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is a weekly Ïã¸ÛÁùºÏ²Ê×ÊÁÏÍø column, serving up mp3s from bands living and making music in China (or coming to China, or thinking about coming to China, or whatever). Copyright holders: if you would like your song removed, please email us , and we'll honor your request promptly.

Happy Monday, Shanghai! I don’t know about you but I love these constant Chinese holidays. Sure, the whole make-up workday policy is like trying to figure out an Abbot and Costello routine, but regardless I was all over the mooncake weekend. Spending Friday and Saturday on the Bund, I bought myself a sweet "I Love Shanghai" panda face t-shirt and even did up the dragon buffet boat in full glory. Also I got the chance to DJ my first wedding, opening up for none other than Lions of Puxi. After five years of living in Shanghai, it turns out I got it all wrong. Instead of spending all my time in smoky basement clubs and record stores mocking Bar Rouge and the ills of pop music maybe it’s not so horrible to dance on both sides of the fence.

Most likely I’ll go back to my salty ways sooner than later, but for now, I’m going to turn up the Daft Punk on the way to get an eight dollar croissant at Farine and live the dream. But in all seriousness I wish the best to the Israeli beach babe Rotem that married her Swiss data man Florian (a.k.a. Flopsy) last Saturday night. Good luck, kids, on that whole being adults scene!

In the spirit of light-hearted fun I’m going to do a little prep work for you on the two huge weekend events down in our local bat cave Arkham club. First up this Friday is Australian mega synth pop duo The Presets. This show is going to be a banger and a half. Then on Saturday is another electro power duo Cassius, who come to us from the Ableton Live lined streets of France.



This Friday’s showcase of the boy two wonders from down under will, in my opinion, not be lightly attended by the fairer sex. But hey, I don’t go to shows for the ladies, I got for the eight-dollar beers. Just look at these two hot shrimps on barbies Julian Hamilton and Kim Moyes. The two toured extensively while still finding time to put out three studio albums, over 15 singles and a boat load of remixes that bare the touch of their electro pop hands. Things really got going commercially with the 2008 studio album Apocalypso which went triple platinum and hopefully is a tribute to the great filmmaker Mel Gibson.

Trained in classics from Sydney’s Conservatorium of Music, early on, The Presets received much praise and were even able to work with none other than the Australian poor man’s Curt Cobain, Daniel Johns of Silver Chair. These guys play mostly large festival gigs, so this Friday’s underground Arkham gig is going to pop off. So be sure to taper those skinny jeans and prepare to take those party pants too new heights.







Continuing Arkham’s onslaught weekend of electropop duos is Saturday’s Cassius show, which also will have hipsters cluttering the damn sidewalks with their piles of fixed gear bicycles making it hard for my street talking bar / massage girls to do their job. Producers, gentleman, scholars, Philippe Cerboneschi and Hubert Blanc-Francart, better known as Philippe Zdar and Boom Bass, form the group Cassius. These two go back a little further than the Presets starting out together in the simpler time of 1988, where they produced for French hip hop artist MC Solaar. Fast forward to the mid 90’s when the pair started producing tracks together under the name Cassius with tracks like the 1996 sensation Foxxy, remixes of Air, Daft Punk, etc. before hitting real fame with the banger song "Cassius 1999." The next notable album after that would be Au Rêve which featured a personal favorite of mine Jocelyn Brown contributing vocals, but not out down by the Ghostface Killah himself who also collaborated on this album with Cassius.

Since then, the producer group have worked on agendas such as the Cassius Workshop project which has received over 400 remixes of their work and they continue to dive more into the pop world, throwing down with up-and-comers like Kanye and Jay-Z. Who knows what to expect at this Saturday’s gig,]? but I’m guessing there will be plenty of French girls blowing cigarette smoke in your face while you get down to those crazy electrohouse beats.




If electro house is not your bag, then WTF is your problem dude? Wait. Let’s try this again. If electro house is not your bag, then this week Shanghai has some solid performances like Thursday’s show and Friday’s the gig, which is a great addition to our little music scene. But most of all, don’t forget about Taboo from Black Eyed Peas stopping by. Oh yes! He is coming back. Just try to keep me away from that night.

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