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Interview: Baijiu Robot

Exterminate! Exterminate! - By Morgan Short, Nov 05, 09

If you wondering who those dudes were that had the balls to play Fatboy Slim tracks in the year 2009, that was Baijiu Robot, educators-cum-partyimpresarios -- voices of the resistance, pillars of the dive bar community, and DJ hosts of the stinkiest Baijiu throwdows in Shanghai.

From the ghostly vacant dance floors at Windows Underground (earlier dayz) to the blood and piss-soaked dance floors at C's, Baijiu Robot have been staples at all your favorite "No cover. Cheap drinks." venues, throwing it back to an earlier time in Shanghai when no one cared who the headlining act was or what DJ flew into town to play that night. It's used to be all about the dance party, and with the Baijiu Bots it still is.

Anticipating their destruction this Saturday, SmartShanghai sat down with the Baijiu Robots Heatwolves! and Mau Mau to talk about murder in the disco, highs and lows, and what make a good baijiu.

Mau Mau made a mix called "Robot Explosion" for this interview, but it was too big and bad to upload directly to the site. I put it on zShare. Here's the download link.

Also Heatwolves! has a blog containing MP3 downloads and piquant musings on life. Click here for that.

***


Mau Mau: I'm from a small town in Maine.


Mau Mau: Yeah? Have you been to Steven King's house?


Mau Mau: I've been here for almost two years but I came almost three years ago on a study abroad thing, and came back after I graduated. I taught kindergarten for a while, and right around when we were starting Baijiu Robot I quit/got fired from my job teaching kindergarten.


Mau Mau: That's a longer story.


Mau Mau: [Laughs.] No no...

Heatwolves!: Yeah, what happened at the kindergarten, man...

Mau Mau: ...so I was unemployed for a while but now I teach sports to kids on the weekends.


Heatwolves!: I'm from Kalamazoo, Michigan. Half way between Chicago and Detroit.


Heatwolves!: Not really. My mom's from up around 8 Mile. 8 Mile is not as sketch as people think it is. It's just a dividing line... but I was in a rap battle before and I got destroyed.


Heatwolves!: Yeah, man. I used to freestyle a lot. I used to be *that kid*. Freestyling everywhere until it was really time to stop. [Laughs].


Heatwolves!: [Starts rapping]: Ain't no shame \ Used to be at the top of my game \ Yo, it's like dragons, they shoot flame!


Heatwolves! [Laughs.]




Mau Mau: Shortly after we met we started trading music and talking about music, and we started Djing together just in my apartment. I DJ'ed a little before, playing mostly Hip Hop. College party type stuff. And Heatwolves! was just getting into it.

But after a while we were thinking of trying to do a party, and we went...

Heatwolves!: ...everywhere. We went everywhere and they all said no.

Mau Mau: And Windows Underground was the only place that would let us play. We tried to do a charity party for an orphanage but no one came. [Laughs.] When we started, and I guess it's the same now, it's all different kinds of music. A little Hip Hop a little Dance Punk. Indie Disco stuff. A little bit of Funk.

Heatwolves!: I was playing mostly Italo Disco and trying to mix that with whatever.


Mau Mau: Umm... Cut Copy, Breakestra, and...

Heatwolves!: Justice. [Laughs.]

Mau Mau: ...Fatboy Slim.


Mau Mau: [Laughs.] He was great. Come on.

Heatwolves!: I remember trying to do that track "World Invaders" by Pluton & Humanoids in with that Le Castle Vania shit. Pretty hip. I've also been playing Baile Funk, which is this Brazilian club rap made with 808's. It gets financed by drug lords in the Rio favelas. It always works really well when I play it -- tons of hard bass kicks. It goes good with the Electro that people here expect. Too much Electro is a mess.




Heatwolves!: We get a decent crowd. We were doing C's for a while, and then this really big fight went down there when we playing. It was some straight-up Double Dragon shit. People flying though the air, strobe lights on...

Mau Mau: I was playing an Eli Smith song with sirens in it, and these sirens came on and I looked up and there was glass flying across the room and bodies in the air.

Heatwolves!: There really was a lot of blood. Everywhere. Like. More blood than I've ever seen.


Mau Mau: We were playing at C's and it was going really well. It was like 12:30am or 1am. Good dance floor with Chinese and Western kids. I put on a song that sounds like an air raid and I look up and there this guy coming across the dance floor with a chair up over his head. Then it just kicked off. All over the bar. In different areas. Blood everywhere.

Heatwolves!: A lot more people jumped in. DJ Sacco was there and saved someone's life. It went on for a good half hour or so. A guard came in, saw what was going on and left. He didn't want any part of it. People breaking bottles on each other. Then the police came back later.

Mau Mau: The cops took me down to the police station to try to identify who started it...


Heatwolves!: Yeah. I really like playing at C's. So we kept going [Laughs.]

There's been some times at C's, though... the customers can get upset because they really want to hear Hip Hop. So they try to climb into the DJ booth with cigarettes hanging out of their mouth. They're bending over the glass and trying to swat at things.


Mau Mau: Give them some baijiu.

Heatwolves!: Give them some baijiu and tell them we got some Akon coming up next. [Laughs.] But yeah I like that place a lot.


Mau Mau: LOgO kind of feels like home. I have really good memories of Freak Club parties there a long time ago. I met the guy Sebastian who used to do those when I first came to Shanghai, and he showed me a lot of good Minimal and House stuff on the internet. That kind of got me listening to more stuff outside of Hip Hop.

Heatwolves!: Yeah, I never listened to electronic music before coming to Shanghai. Besides Dance Dance Revolution.


Mau Mau: I think we got started by being in our own little world, but people have been really generous to us. We were included into what other people were doing -- Acid Pony Boys, Reggie [STD promoter] -- lots of people supported us when we were starting out and trying to get people to come.

Heatwolves!: On the other hand, we're a bit different because the main focus is on throwing dance parties. It's all about a good dance party. We're not really concerned with bringing in more famous DJs from other countries. At the end of the night, we just want to throw really good dance parties.


Mau Mau: Well, I was pissed when that fight happened at C's because it was getting really good... but we¡¯ve had worse shows.


Mau Mau: For me, one of the worst ones was one of the first times we played at LOgO. I was really nervous about playing there for the first time and my laptop shut down. Watching that silence kill the room. It was a solid silence. [Laughs.]

Heatwolves!: We had one where I played like shit and just everything went wrong with the Acid Pony Club at Longitude. I fucked up. A lot. [Laughs.] It was funny playing with the Acid Pony kids because they know what they're doing and when we show up they're like... "oh".


Mau Mau: The first time we played at the Shelter. Slackerton [Local DJ/Promoter] invited us to play on his warm-up slot, and we showed up there. I think Mr. Stokes or someone was supposed to play the headlining slot, but he missed his bus from some place far away. So Slackerton just let us play at the end. But it was a great turnout and a great crowd. It was nice to play at The Shelter because I've seen other great DJs play there. Towards the end Jane [DJ Siesta] came in and we were sort of playing back-to-back and people liked it. At 1:45 the turned on the lights, and everyone boo'ed [Laughs], so they turned back off the lights and we kept going.


Heatwolves!: We got shut down.

Mau Mau: We were practicing the other night and there was a knock on the door. It was a group of dudes...

Heatwolves!: They spoke really good English. They were like, "listen guys. It can't go on. We got the Expo coming up and this has to stop..."




Heatwolves!: [Laughs.]


Heatwolves!: We¡¯ll still play together occasionally. We have some stuff coming up. One at The Shelter. The Tuesday one at LOgO is still going. We were doing a Friday at Not Me, which we will stop doing though.

I guess really we're just not going to spread it too thin. We were already doing so much stuff...

Mau Mau: I guess we got a bit more of a regular crowd and people are asking us to play stuff, but we're just playing all the time and not really able to see anything else going on. A lot of my energy to DJ comes from seeing other people playing, and we haven't really been able to do that because we're always booked somewhere. It's just gotten to be a lot of work...


HeatWolves!: We go through 9 drafts...


Heatwolves!: It's a Scandinavian firm.



Heatwolves!: Well, I guess everyone says this but the divide between western and Chinese clubbers -- it would be nice if it went away. In terms of music, I wish there was more people mixing harder club rap, like Three Six Mafia, with the blogcore Electro shit. Not enough people here mix up their genres/tempos enough.

One of my favorite moments was at Dragon Club seeing the Acid Pony boys slowing down a techno record to like 95bpms and then dropping "Pony" by Genuine...

Mau Mau: I dunno. I'm pretty happy with Shanghai, you know. I'm from a small town, and to come to a city like this with so many options and mostly people are open to listening to whatever. I remember DJing Hip Hop back in the States and every time you play, there are about 30 songs that you have to play.

Heatwolves!: Yeah, this Baijiu Robot thing wouldn't have worked in American.


Heatwolves!: [Laughs.] Yeah, but also two unknown dudes just showing up and wanting to throw a party. It doesn't happen. In Shanghai, people are pretty open to it.

But any new DJ that comes, you gotta battle Baijiu Robot -- not only on the decks but on the freestyle tip as well.


Heatwolves!: Yeah, it's no front -- we really drink that shit like northern Chinese. Pretty much we go with Er Guo Tou, from the north. Every bottle is different. And it's 4.2rmb. A lot of people hate on baijiu. I don't know why.


Mau Mau: Umm... Inexpensive-ness.

***

Busy weekend for the Baijiu Robot. This Friday they're on the bill for that big time Pet Conspiracy show at MAO, and on Saturday they're throwing their self-destruction party down at LOgO. At both venues, they'll be sorting you out with Indie Electro, Baile, Italo, Fidget, Disco, whatever. Good times.

Cover is 20rmb at their main Saturday party. Starts 10pm.

ExxxtermiNATE!

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