. Less than 24 hours after Christian Audigier’s custom-designed CA Club toasted its own grand opening last Tuesday with some serious glitz and glamor, the rock-and-roll skulls and roses were stripped down and the bar dismantled while Taipei inspectors looked on. Citing a lack of permits, by 9pm on Wednesday the second-floor outdoor dance floor of the Breeze Center Mall was no more.
Disco fans that were looking forward to seeing Zimmer tonight will have to wait a bit longer, but not too long. CA Club marketing executive Sandy Lin says the club will undergo some renovations and that yet another opening is imminent. Hopefully these renovations meet the expectations of Taipei City’s Construction Management Office quickly, because the club’s calendar is already stacked and the show must go on.
■ Fortunately, there is plenty more to do tonight. Luxy’s smaller and more electronic room, Pulse, has undergone a dramatic facelift. What was already arguably one of Asia’s finest electronic rooms, has perhaps become the best. Renovations added a touch of class to the room, the most intriguing being redesigned booths that make you feel like you’ve walked into a sexy uptown red-light district with bottle service. Also, the DJ booth was lowered, the floor leveled out, and the giant LED panel that once sat squarely behind the DJ booth has been broken up and now sprawls across the entire room.
Photo Courtesy of Stadium Artists
It’s a shame, however, that acid house innovator Paul Oakenfold won’t be the first to break in the new room when he plays at Luxy tonight. He’s just a little bit too big of a deal, his management feels. He’ll instead be playing in Luxy’s grander room, Galleria.
The London national is a pioneer on the electronic music map, having begun his long and illustrious career on West 54th Street, home of Studio 54, in 1979. He has since packed a catalog too long for this column, but includes re-workings of Madonna and Britney Spears, collaborations with artists like the late Brittany Murphy, a few movie soundtracks, and even signing other artists early in their career, like DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince and Salt-n-Pepa.
Few artists have managed to stay true to their roots, many succumbing to the pressure inflicted upon them by young and sweaty fist-pumping electronic dance music apocalypse, but Oakenfold has stood the test of time and reaches out to those who are still with him, as his sets are predominantly trance.
Paul Oakenfold plays tonight from 10pm to 4am at Luxy, 5F, 201 Zhongxiao E Rd Sec 4, Taipei City (台北市忠孝東路四段201號5樓). Admission at the door is NT$900, which includes two drinks.
■ If something a bit funkier is your jam, the always-entertaining Robi Roka is celebrating his birthday at Room 18 tonight with a Love2Funk series party. Since it’s his party and he can do what he wants to, it will be strictly bass music. The lineup, which includes Robi Roka himself, Chamber, Rich, Lai, Subtle, and MC Stoppa, suggests a night of drum and bass music; imagine that.
Love2Funk is tonight from 10:30pm to 4:30am at Room 18, B1, 88 Songren Rd, Taipei City (台北市松仁路88號B1). Admission is NT$700, which includes two drinks.
Last Thursday, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) detected 41 sorties of Chinese aircraft and nine navy vessels around Taiwan over a 24-hour period. “Thirty out of 41 sorties crossed the median line and entered Taiwan’s northern, central, southwestern and eastern ADIZ (air defense identification zones),” it reported. Local media noted that the exercises coincided with the annual Han Kuang military exercises in Taiwan. During the visit of then-US Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan in August 2022, the largest number of sorties was on Aug. 5, “involving a total of 47 fighter aircraft and two supporting reconnaissance/patrol aircraft.
July 7 to July 13 Even though the Japanese colonizers declared Taiwan “pacified” on Nov. 18, 1895, unrest was still brewing in Pingtung County. The Japanese had completed their march of conquest down the west coast of Taiwan, stamping out local resistance. But in their haste to conquer the Republic of Formosa’s last stronghold of Tainan, they largely ignored the highly-militarized Liudui (六堆, six garrisons) Hakka living by the foothills in Kaohsiung and Pingtung. They were organized as their name suggested, and commanders such as Chiu Feng-hsiang (邱鳳祥) and Chung Fa-chun (鍾發春) still wanted to fight. Clashes broke out in today’s
Xu Pengcheng looks over his shoulder and, after confirming the coast is clear, helps his crew of urban adventurers climb through the broken window of an abandoned building. Long popular in the West, urban exploration, or “urbex” for short, sees city-dwelling thrill-seekers explore dilapidated, closed-off buildings and areas — often skirting the law in the process. And it is growing in popularity in China, where a years-long property sector crisis has left many cities dotted with empty buildings. Xu, a 29-year-old tech worker from the eastern city of Qingdao, has amassed hundreds of thousands of followers for his photos of rundown schools and
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