Posts Tagged ‘ festival ’

2013 May Festival Season


The annual bat­tle between Midi and Straw­berry is upon us. Maybe you’ve already seen the line­ups, but if you haven’t, they’re pretty damn solid. If you have to pick just one day to go to the futhest-flung reaches of Bei­jing, though, my money’s on the first day of Straw­berry Fes­ti­val. The lineup is truly epic, with their biggest head­liner Travis tak­ing the main stage in the evening. It’s also got some of the biggest names in Chi­nese tal­ent Mod­ern Sky could rus­tle up: vet­eran electro-pop group New Pants, indie pop crooner Peng Tan, post-punk trio Snapline, Tai­wanese indie pop god­dess Joanna Wang, Dalian post-rock leg­ends Wang Wen, and just… so much more. Do not. Freak­ing. Miss it.

Wednes­day is up for grabs, with seri­ously solid line­ups on both sides of the fence, but Midi’s Tues­day is solid with Chi­nese rock gods Muma & Third Party, Lanzhou folk rock group Low Worm­wood and wild punk rock­ers SUBS. What­ever deci­sions you make, both fes­ti­vals are set to be loads of fun — at least from a per­for­mance point of view.

Trans­porta­tion, how­ever, is going to be a bit of a bitch for Midi pun­ters. Straw­berry will be fine, as always, because with so many years at Tongzhou Canal Park under their belt they have this down to a sci­ence (and so do I; I take pub­lic trans­porta­tion). But Midi is out in Pinggu, at the China Music Val­ley venue of Yuyang Inter­na­tional Ski Resort. Their buses run from the Line 10/8 stop Beitucheng Exit A and cost 20/40RMB (single/round trip). They leave every half hour from 9am-2pm, and return every half hour from 8–11:30pm. My per­sonal rec­om­men­da­tion is find a bunch of friends and the num­ber of a trusty mian­baoche dri­ver, lay down a few extra kuai and be secure in the knowl­edge you’ll have a des­ig­nated dri­ver for the ride home, all the way back to your house. You do not want to be stranded and drunk in the far west of Bei­jing. Trust me.

2013
04/25
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Zhangbei InMusic Lineup Preview Announce

Now in its fourth year, Zhang­bei InMu­sic Fes­ti­val is one of the biggest des­ti­na­tions for music fans in Bei­jing. It’s a hike out to the grass­lands of Zhang­bei county, but it’s worth it, and we’ve just got notice of why this year’s is going to be just as good. The fes­ti­val runs from July 27–29 this year, with a big­ger lineup than ever before. This year, they’ve got inter­na­tional acts Orbital (UK), Spir­i­tu­al­ized (UK), Joyce Jonathan (France), Linkoban (Den­mark) and Joanna Wang (Tai­wan) up along­side big local names like Tang Dynasty, Mis­er­able Faith, Queen Sea Big Shark, A-BOYS, Brain Fal­i­ure and much more. We’re all excited — are you?

2012
06/21
CATEGORY
Indie Scene
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2012 May Festival Planner

Most years, May fes­ti­val sea­son is a hair-tearing, brain-draining, heart-wrenching deci­sion mak­ing period, com­plete with printed-out line­ups and timeta­bles and fig­ur­ing out if you can really be in Tongzhou and wher­ever MIDI is held all in one day. And on years when Ditan Folk Fes­ti­val throws its hat into the Labor Day calamity, it gets even worse. Thank­fully, as far as I can tell, this year is an absolute no-brainer.

Day 1, April 29. Straw­berry Fes­ti­val, Tongzhou Canal Park
With­out Ditan Folk on this par­tic­u­lar day, it’s between heavy hit­ters Straw­berry and MIDI. And while MIDI’s first day has a good array of hard rock and metal groups, there’s noth­ing we can’t see at MAO Live House within the next month or so. And even if things were dif­fer­ent, they’d be up against some seri­ously good acts at Strawberry’s open­ing day. Every sin­gle stage is jam-packed with awe­some bands I’d pay good money to see else­where. The Straw­berry stage has head­lin­ing for­eign act, Blonde Red­head, along­side Hang­gai, Re-TROS and New Pants. The Love Stage has indie pop rock­ers Con­ve­nience Store, the blind mas­ter of folk Zhou Yun­peng and rarely-seen punk rock­ers Reflec­tor. The new Planet Stage has smaller-name for­eign acts like Arms & Legs (US), Jeans Team (UK) as well as Hong Kong’s Killer­soap. Plus, the Over­load Stage kicks MIDI’s ass for metal groups, with vet­eran act Voodoo Kungfu along­side younger (but still just as hard­core) A.J.K. And even the elec­tronic stage has stepped up its game, with Migas’ res­i­dent Nass­dak, Lantern favorite Elvis.T and Ital­ian new­com­ers and Haze reg­u­lars The Pipesmok­ers. As though that wasn’t enough, they also have their School of Rock stage with fresh young bands out for some fes­ti­val expe­ri­ence, the exper­i­men­tal Cha stage and the “Straw­berry Life” exhi­bi­tion hall which will host cul­tural activ­i­ties and events. There’s no rea­son not to get your ass to Tongzhou on the first day of May holidays.

Day 2, April 30. Ditan Folk Fes­ti­val, Ditan Park
It’s hard for a lit­tle folk fes­ti­val in a park to win out over mosh-pit won­ders like MIDI and behe­moth jug­ger­nauts like Straw­berry, but Ditan Folk Fes­ti­val has a solid chance this year. Even though my favorite band (Res­i­dence A, in case you had for­got­ten) is play­ing at MIDI, and some of my indie pop indul­gences (Perdel and The Life Jour­ney) are play­ing Straw­berry, my heart belongs at Ditan. Two of my favorite folk acts are on that day, with Yun­nan wun­derkids Shan­ren and always-interesting exper­i­men­tal artist Xiao He likely clos­ing out the evening. Blue­grass star­lets The Randy Abel Sta­ble are also per­form­ing, as well as the very tal­ented French multi-instrumentalist Zhang Si’an. All in all, weather per­mit­ting it’ll be a lovely day to just sit in the grass lis­ten­ing to qual­ity music amongst your friends. Stay in the city and recoup some of your energy.

Day 3, May 1. MIDI, Shunyi Olympic Rowing-Canoeing Park
I know that the word “Shunyi” makes peo­ple shud­der at the thought of get­ting taxis to and from, but it shouldn’t be too dif­fi­cult. MIDI has a 10-minute shut­tle bus to and from the Fengbo (俸伯) sub­way sta­tion, which will be great on the way there, but I do worry about the fact that the last train is at 22:11; the last train at the Line 13 inter­change is 23:24, and that will likely get you to Dongzhi­men after the last train any­where else leaves. Still, it’s doable, and I’m sure there’ll be a plethora of heiche will­ing to get you home. At any rate, trans­porta­tion issues aside, the lineup is going to be a good one. The VANS stage plays hosts to Xi’an hip-hop crosstalk­ers (who famously cussed out Japan in their last appear­ance in Bei­jing) Black Head, one of my favorite high-energy punk rock­ers SUBS and old stal­wart of the scene, Mis­er­able Faith. Other stages host Aussie hard­core rock­ers Arcane Saints, vet­er­ans of the punk scene Misan­dao, the bizarre addi­tion of indie pop-rock group Perdel and for­eign rock­ers The Amaz­ing Insur­ance Sales­men. Should be a great night, and check out the pho­tos of the park — it looks amazing.

It’s worth not­ing that Day 2 & 3 are eas­ily inter­change­able, if you don’t like Xiao He or really don’t think Black Head are worth it. MIDI April 30 brings Mos Def, Res­i­dence A, Muma & Third Party, Voodoo Kungfu and folk artist Hao Yun. Ditan May 1 has solid Ningxia acts like Li Dong and Buyi, as well as funk out­fit Afrokoko Roots and folk leg­ends Traveler.

2012
04/20
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Festival News: MIDI’s Back in Haidian!

I’ve been won­der­ing when MIDI would finally get around to announc­ing… well, any­thing at all for their May hol­i­day fes­ti­val. I’ve had to watch Shang­hai get their venue and lineup infor­ma­tion released all at once, while the only thing we knew for cer­tain was that if MIDI was hap­pen­ing in Bei­jing, it would be on the same dates as every other year. But now we know more: MIDI will be held at Haid­ian Park, mark­ing a return to the festival’s orig­i­nal home in 2005. It will be back with the usual dynas­tic stages — Tang, Song, Qing and Yuan — and the elec­tronic music will be han­dled by O2Culture/Yen. The whole festival’s theme is PM2.5, to focus the festival-goer’s minds on the envi­ron­ment and pub­lic health (inso­much as it can be focused on any­thing but rock­ing out).

And of course, there’s no offi­cial artist lineup, but Shang­hai already has inter­na­tional acts Back­yard Sur­geons, Lit­tle Fish and Marky Ramone’s Blitzkreig, as well as big local bands Muma & Third Party, Brain Fail­ure and Mis­er­able Faith on the lineup. Fin­gers crossed we get in on most of that action, too. But if you want to check out a totally unof­fi­cial lineup that’s in the works and will likely change a thou­sand times before the bands actu­ally get on stage, check out this post at Rock in China.

2012
03/30
CATEGORY
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JUE Festival Warm-Up: Pains of Being Pure at Heart

If you haven’t been pay­ing atten­tion to the Split Works lineup for JUE Fes­ti­val this year, you’re miss­ing out. Not only on some great shows dur­ing the offi­cial fes­ti­val time­line (March 9–25), but also this weekend’s show, The Pains of Being Pure at Heart. If read­ing the arti­cle I linked to there doesn’t make you want to get up and get to Yugong Yis­han this week­end, take a lis­ten to their stuff at MySpace, which has been behav­ing itself lately. They’re one of the bet­ter exam­ples of indie pop I’ve heard in a while, with a won­der­ful 80s style to them, mak­ing them feel like a curi­ous revamp of The Cure. Plus, open­ing for them is Chi­nese indie pop won­ders, The Life Journey.

Get pre-sale tick­ets in the fol­low­ing var­i­ous ways:
预售热线 Ticket Hotline：1870 113 3908 （Mon.–Fri., 10am-6pm / EN & CN）
预售方式 Pre­sale Avail­able From：
1. 淘宝 Taobao：http://shop34274764.taobao.com/
2. 愚公移山 Yugong Yishan（Mon.–Sun., 5 pm–midnight）
3. 可百尼尼Crêpanini（Mon.–Sun., 9 am–midnight）地址Address：三里屯北路81号那里花园1层酒吧街对面 1/F, Nali Patio, 81 San­l­i­tun Beilu

2012
02/20
CATEGORY
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Gig Review: Black Rabbit Festival 2011

Black Rab­bit this year was a new player in the field of Bei­jing fes­ti­vals — a quirky, funky kind of fes­ti­val with an odd name and cool-creepy mas­cots. Most Bei­jing fes­ti­vals bring big inter­na­tional names, of course, but when the lineup for this new kid on the block was released, it was obvi­ous that these guys were play­ing on a dif­fer­ent level. And, when you see who’s behind this, it’s obvi­ous. Split Works is famous for bring­ing Sonic Youth on tour in China in 2007 amongst other incep­tion myths, but what they do reli­ably is put on good shows. And while there were some parts of Black Rab­bit that were less than ideal, they still put on a good show with the bands that were there.

I wasn’t there for the whole day, but what I did see was lots of for­eign­ers in the crowds. I can assume it was the cover of City Week­end that did it, or names like Ludacris and 30 Sec­onds to Mars that pricked the ears of the Haid­ian crew, but the thing I noticed most was for­eign­ers — mostly stu­dents — every­where. Which meant that for a big name Chi­nese band like PK14, the crowd at the front of the main stage was piti­ful, while Ludacris was packed to the gills. I think a high­light of hav­ing a crowd filled with for­eign­ers, though, was the oppor­tu­nity to see bearded hip­sters attempt­ing to dance along to Ludacris. I spent most of my time at the main stage, occa­sion­ally going fur­ther to check out the hip-hop stage — sup­ported by NBA and held on a bas­ket­ball field, with some MVPs shoot­ing hoops — but that wasn’t all about the lineup. It didn’t help the qui­eter Obliv­ion stage that it was a good five minute walk from where all the action was, because in that space of time, and with an unpre­dictable sched­ule, you could miss the end of an act you were hop­ing to see.

So there were a few things that I would have changed. There were some last-minute and unad­ver­tised changes, mean­ing that folks turned up for Titus Andron­i­cus who, while they were on all of the printed mate­ri­als, weren’t even in the coun­try let alone going to be at Black Rab­bit either in Bei­jing or Shang­hai. It also meant that the sched­ule was com­pletely out, and that every­thing printed — from the book­lets given out at the front gate to the posters hung up at each stage — was inac­cu­rate. But to be fair, I knew some of the peo­ple work­ing for the show, and they didn’t even know what was com­ing up next.

Still, it was a good show. Apart from PK14’s lack­lus­tre crowd, every­one got very much into the per­for­mances, espe­cially Ludacris, whose act made me won­der how he ever got a visa with all the shit he was spout­ing. I’m glad I went, and it was well worth the sur­pris­ingly long taxi ride, but I hope that next year the venue won’t cut the fes­ti­val grounds into two like it did this time.

2011
09/20
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Festival News: Black Rabbit Festival

The good folk at Split Works are at it again, and this time September’s Black Rab­bit Fes­ti­val looks absolutely amaz­ing. I was going to write my own intro­duc­tion, but they say it much better:

Taihe Live and Split Works are thrilled to announce the first ever Black Rab­bit Music Fes­ti­val, pre­sented by OPPO Real, going down on Sat­ur­day, Sept. 17 in Bei­jing, and Sun­day, Sept. 18 in Shang­hai.

The inau­gural Black Rab­bit Music Fes­ti­val pre­sented by OPPO Real is the cul­mi­na­tion of sev­eral years of plan­ning, plot­ting and schem­ing between two of China’s pre­miere enter­tain­ment groups, Taihe Live and Split Works. The mighty and mis­chie­vous Black Rab­bit will be descend­ing upon Bei­jing and Shang­hai for one day only, bring­ing with him 4-stages worth of stel­lar Chi­nese and inter­na­tional live music: every­one from arena rock­ers Thirty Sec­onds to Mars to dirrrrrty south rhymes cour­tesy of Ludacris to Tai­wanese pop songstress Hebe of the group S.H.E. and lots lots more!

TICKETS: On-sale in early-September, prices TBA. Check www.HEI-TU.com and sign up for our newslet­ter for updates.

BEIJING TICKETING:

www.piao.com.cn
www.damai.cn

Chi­nese Ticket Hot­line: 400–610-3721 (中文, 周一至周日, 8:30 — 21:00)

Eng­lish Ticket Hot­line: 010‑6417-7845 (Mon­day — Fri­day, 9:00 — 18:00)

Click here for a list of loca­tions where you can buy tix in Beijing.

—

And back to me: The lineup is fan­tas­tic, and I can’t wait for it. It will be a full day, hope­fully with very few con­flicts, but what­ever they end up charg­ing I’m sure it will be more than fair. Just for Car­sick Cars and Hang­gai alone, not to men­tion all the huge for­eign acts that will be there, you’ve got to get on it.

Beyond the jump is the full lineup, and I’ll have them listed on the gig guide by the end of the week.

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2011
08/29
CATEGORY
Indie Scene
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Summer Sonic Update: Final Lineup

Now, I don’t know why I’ve been post­ing about Sum­mer Sonic any more than you do. For some rea­son, Mao put me on the email list about it, so I’ve been get­ting the emails. But I do hon­estly think that it’s a great oppor­tu­nity for those bands going, and another step in the right direc­tion for cul­tural exchange between China and Japan, to take eight Chi­nese bands and put them on stage at Asia’s biggest and most suc­cess­ful music fes­ti­val of the year. With all that said, here is the final lineup, includ­ing Mao Livehouse’s bat­tle of the bands winners:

1. Re-TROS
2. Queen Sea Big Shark
3. Muma & Third Party
4. Perdel
5. The Ghost Spar­dac
6. Crys­tal But­ter­fly
7. Run­Run­Loser
8. Nanwu

And despite the fact I have never heard of Run­Run­Loser, I think this is a solid lineup. There’s a good vari­ety of all the biggest gen­res, and all with great bands rep­re­sent­ing China’s efforts. Of course there are bands I think would be bet­ter, but for a first pass at impress­ing Asia, I think China’s done a good job.

2011
08/02
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Festival News: Rock Aid Beijing 2011

And yet another music fes­ti­val is grac­ing our fair city. If the inmu­sic fes­ti­val is too far out of the city for you to con­tem­plate, try the Rock Aid fes­ti­val in a cou­ple of week­ends. It’s being held over three nights from 8PM at Tango 3rd Floor (pre­vi­ously Star Live), just out­side the sec­ond ring road north, near Yonghe­gong Lama Tem­ple sta­tion. It’s easy to get to, always clean, and while the space looks like a fac­tory, it’s got pretty good acoustics. The price is a bit much (100RMB/night, and noth­ing yet on pric­ing for all three nights), but the lineup is stel­lar. Twisted Machine, Yaksa, and Chun­qiu head­line each of the nights, with other great hard rock acts lined up. Check out all the per­form­ing artists and more at the gig guide!

2011
07/26
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Gig Review: Kama Love Festival Day Two

The prob­lem with hav­ing such a large num­ber of music fes­ti­vals around the city is that it becomes dif­fi­cult to talk about the indi­vid­ual acts. After going to so many dif­fer­ent fes­ti­vals, all with their own atmos­phere and all in dif­fer­ent parts of the city, it becomes more about the fes­ti­vals them­selves than the acts. I could, of course, just be say­ing all this because I only got to Kama to see two acts, but it does hap­pen. And I have to say, I really enjoyed Kama, for lots of rea­sons not related to the lineup.

First of all, despite my own con­fu­sion about how to get there, it was actu­ally quite easy to get to — right on Line 10. They could have done with some signs at the sub­way, but it’s always easy to fol­low a crowd. Sec­ondly, and quite impor­tantly in the recent fes­ti­val cli­mate, there was alco­hol! We started out with over­priced beer (20RMB, though admit­tedly it was cold), but then found a wine stand sell­ing cups of quite good wine for 8-15RMB. Score! Thirdly, the port-a-potties were first rate! They weren’t squat toi­lets, they had lights and toi­let paper, and they remained fairly clean through­out the day, so they were heads and shoul­ders above any­thing I’ve ever expe­ri­enced at a music fes­ti­val in China. The food selec­tion was fairly good too, but I wouldn’t rate it amongst the best. I had zha­jiang­mian that tasted like noo­dles with Veg­emite on them — way too salty.

And some­thing I can’t quite work out whether it’s a pro or a con — the entire fes­ti­val was run­ning way ahead of sched­ule, at least half an hour. I hypoth­e­size that they were told the entire fes­ti­val had to be over by 9PM instead of the 9:30 (or likely 10PM) they had sched­uled, so they pushed every­thing up. It wasn’t too bad, unless like me you got there late and couldn’t fig­ure out what was play­ing when. Also, the one band I was super excited to see — SuperVC — was cut short after five or so songs. That didn’t make me very happy.

The most mem­o­rable thing, of course, was Eels, who played for a full ninety min­utes. There they were, bearded and stand­ing under the hot sun, and it was the first time I had ever seen them. To be hon­est, it was the first time I’d heard them since I left high school, and it was def­i­nitely a good show. Except for Novo­caine For The Soul, which I think just shows how good a recorded track it was. The crowd for Eels was huge, both Chi­nese and for­eign, and while I would have liked the band to have learned at least how to throw out a xiexie or two (they proudly stated they hadn’t learned any Chi­nese for the show), they were def­i­nitely appreciated.

The only other band I got to see was Super VC, which as men­tioned was cut short. They man­aged to have a good five songs or so, play­ing their HP song/ad and also a song they’d never per­formed before. How­ever, unlike the crazy fan­girls at Straw­berry Fes­ti­val last year, there was no jump­ing and scream­ing and singing along… except from me, of course. It was still a good show, but I was sur­prised at the lack of enthu­si­asm from the crowd.

And then, the fes­ti­val was over by 9PM. We availed our­selves of last-minute bot­tle sales of wine (buy five get one free!), and then headed home on the sub­way, dusty but satisfied.

2011
06/09
CATEGORY
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