A few hours ago I arrived back at home in Chengdu after spending half of the weekend in Chongqing, playing on Saturday night at one of my favorite clubs in China called Cotton Club. This was my second time in Chongqing (pronounced “Chong Ching”) in a month and this show was a totally different environment than the last one at “Falling”, but further solidified Chongqing as my favorite city to DJ in.
Several weeks ago an American, Joe, called me representing the club and expressed interest in booking me to play funk, soul, reggae, and hip hop. A general roots-oriented set, which is an extraordinarily uncommon request in China – especially in western China. I was immediately excited because this is the kind of music that I’d rather be DJ’ing these days. To be honest, I’m getting bored of listening to and playing house music entirely. Fortunately, last time I was in Chongqing I was able to play an entire breaks set and have people go nuts, but even that doesn’t trump being able to play Bootsy Collins, George Clinton, and E-40 to a throbbing dancefloor with an exploding b-boy circle. Fortunately a Swedish photographer was there to capture some photos of the ambience in the room which wasn’t short of incredible. When I stepped into the club at 10pm the place was already packed. I really can’t say enough good things about Cotton Club and the Chongqing nightlife scene in general. I went with Jovian who VJ’ed right beside me, and Sascha who returned to Chongqing to finish writing his story on the city.