(Electronic) music festival season is upon us, my friends, and all across the city local DJs and producers are getting their trap sets together for the enjoyment of the 15 or so people that will stop for two seconds at the electronic music stage before making their way to a proper rock 'n' roll stage. Nah, just kidding. There's a bunch of big-time electronic music festival stuff happening in the near future. Scroll down for your primer on electronic music side of Beijing festival season. Oh wait, I think they're calling it "EDM" these days. Damn. Come on back for tomorrow's "Beijing Music Festivals Primer: Rock Music" if you're more of a screeching guitars kind of guy...

Saturday, May 11, 2pm to midnight -- one day only Location/Transport: Juyongguan Great Wall AKA "Great Wall Impregnable Pass Best in the World". Location-wise, it's a mountain pass located in the Changping District of Beijing, about 60 kilometers from the city center. Here's the festival organizer's venue page for the location and here's the official tourist site for this section of the Great Wall. Your ticket comes with the option of purchasing a shuttle bus to and from the event, which is probably the easy way to get there. If you miss your shuttle bus, you're looking at taking a city shuttle bus -- Number 68 -- from the Longze Station off Line 13 in Changping District. Hey, good luck with that. By cab and car it's the Juyongguan Pass Exit off Badaling Expressway; consult the tourist site linked above for more information. Tickets: Tickets are available in the following categories: Limited Early Bird (available now, right here, 380rmb), Pre-sales (available when the Early Birds are gone, 480rmb), Door tickets (purchased at the gate on May 11, 580rmb), and in various travel packages from the organizer, which include hotel stay at the Juyongguan Great Wall Hotel, location of the official after-party. Geared towards out-of-town festival goers, our sister site SmartShanghai.com has arranged a hotel package with pentahotel in Beijing -- click on the Great Wall Festival ticketing platform for more information on that. It's available for Beijing residents as well if you want to tack on a stay-cation to the concert. On top of the general ticket is a shuttle bus ticket, which is 30rmb added on to the advance price. If you don't want to deal with getting to Juyongguan on your own, make sure you order your ticket in the category that includes the shuttle bus. You're number one, Dave, you're number one! Run-down/Line-up: As of this writing festival organizers have still not released the official, iron-clad final line-up for the event, although the most pertinent information is that Mr. David Guetta is the main headliner. That's him right there, 'making it more high' for, no doubt, a crowd of millions somewhere in the world. Not going to get too much into Hip House/French House/Dirty Pop superstar David Guetta. Here's his official website if you're interested in what he's been up to lately. On top of Guetta is one of the world's biggest names in drum 'n' bass, Andy C -- a dance world titan in his own right. Here's his official page. But what's going on with the rest of it? Well, it's two stages, that's for sure. In addition to the main acts listed on the above flyer, organizers are currently rounding out booking local DJs in support slots -- that's what going on now. We're expecting the official schedule of acts to be released this week. Main draws though: David Guetta, Andy C, and the location itself, bursting with 10 gazillion years of heritage and culture and blah, blah, blah. After-party: Information is scant on the official after-party for the event, but it will go down at the Juyongguan Great Wall Hotel after the concert is over at midnight, and feature "mystery guests" (oooo!) until 5am. We'll try to suss out more details on that in the coming weeks. Official Festival page right here *

Saturday, May 25, 2pm to 10pm -- one day only Location/Transport: INTRO Festival returns to the 50,000 m² open air plaza at Crab Island this year, that fake beach, amusement, and water park out past the fifth ring road in Chaoyang District. Here's a generalized Google map of it's location to give you an idea of where it is vis-a-vis the city center. Here's the official page of the venue. Here's the venue's simplified (Chinese-language) map. If you're cabbing it, which is probably the best way to go, take the Weigou Exit off the Airport Expressway and follow the signs. Write down these numbers if you have to call for directions: 8432 4851, 8433 5566/5588. City bus is Number 688 leaving from Dongzhimen. It's the last stop. Should be a scenic ride... On top of that, festival promoters are arranging buses running from 1:30pm from Wudaokou and Worker Stadium North Gate. We'll have more details on those when they're released. Tickets: Tickets are available in the following categories: Early Bird (available right now, right here, 150rmb), Pre-sales (available on SmartTicket from May 1, 200rmb), and Door tickets (available at the festival gate, 300rmb). You should decide this week if you want to save some money, and, failing that, before the concert date, May 25, if you still want to save money, just slightly less money. Shot of the sundown set, care of the festival organizers Run-down/Line-up: Three stages on offer for INTRO 2013 (plus a fourth "VIP Stage" if you can find your way to that one) broken up loosely by electronic genre: The Main Stage (house, techno), Syndicate Bass Stage (drum 'n' bass, dubstep), Disobedience Movement Stage (indie dance, electro, breaks). It's a local pride kind of thing -- this is the mammoth share of all DJs in this city, with a few out-of-town guests thrown in the mix. Each stage kicks off at 2pm, with DJs playing for about an hour each. Here's who's booked, listed from headliners to openers. INTRO 2013 Main Stage: QQ, Dave K, Patrick Yu, X.L.F., Ouyang, Huang Wei Wie, Nee Bing, Yang Bing, Lupen, Sistema, Mickey Zhang, Weng Weng. Visuals by Tang Yihu and guests. Syndicate Bass Stage: Blackie, Oshi, Donkey Tonk, Kay C, Clir, Markso, Flood, Verktyget, Shackup. Disobedience Movement Electro Stage: Jonas Rosch, Bite-Size Buddha, Nichifankemei, Sulumi, BB Deng, We Are Not Invited, Digital 21, Cad 73, Ludo V. Bonus VIP Stage (organized by Passphrase Agentur): Diva, Shenyue, PAK, Naxx Noise, Youga, FuNN, Van1 Here's a YouTube promo viddy of INTRO 2009, the first one. Maybe expect something like this only bigger, better, faster, more. After-party: After-party is at -- where else -- Lantern. Exact details still TBA but I'd imagine it's some variation of those Main Stage DJs keeping it going until well into the next day. Cover is 50rmb with INTRO tickets or 100rmb without. On the promotional material, organizers are citing the official website as this -- www.intro-festival.com -- but that doesn't seem to be online yet. Here's Acupuncture's homepage. *

Three days: April, 29, April 30, May 1. Acts start playing at 1:30pm and end at 9:30pm. Tickets: Pre-sale prices are 120rmb for a one-day ticket or 320rmb for a three-day pass. All categories available right now, right here. At the door it's gonna be 150 for the one-day and 400 for the whole thing. Italian producer Phonat, headlining the electronic stage on Day 1 Run-down/Line-up: Strawberry Music Festival is more of a rock thing, so come on back tomorrow for Josh's "Beijing Music Festivals Primer: Rock Music" if you're looking for a more in-depth look at the logistics of getting yourself to this thing. Here's just some info on the electronic side of Strawberry. Incidentally, MIDI is saying to hell with an electronic stage in Beijing this year, and after the brouhaha in Shanghai, that's probably a good thing. Speaking to the electronic music programing at Strawberry, you'll be heading to one of the secondary stages -- the "Alienware • Guava Electro Stage" -- which is pairing local talent with a few flown-in acts from Europe and beyond. The schedule for this stage for the three days is thus: Alienware • Guava Electro Stage (DAY 1) 2:00-3:00pm - Rigelmade (Italy) 3:00-4:00pm - DJ Guoji 4:00-5:00pm - Simon Adams (UK) 5:00-6:00pm - Jackie 6:00-7:00pm - Yang Bing 7:00-8:00pm - Wengweng 8:00-9:30pm - Phonat (Italy) VJ: VJ Yang Tiezheng Alienware • Guava Electro Stage (DAY 2) 2:00-3:00pm - Fløøød (US) 3:00-4:00pm - DJ Yoga 4:00-5:00pm - DJ K0MMY 5:00-6:00pm - Robin Lew 6:00-7:00pm - Microgram (Israel) 7:00-8:00pm - Atoned Splendor (UK) 8:00-9:30pm - Ecliptic (Mexico) Alienware • Guava Electro Stage (DAY 3) 2:00-3:00pm - Shackup 3:00-4:00pm - Chole 4:00-5:00pm - Bite-Size Buddha (US) 5:00-6:00pm - Blackie (UK) 6:00-7:00pm - Oshi (France) 7:00-8:00pm - A.M.U 8:00-9:30pm - Young Punx (UK) Bit of this and a bit of that with three international guests in the headlining slots: Phonat (Italy), Ecliptic (Mexico), Young Punx (UK). After-party: For the electronic music side of things, the after-party this year is at Dada on April 30 with Mexican trance DJ Ecliptic turning in an encore set with the Goa Productions people. Should fill up with a bunch of tweakers going mental. Free entry with a festival wristband, 50rmb without. *

Electronic Music Week is a three-day, multi-venue, muti-format event running on May 30 (@ Haze), May 31 (@ Lantern), and June 1 (@ Haze). Start times for the Thursday salon event is 8:30pm and 10pm for the clubbing events on the next two days. Tickets: Tickets are available in pre-sale two-days passes for the two clubbing events (150rmb), one-day passes to either clubbing event (80rmb), or at the door per event (100rmb). Pre-sale tickets available on SmartTicket in mid-May -- come on back for those. The Thursday salon event is free entry. Alex Flatner, preach Line-up/Run-down: This one's not really a festival but it's a bit more involved than your standard club night and it's a multi-day thing so we'll toss it in here. Local promoters FOOTPRINT足迹 are hosting a three-day Electronic Music Week (yeah, math seems a bit off), which is one salon discussion event on Thursday night and two club nights featuring international guest DJs in Lantern and Haze on the Friday and Saturday. So Thursday, May 30 is a salon discussion night at Haze featuring main guest Alex Flatner joined by local old school cats, Youdai, Weng Weng, Yang Bing and more, talking about how Alex Flatner came to be such a successful guy in the music industry. Flatner runs underground music labels Gedankensport and Circle Music and works as an A&R manager for a bunch of labels including Harthouse and Plastic City . No doubt they'll be discussing his experience in the biz and looking to put some sort of China electronic music slant on that. That's on May 30 at 8:30pm. No entry fee. Next night, May 31, the Electronic Music Week moves across town to Lantern wherein Irish-via-Spain techno producer Sian is joined by Malaysian Terence C (an ex-Zouk resident), and some local DJs for a straight clubbing night. The next night after that, June 1, Electronic Music Week returns to Haze and salon speaker Alex Flatner will be dropping some audio science alongside local DJs Yang Bing, Eric Lee, QQ, and Kaize. So that's at the end of May -- not for a while yet, but keep it in the back of your mind if you want to go. Tickets should be available on SmartTicket some time next month. After-party: The party is the after-party. McDonald's delivery maybe? ***