This is a big weekend for beat makers, MPC players, button pushers and dusty-fingered producers all over Taiwan. Tonight in Taichung at 10 Points Music and Art Bar, Dasu Ghettochild steps to the stage for Machine Rhythm #6, while tomorrow night Korner features Anchorsong, one of Japan’s most original producers and DJs.
Dasu has been a hip-hop purist since he was in high school. He has been making original boom bap beats since he got his hands on an MPC, which is one of the beat-making machines the first hip-hop producers used to sample vinyl records. Dasu says that over the years, he has had many professions — cook, painter and lazy, beer-drinking skateboarder. The common thread running through all these identities is that he always writes music about daily life.
■ Machine Rhythm #6 featuring Dasu Ghettochild is tonight from 9pm to 4am at 10 Points Music and Art Bar, 25-7, Daye Rd, Taichung City (台中市大業路25-7號). Admission is NT$250 and includes one drink ticket. People dressed in 1990’s hip-hop gear will get in for NT$150 and get one drink ticket.
Photo courtesy of Korner
21ST CENTURY COMPOSER
Anchorsong (real name Masaaki Yoshida) plays the same sampler, an MPC, as Dasu, but instead of creating Pete Rock-like hip-hop tracks, he makes quirky and avant-garde tribal rhythms that bend in and out of genres. Anchorsong’s tracks are like books with clear beginnings and ends, but instead of lyrics or a singer to lead from one place to another, the audience has to follow his flow. Anchorsong is headphone music that has been made to be performed live on stage. In a recent Boiler Room set that was posted online, Anchorsong went from spaced out trip-hop to double-time dub music and a lot of places in between, and all in 45 minutes.
Anchorsong played at Korner in September 2014 and was impressive enough then, and at Thailand’s recent Wonderfruit Festival, that Korner’s booking staff invited him back for another spellbinding show.
■ Night Zoo featuring Anchorsong, Puzzleman and James Ho is tomorrow night from 11:59pm to 5am at The Wall, 200, Roosevelt Rd Sec 4, Taipei City (台北市羅斯福路四段200號B1). Admission is NT$500 at the door and includes one drink ticket.
THE WARM IS COMING
While a lot of people in Taiwan were scurrying up the mountains to make snowmen out of slush or staying in their rooms with three heaters on full blast, a few big announcements were made for the spring time over this past weekend.
Last Friday, Hardwell, the number two-ranked DJ in the world according to DJ Mag’s Top 100 list, posted that he would be playing in Taipei on April 9 at the Daja Riverside Park. Not to be outdone, Spring Wave Sunset quickly announced afterwards that the third version of their party would be on May 28 in the same space. Rumors spread on Facebook groups like wildfire that their headliners would be the number one ranked DJs in the world, Dimitri Vegas and Like Mike. On Wednesday, the rumor was confirmed. From the looks of it, spring and summer are going to be filled with the biggest DJs making their way through Taiwan.
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