Chen Tianzhuo‘s hard-to-define collective Asian Dope Boys took over Boiler Room last night for three and a half hours of club music mixed with Buddhist chants, Tibetan imagery and bizarre animated creatures roaming across the livestream screens.
Chen himself kicked things off with a meditative set in collaboration with RADII favorite 33EMYBW, with the video stream flicking between shots of mountains and plateaus and footage from inside Beijing’s Zhao Dai club, where the pair were performing:
The set references Chen’s latest work “The Dust,” which also features music from 33 and which you can dive into here:
While the opening set was an atmospheric slow-burner to begin with, Chen picked up the pace to end on a more club-friendly note. Beijing-based producer Tutu then picked up the baton and ran with it, providing an hour of driving, dynamic electronic music:
Related:
Next on the bill was City (aka Will Ballantyne), whose dark beats were spliced together with more Tibetan visuals centering on some incredible masked cham dance performances:
That set the scene for an intense final half hour, with Berlin-based artist Dis Fig (aka Felicia Chen) — who last year joined forces with The Bug for a release on Hyperdub — delivering an intense experimental live set:
The takeover also marked the official release of a new capsule collection designed by Chen for Boiler Room. The limited edition line features three T-shirt designs emblazoned with imagery from Asian Dope Boys.
You can read more about Chen’s fashion, art and music collective right here:
And you can get another taste of the Chinese club scene via Boiler Room right here:
