If you’re in Dalian this weekend, peep at the Dusk Music Festival, happening on Saturday June 22. Taking place at a youth hostel supposedly on the beach, it’s being promoted by a collective of bars and entertainment professionals. The lineup includes Shanghai imports Duck Fight Goose, Pairs and R3; Beijing’s Skip Skip Ben Ben and Dalian’s own Doc Talk Shock.
UPDATE 9/20/2012: Surprising no one, the Dreamer Festival dates in Shanghai have been “postponed” to April of 2013 due to the promoter not receiving the correct permits (yet promoting the festival and selling tickets…) and the current political climate. Instead, the festival will be held next year. Here is the latest announcement (Chinese only).
UPDATE 9/17/2012: As of Friday afternoon, the Wuhan Dreamer Festival has been cancelled as well due to the fact that none of the foreign artists are able to perform. Link to the Douban note with the official notification from the organisers, here.
Well, color us shocked (and dripping in sarcasm, FYI). From their official microblog (Sina Weibo) yesterday afternoon comes the news that the Dreamer Festival in Tianjin has been canceled, less than a month out from it’s original October holiday date.
To recap, Sounds Great! promoters (声演坊) and Pocket Music announced earlier this year that they were putting on three simultaneous music festivals in Shanghai, Wuhan and Beijing during the October holiday period, 2012. Over 20 foreign headliners were announced, including World’s End Girlfriend, Jay-Jay Johansen, Pelle Carlberg, Agnes Kain and more. We were always dubious that ANYONE could pull off three multi-day festivals simultaneously, and Sounds Great/Pocket have not had a good track record in the past of following through on announced events.
According to the organisers, the Shanghai and Wuhan festivals will go on as scheduled, and the cancellation of the Tianjin event was attributed to the upcoming transition in nearby Beijing. If you’re keeping count at home, this means that there are official no outdoor festivals north of the Yangtze this October. So, uh, enjoy the beautiful weather we’ll inevitably have in the northern capital?
2012 Fuxian Lake Music Festival in review
Words and photos: Hugh Bohane.
On the weekend of the 24/26th of August, Yuxi hosted the second edition of the Fuxian Lake Music Festival. This three-day adventure was held by the side of one of China’s deepest and cleanest lakes. The Fuxian Lake (抚仙湖) scenic area is definitely one of the better locations for a music festival we have seen so far in Yunnan.
Festival organizers worked with the local tourism department to ensure that accommodations – including hotel rooms and campsites – would be available on the banks of the lake. Hotel prices near the lake started at around 80 RMB for a room. The weather was kind with no rain and glowing sunshine two out of the three days. Continue reading
This just in from our friends at Beijing Gig Guide – playing this year at the InMusic Festival, aka Zhangbei, aka that festival that’s pretty much in Mongolia, are Spiritualized and Orbital. Other announced international headliners include Joyce Jonathan (France), Linkoban (Denmark) and Joanna Wang 王若琳 (Taiwan). On the domestic side, they’ve booked Tang Dynasty, Brain Failure, Queen Sea Big Shark, Miserable Faith and A-BOYS, with many more to be added, we’re sure.
InMusic has a history of booking good acts – see Little Dragon and Tricky in ’09, CocoRosie and Killing Joke in ’10, Tricky (again) in ’11 – and sparse attendance. We’ll be curious to see if the 1-2-3 punch of Orbital (EDM kids), Spiritualized (space rockers, Brit fetishists) and Joanna Wang (pop lovers) will finally draw the crowds out to Mongolia Hebei.
Editor’s Note: Department of Shameless Self-Promotion, Population: Us. As many of the readers of the blog know, as Split Works we are co-producing Black Rabbit Music Festival.
After the smashing success of last year’s Black Rabbit Music Festival, event co-producers Taihe Live and Split Works are incredibly excited to formally announce that the festival will be returning for a second year. Happening in October in Shanghai, we can’t reveal the artists coming for Black Rabbit Music Festival 2012 just yet, but rest assured that they are even bigger than last year’s lineup of Ludacris, 30 Seconds to Mars, Hebe, PK 14, Yellowcard and more. We’ll leave it up to you to contemplate the possibilities.
In the meantime, re-live the magic with the official 2011 Black Rabbit Music Festival wrap video, and follow Black Rabbit on Facebook, Twitter, Douban and Weibo for all the latest updates, lineup announcements, ticketing, venue, prizes and much much more.
Editor’s note: a bit delayed, but this piece is as much about the general state of branding and commercial presence at large outdoor music festivals as it is about any specific event. It was written after attending Midi 2012 in Shanghai.
China’s Midi Festival is a crazy beast. The first time we attended was in May 2006; it was our first sighting of the paradox that was modern China: a park full of rock and metal fans stomping and moshing to mohawked and dreadlocked bands who in turn were singing about those issues close to their hearts and sensitive to the country surrounding this little enclave in time and space. It took our collective breaths away.
Midi is the Glastonbury of China in so many ways: the fans who attend Midi are a coalescence of the disaffected 90’s generation of punks and rockers who worked in the margins of the margins because of a heartfelt desire to change things. The people that come really contribute to the vibe of the festival rather than expecting to be passively entertained. The merchandise is better, the people are crazier, there are more smiles, more impromptu jam sessions, more hugging and general random acts of kindness than anywhere else in China.
The other thing that Glastonbury and Midi share is a generous and powerful gesture to give up the massively lucrative “billboards” that are their respective mainstages, and instead give them to good causes. In Glastonbury’s case, the charities Wateraid and Greenpeace have pride of place on the Pyramid Stage. In Midi’s case the Tang Stages in 2011 and 2012 plus the overall festival VI (programmes, flyers, posters) were devoted to causes that the organizers consider important: in 2011 the eradication of the Chinese trade in bear bile in, and in 2012, drawing attention to urban China’s dangerous pollution levels: PM2.5.
[this was true at the time of writing: in fact, in 2012 Midi did succumb and sold main stage branding to Vans for the Beijing festival].
We’d like to put it out there that WE THINK THIS IS FUCKING AWESOME. We don’t know of any other examples of powerful social movements in China using their influence to stand up to some of the systemic problems that exist here. (We would love some comments to share what inevitable others are out there)
Hot from our email inboxes, we’ve just received word that this weekend’s INTRO Festival has been moved from it’s ancestral home at 751 D-Park to Crab Island Resort, outside the 5th Ring Road.
From Acupuncture Founder and INTRO organiser Miao Wong’s email to media:
“Even though INTRO got stamped paper from Ministry of Culture, Government of Chaoyang District, local police still don’t allow it to take place at 751 D-Park. We were required to move to a venue outside of 5th ring. But the good news is, there is a very cool place, Xiedao ICEC（http://www.xiedaoicec.com), only 30min drive from 751 D-Park. And, thanks to the venue change, with the same line-up, now we can party later, until midnight! And after party at Lantern Club continues!”
Buses will be available departing from 751 D-Park in 798 and Wudaokou to Crab Island starting from 1pm. 10 RMB round-trip will get you to the new venue.
Best of luck to the organisers and attendees for this weekend’s festivities. Look for a full review after the event next week!
Words + Photos: Ami Li
Hilarious: note the huangniu ticket seller in the foreground
Your faithful Radar correspondents repeated a May holiday weekend ritual once again in 2012 by going to Modern Sky’s Strawberry Festival in Beijing. The overarching feeling of the whole weekend was repetition: same routes, same festivals, same artists. Same sponsors, even.
Located at Tongzhou Canal Park (despite our claims to the contrary – sorry again) eight stages vied for sound supremacy over the park grounds. New this year was the A Cappella stage, where co-ed voices blended mellifluously over new classics including “Dancing Queen” and “I’ll Be There For You” while the mysterious Chǎ stage played host to only 4 acts per day, including the ever-popular MC Stone (石头). Headliners for the main Strawberry Stage included Blonde Redhead, Queen Sea Big Shark and Xie Tianxiao, whereas other foreign acts invited included Laura Jansen, Jeans Team, Pitchtuner, The On Fires and Tahiti 80. Other festival favorites such as New Pants, Hanggai, Convenience Store, Carsick Cars and Hedgehog rounded out the lineup. Metal stalwarts Voodoo Kungfu, Army of Jade Kirin, Twisted Machine and Liquid Oxygen Can kept the Overdrive Stage rocking all weekend long and young blood in the form of Wanderlust, CAssette, Steely Heart held it down in the early afternoon slots.
Love is a mixtape, so they say. But for Vans x Midi Festival 2012, your mixtape is more of a risk than a love letter. Working with China’s favorite semi-legal streaming service Xiami as well as Sina Weibo and Renren, Vans敢放 is a new breed of social mixtape, where users are making it for themselves, their friends, and that cute girl from 2nd period chemistry class.
A simple (and completely Chinese) interface that lets users login with either their Xiami, Sina Weibo or Renren accounts. Once you’re in, you pick songs according to 5 questions posed by Vans:
1) The song you could play over and over again for the rest of your life
2) Your secret guilty pleasure song
3) The song you practise a lot but wouldn’t dare sing in KTV
4) A song that you want to recommend to someone you know (they give you the option to @ anyone on Weibo), that they wouldn’t think of listening to given the choice
5) A fantastic song that someone hasn’t listened to yet (you can also @ the person)
Another year, another big Western company tries it hand at the crazy market that is China. Rumour has it (and this is completely unsubstantiated, but hey, we like to be first with the speculation) that C3, the company behind the American touring festival Lollapalooza and the more independently minded Austin City Limits is planning a festival in China this summer.
C3 recently invested in Australian touring behemoth Big Day Out and has been actively expanding in South America in recent years. It will be interesting to see how they fare in crazy town.
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