Music festivals have a poor reputation, and rightfully so. As great as it can be to see a bunch of your favorite musicians in one place and for one price, having to go to the middle of the desert as with Burning Man or spend a week getting rained on at Glastonbury is probably not worth it. One event that eschews this is It's The Ship (ITS), which trades a grim, distant locale for a luxury cruise liner while maintaining the big fest feel.
Having spent half a decade developing its reputation in Singapore, ITS made its Chinese debut this year with a five-day cruise that departed from Shanghai for the seafront city of Shimonoseki in Japan and back, and along the way supplied a near non-stop party atmosphere with EDM DJs from around the world - most notably China.
As it stands, China is more known for its thriving hip hop scene than it's EDM one but the performances from the DJs prove there's a hotbed of talent in such cities like Shanghai, Beijing and Taipei. The showmanship from the Chinese DJs was significantly grander than that of those from elsewhere; established names like Sander van Doorn and Jeffrey Sutorius clearly have a great time spinning tunes from up on the stage but China's Corsak and Carta, for example, fire up the crowd with an electrifying presence too.
Jeffery Sutorius headlining the final night of ITS China. /ITS photo
If there is an issue, it's with the limits of EDM itself. Since it became the dominant genre of electronic music, it has ensnared everyone from Above & Beyond to Zedd and certain local flavors have been lost. Leftist writer Mark Fisher had a love for dubstep, which evolved on the streets of London thanks to artists like Burial and Four Tet, because its echoing bass lines and rumbling rhythms had what he termed “hauntology”, the sound of a future that didn’t take place. In this instance, dubstep represented the rave scene that was killed by Britain’s Conservative government in the early 1990s.
The rise of EDM took place following Fisher’s death and so he never opined on the movement but it embodies an alternate take on the same principle. By combining the candy raver aesthetic of the 90s; the harsh, distorted sounds of the 00s’ blog scene, and getting played in sets that mash together tracks of all different tempos and melodies together with samples from other media, such as vocal clips from movies and sound effects from video games, EDM often feels like all of dance music history playing out at once and, rather than create a new future, it recycles the past in exciting and totally thrilling ways. China lacks a clear dance music history, ITS is a glimpse into its dance music future.
The crowd at the Crown Stage of ITS China. /ITS photo
The dance floor at ITS is a wild, energetic experience unlike almost anything else out there. Everyone is there to party, and with top class facilities a few minutes’ walk away at most, no energy is wasted. When hundreds of people gather together on the Crown Stage miles out in the East China Sea for an all night EDM show, there is something unmistakable in the air; it’s not the bliss of The Second Summer of Love, it’s something else - in this instance unique to the Chinese dance floor - and it shouldn’t be missed.
The success of this year’s event guarantees a 2020 follow up, and if you have any interest in the Asian EDM experience, you have to go.
(Video by Anosi Wang, Wang Yanan and Ge Ning)