SmartShanghai | Interview: Urban Planning

Interview: Urban Planning

By Morgan Short, Jan 15th, 2010 | In Nightlife

There’s this party at Dada on Saturday called “The Dangers of Up” put on by these guys called Urban Planning. The whole thing in pretty involved, so here’s the extended back-story:

“Ultra-synaptic Pulse, commonly referred to as UP, is a digital neurostimulator originally discovered by scientists searching for an epileptic seizure inhibitor. By 2015, it had become a global crisis that threatened the very fabric of modern society.

The Dangers of UP takes place in a cyberpunk post-reality where digital drugs carve a pixelated landscape, glitchers compress subsonic signals into fluorescent dreams.

icenine – a former UP user, with ex-employee of SomaTech Medicine - Scott Levy, visit Dada on their DownWithUP! campaign. icenine enters the mind of an UP addict, and vicarious manipulates your optical sensors.

Fellow creators MatteroffacT and Slap Dash Ninja are set to construct the soundtrack; joined by special UP collaborators Scott Levy and Wet London.”

So: part party, part performance art, some pessimistic visions of the future, some hip hop, buzzing, glitching, bleeping, some loopy whiz, bang, pow to watch on the big screen, some carnivalism, and an extremely involved plot.

SmartShanghai talked to three of the guys from Urban Planning about pulsing synapses, Hell’s Angels’ business practices, and residual cool effects.

Here's their MySpace.

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SmSh: So maybe we could start with you guys introducing yourselves and saying how you’re involved with this thing.

Ari: My name is Ari. I basically do the hip hop. Djing. Well, whatever is needed for whatever the night is. I moved to Shanghai about three years ago now. I used to live in Taiwan, down in the south where there was not much going on, but we’d play on Fridays with this other guy…

Kim: Yeah, before we get too far we should say that along with us there’s another DJ coming in from Taiwan just for the party, and another guy is supposed to be here but he has like dysentery right now or something. Bring your rain coats.

Chris: Yeah, it’s going to get like an Alice Cooper show if he doesn’t get better. But yeah, my name is Chris. MC, producer from Canada, about 10-12 years into it. I started back in ’99 as a drum n bass DJ, and then moved to hip hop producing, and eventually MCing. I travelled around to different cities in Canada, and then moved to Taiwan and then here. And I’ve been here for about two years. Um… I’ve released three albums, independently, and now since we’ve started doing this shit it’s evolved into me producing an album just for this party. So we have a CD for each party.

But yeah I’ve come to the realization that what I do well with hip hop is quick and easy as apposed to over-produced Kanye West-style stuff. So with the digital stuff we can do it quickly and put something out and make it about the live show.

These days I’m trying to get away from “making an album” and concentrating on the live show. But yeah, these days its hip hop influenced heavily by electronic shit.

[Ed's note: These MP3s are from the "Dystopia" EP, available on Saturday night.]

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SmSh: When’s the last time you were in Toronto? Did you check out a Kardinal Offishal show?

Chris: [Laughs.] No, I’m not a big Kardinal fan, but I go back to Toronto often. It’s a lot of dubstep there now. Have you been to Social?

SmSh: No, I’ve heard of it, but have never been.

Chris: Yeah, it’s crazy. Ecstasy biker raves.

SmSh: Ahh. Canada. I think it’s kind of awesome that the bikers control all that shit. And they really do… well, from what I know, which is just rumours and stuff. I believe 100% of what people tell me.

Chris: Yeah, the kids who sell ecstasy at raves are all scared that the bikers will find them. [Laughs.]

SmSh: I used to live in Kingston, which is a big biker hub. And there’s this great rumour about how every year some kid from Toronto will move to Kingston for university, and then start selling coke. Eventually the bikers find out about it and then they take him or her for a sit down in a local diner. They say, “you can sell weed, but you gotta stay away from dealing coke.” Of course the kid always complies. But apparently this has been happening basically every year for the past 20 years.

Kim: You have bike gangs in Canada?

SmSh: Yeah. Hell’s Angels man. But, yeah I don’t know. It’s just something people say.

Chris: Yeah, it started in like 2003. Bikers came and locked it up. Doing silly shit. It was really funny actually.

SmSh: How’s Toronto for hip hop. It seems like there’s not too much going on there these days...

Chris: Well, actually that was more of a problem in Taiwan, which was where I was before I moved here. People are still pretty basic with what they like. But maybe it’s a problem with underground hip hop in Asia in general, as far as people even understanding your lyrics. But at least in Shanghai there’s a heavier population of foreigners I guess…

SmSh: And what about yourself, Kim? You never introduced yourself I don’t think. Got any good biker drug dealer stories?

Kim: [Laughs]. I’ve never been involved with either bikers or drug dealers in any capacity. I’m from a small town where someone builds a new wall and everybody gets up in arms about the new wall and that’s it really…

SmSh: And so how are you involved with “The Dangers of Up”?

Kim: I do the visuals and video whatever. I don’t want to say I’m a “VJ” because that has bad connotations in North American with MTV or whatever… so I don’t really know...

SmSh: You’re a video artist.

Kim: Yeah but that sounds even worse. Really pretentious. Video art.

SmSh: A little pretension is a good thing. Embrace it. Fuck “down to earth”.

Kim: Yeah, but I’m sort of just starting out with it and still learning how to do it. The first time I did it was at the other party, “Dystopia”. I

SmSh: Maybe just describe that one then. What was on the screen? What were you showing?

Kim: Um… some post apocalyptic stuff…

SmSh: Orwellian?

Kim: Um... more like wastelands. It wasn’t a corporate dystopia. It was more like a nuclear fallout dystopia…

SmSh: More Mad Maxian.

Kim: [Laughs.] Yeah.

SmSh: What do you have planed for this one? Blade Runner-esque?

Kim: Well, it’s more hi-tec than Blade Runner. And it deals with drugs, so there is like public service announcements about drugs. Maybe we should just try to explain the whole concept at this point.

SmSh: For sure.

Kim: Basically, you know at the moment there are these companies developing these cures for epilepsy…

SmSh: Yeah, I googled all this shit and there was nothing on it. Bunch of charlatans!

Kim: [Laughs.] Well, the epilepsy thing does exist. Okay, well we’ll back up a bit. Say at the moment somebody is developing a brain implant to cure epilepsy. And then say, somebody says, ‘well we’ve got all these brain implants, why don’t we access them for pleasure.’ And then people are using these things for unethical purposes. And then we’ve though of these circuit boards and how are they going to be produced?

They’re going to be produced in these factories in Shanghai because why not. So people are producing these bootleg circuit boards and selling them all over the place. And everyone is having an amazingly good time until they “glitch”. Like they glitch and get fucked up. Like you’re watching a video on the Shanghai metro and they glitch and everything goes pink and purple.

Chris: And I’m a method actor so I’ve been getting prepared to perform as an ex-user of ultra synaptic pulse. I think it will be something quite Jello Biafra-esque. When he was just starting out and going really crazy. He’s had a big influence on me, Jello Biafra.

SmSh: So this whole thing is quite involved. Maybe Ari you could talk about what kinds of music you’d be playing.

Ari:Um. Early Public Enemy. Drug tracks. I’m very into early hip hop though. De la Soul. Stuff like that. Also dubstep.

SmSh: So you guys are all coming from Taiwan then. What would you say the differences are between Shanghai and Taiwan?

Chris: Well there’s a larger foreign influence on the nightlife here. Taiwainese kids want hip hop but they’re very specific about what they want, which is Top 40. I’ve found that in Shanghai, there are more different people, and people tend to be a bit more open minded. They’re willing to check out different stuff and if they like it they like it.

In Taiwan, it’s like ‘white guy on the microphone!’ and for one song they freak out but then the next song they’re like ‘well, what is this.’ But Taiwan is still a great place, you know.

SmSh: So you were saying you’re doing specific productions and lyrics for this one party and you’re going to release it?

Chris: Yeah, we’re doing a five-song EP thing that we’ll give away. Usually I try to do five to seven tracks. But for this party we’ll give away the one from the “Dystopia” party and then for the next one, we’ll give away the stuff from this party. It’s kind of a thing we’re trying to do to get people some music. You know with proper albums, they take like a year to make and no one buys them anymore. It’s all about one track, two tracks, so this party has sort of inspired me to get away from trying to get a record deal and trying to do albums.

You know, hip hop is weird because everyone says they’re going to do something different but the second you do something different people say, ‘well, it's not hip hop anymore.’ So I’m trying to do new things… and I think opportunity is here because people are open-minded and looking for new things. People aren’t coming in with this attitude that “This is Hip Hop” -- they at least listen to it first and then judge for themselves. You’re succeeding or failing based on something real rather than succeeding or failing to live up to someone’s expectations of what they want.

Kim: I’m just really happy with Shanghai. There is opportunity to do stuff that people remember. And that’s what we’re trying to do. There are so many nights here, and let's be honest, compared to New York, Tokoyo, London, it’s pretty easy to try to promote a night in Shanghai. In other major cities, you have to work for years until you can break in and people will let you try something.

But what we’re trying to do is do something people might think about and remember the next day. I think when you remember the best nights, there’s normally something really different about that night. So we just want that. Like when people go and remember it for whatever reason, music, show, whatever -- even if it’s not their kind of thing. And so we’re trying to do something that people can’t really have any expectations before and you don’t really know what you’re going to get.

When you see a decent film or whatever you have that residual effect that you take with you and keep and think about. If we could get that, it would be cool.

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The Dangers of UP is this Saturday at Dada bar. Event details here. More on Urban Planning at their MySpace.

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