MYST (or Moving You, Stunning Trip) reads like something you’d see on a fake market t-shirt. But make no mistake; MYST is in fact Shanghai’s latest entrant to the nightlife circuit. They give us this as their strapline:
‘The possession of knowledge does not kill the sense of wonder and mystery. There is always more mystery…’
…which leads to the next point: DJ BT. DJ BT has made some pretty substantial contributions to the music industry, pioneering the stutter edit technique which makes singers sound like they have a speech impediment. He’s also written and produced for artists including ‘N Sync (uhum raised eyebrow) Paul Van Dyke and Tiësto (we’ll give him those). But opening clubs in 2013? Why? Just why? BT has done his time in China: several tours and a couple of club openings if we’re not mistaken, but what we see with MYST is what we’ve seen so many times before: big space, lavish overhaul, big marketing spend, old-age-ex-DJ-Mag-top-10 DJ at the opening party. It’s just that this was a model of the noughties and has failed so many times since that we thought we’d seen the last of it.
In our minds this mega massive retread is an indication that there is too much fast money lapping around the system: people are even getting investment for business plans resurrected from the last decade.
2014 is gonna be tough: MYST might be the canary in the coal mine…..