Shanghai’s VIP Room filled up quickly Thursday night as several hundred locals and Scandinavian expats got together for a Finnish electro showcase. It was all too clear no one knew quite what to expect. Obviously Absolut Vodka’s local marketing manager - the event’s sponsor - didn’t. She spent half Ovali Virta’s show asking me whether it was a “successful” performance.
Cleaning Women were first up. Three guys on homemade instruments dressed as angry girls, complete with Doc Marten boots, short shrill pigtails and black stockings. An electrified clothes drying rack, a guitar made out of an Illy coffee tin, drums built from stainless steel colanders, pots and rubbish bins. On paper it sounds closer to performance art - and they are killer on stage - but it’s musically interesting too, the clattering, harsh rhythms add up to something like Einsturzende Neubauten.
They get an amazing sound out of the homemade guitars, and when vocals somewhere between Tim Buckley, Ian Curtis and Souxsie Souix glide over a seductive metal samba it all adds up to something newer, a fascinating punk jazz with a crazed, almost hymnal feeling.
It was strange though, to watch this uncompromising group in such an elitist venue. Owned by one of China’s most famous actors, the VIP Rooms are pitched somewhere between elite lounge bar and super club glam. A winding maze of paneled rooms and alcoves lead to increasingly exclusive rooms each level, up to the coveted fifth floor. The drinks are frightfully expensive, even for Shanghai, and the advertising around the room seems more important than the music.
Ovali Virta took the stage in matching black jeans, white shirts and black cravats to the theme song from Dallas. Crowded in around a laptop, it was obvious they are not as comfortable onstage as Cleaning Women, but their music was far more accessible: club-friendly electro, guitar riffs and infectious vocals. One of them did crazy dance steps, but it all seemed like a band who have been told: “You can make great music, but you’ve gotta put on a good performance.”
If people were there to see a particular performer, it was Finland’s best-known DJ and one of its longest running electronic musicians, Jori Hulkkonen. But it’s easy to imagine that few punters noticed him as he slid onto the decks in a cloud of smoke at the end of Ovali Virta’s set. It was tough to avoid the music though. Hulkkonen played a lush set of deep garage that touched on acid, electro, techno, heavy EBM, bottomless bass and always the spectre of Chicago and Detroit house. Industrial tracks melt seamlessly into Depeche Mode in a blink of an eye, then it’s onto Cajmere. It’s perfectly mixed, though you can always tell when a new track is coming into the mix. None of that monotony created by DJs who might as well be playing the same track for an hour. The sashaying dancers responded in kind, flooding the dancefloor for one of the best DJs to have played the club.
Music downloads and real-time video camera moblogging at the tour blog.