Oh Moby: Too Many “Blowholes” at WHALE!

A WHALE! of a Good Time at 4corners Bar

A night at WHALE! generally implies a blurry mess of music, dancing and going home at sunrise after the local cops barge in ordering the WHALE! tunes off and this past weekend proved no exception.

The dance floor was packed full of WHALE!ers flopping around to the sounds of Bobby Dropper, DJ Assassin Eyes, DJ Crab People, DJ Attacks Unicorns and DJ Pun Farty.

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WHALE!: Dance to 200 tons of Nonsense at 4corners

Beijingers: Get ready to WHALE!

What does a 200-ton sea mammal have to do with a group of wacky non-DJ’s?!

EVERYTHING.  

For those who don’t know, WHALE! is a regular DJ event comprised of a group of 5 eclectic “non-DJ’s” playing “200 tons of danceable rock and electro nonsense in the deep, dark hutong”.

Migrating it’s way around Beijing, WHALE! has hopping around Beijing from School Bar to Temple Bar and has recently landed just down a little hutong by the Drum & Bell Tower at 4corners肆角餐吧 bar.

The past few WHALE! ragers have been hosted at 4corners with each one blowing up bigger and more bad@ss than the last. With the last WHALE! in March marking the launch of JUE Music + Art Festival, this upcoming WHALE! may very well be a finale WHALE! for two of the five DJ’s: DJ Assassin Eyes and DJ Crab People.

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Death Cab for Cutie Headlining JUE Music + Art 2012

Death Cab for Cutie (Press Photo by Danny Clinch)

People have been going nuts for American Indie-rock band Death Cab for Cutie tickets since word first got out that they’d be coming to China this year and thanks to JUE | Music + Art Festival, the Splitworks team has brought the arrival of Death Cab for Cutie for two performances in Shanghai (March 9) and Beijing (March 10)!

Beijing’s performance will be held at the 3rd floor of Tango at 8PM on Saturday, March 10 and pre-sale tickets are available now! See below for ticket sale info.

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Emergency WHALE! at 4corners! Tonight!

Blue Alert! It’s a WHALE! Emergency TONIGHT!

WHALE! is holding a last-minute emergency party tonight, Friday, January 27, 2012 at the newly opened 4corners肆角餐吧 bar by the Drum and Bell Tower in Gulou.

Previously, WHALE! parties were rocking Beijing with monthly gigs around town, but since winter hit, it’s been a few months without some WHALE! fun.

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LumDimSummary: Call her DJ Little Boots

Little Boots DJ Shake Tour at Beijing’s Yugongyishan

I rarely leave the comfort of my home on Sundays.  Even more rarely do I miss a chance to join in a BJ FOoDiEs dinner like the one they just hosted at Starfish Wine & Seafood Bar (where they raised RMB 3,028 for Little Flower Project).

But I am a big fan of UK electro-pop star Little Boots as you can see from my pre-event post here.  Her tracks are catchy and from the first time I heard her perform at Beijing’s China Music Valley (CMV) Festival aka Pingu Music Festival, I couldn’t stop listening to Meddle, Stuck on Repeat and Remedy.  

And maybe I’m just an idiot, but I did not realize that her worldwide “Shake DJ Tour” covering Paris, Berlin, New York, SF, LA, Beijing, Tokyo and London would not actually be Little Boots herself performing, but rather her standing behind the decks as a DJ. She opened with a J.Lo remix and at one point, she played some of her music, but it was just not what I expected.  

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Little Boots’ “Shake DJ Tour” Beijing Stop at Yugong

Victoria Christina Hesketh aka Little Boots

The first time I heard UK’s electro-pop starlet Little Boots was during one of Beijing’s summer music festivals – China Music Valley (CMV) Festival aka Pingu Music Festival who also hosted Avril Lavigne and in the same line-up as Ladytron, The Editors (who were AMAZING) and KT Tunstall. I liked her music so much, I got all her songs and listened to them on repeat for at least 2 days straight.

This Sunday, she’s back in Beijing (from Toyko and before that San Francisco, LA, NY, Berlin and Paris) and performing her Shake DJ Tour at Yugongyishan with the one and only Bobby Dropper opening for Little Boots (even more reason to leave the comfort of your home on a Sunday night).

Tickets are RMB 100 (presale) or RMB 150 (door charge). Get presale tickets online here.

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WHALE! on a Rainy Night in the Deep, Dark Hutongs

What WHALE! looked like at 4AM

Friday night would not stop raining, Temple Bar is not the easiest place to find on a dark, rainy night, there were technical difficulties, there was a wire that blew and made our eyes sting, by 1AM, the po-po had already forced WHALE!’s music volume down…and  even that didn’t stop the dancing frenzy that took on a life of it’s own.

Maybe it was the good vibes, maybe the music was so good it didn’t matter that it wasn’t loud enough, maybe it was one-too-many “blowhole” cocktails, but boy was it another WHALE! of a good time.

Thanks to a fun WHALE! line-up: Assassin Eyes, Bobby Dropper, DJ Fun Party, DJ Crumbum and DJ Dirty Pirate...but DJ Je Ne Sais Quoi, where were you??!?  After all that hype around this special guest DJ, the fans were slightly heartbroken he never made it. Perhaps some day WHALE! will be graced by the presence of the high and mighty Je Ne Sais Quoi…one can only hope.

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Try the “Blowhole” at WHALE!

“Harpooning season is upon us once again”

-DJ Assassin Eyes (one of WHALE!’s DJs)

WHALE! is back this Friday, July 29th and not only do they have their very own signature cocktail drink – the “Blowhole”, they have moved from School bar to the newly opened TEMPLE Bar. Located on Gulou Dong Da Jie, just west of the north entrance of Nanluoguxiang (NLGX), Temple just opened last Friday and is bound to be a nice change from School Bar.

“Roooooooock and roooooolllll! Dance and drink to the best new/old and rare rock, indie, techno, disco, and electro grooves with Beijing’s most casually inept DJs. Swim the briny deep of Beijing’s best underground music night.”

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