Last Saturday, Beijing tweakers, freakazoids, spazz cases, mutants, ravers, revelers, wasters, spongers, rakes, orphans, reprobates, vagabonds, vagrants, caterwaulers, figurants, hoofers, travelers, vandals, pirates, pillagers, and a bunch of goddamn high school-looking kids in body paint stomped on the Capital Steel Factory (Shougang) for the annual INTRO Electronic Music Festival and, hey, it let it be declared with resolute and unwavering certainty: it was pretty fucking rad. Ripping on Chinese music festivals is an enjoyable and fun pastime for seasoned Beijingers -- sound and production usually suck, organization usually sucks, getting booze usually sucks, getting water usually sucks, local bands suck, international artists suck, lines suck, crowd sucks, food sucks, toilets suck, location sucks, getting there sucks, getting back sucks, people suck. God, do people ever suck. Suck, suck, suck. None of that was true about this thing. Okay, there's always room for improvement-- making it right next to my house would be pretty right-on -- but it would be tough to complain about this year's INTRO. It was a pretty definitive statement that Beijing can pull off a well-organized music festival -- an electronic one at that. "This is good, like, compared even to the rest of the world, man", was the argument proffered to me by some brohammer in the line to the shitters. The location: Star of the show, of course, was the venue. This crazy damn venue. The Capital Steel Factory (Shougang) is a massive derelict steel factory that looks both obsolete and crumbling in parts, and alien and futuristic in others. It was gigantic. Towering smokestacks reaching for the sky, crumbling warehouses, train tracks disappearing into overgrowth, black soot underfoot, networks of pipes snaking through the sky -- it was super neat looking. It lent this sort of steam punk-through-the cultural revolution vibe to the proceedings that had everyone -- since we were at an electronic dance music festival -- searching for the apt metaphor to contextualize the booming, buzzsaw bass music with the grimy, crushing industrialization of the scene. Something was happening that was spinning the past and future, east and west, young and old into a crazy kaleidoscope. But, yeah, basically, the venue was the showdown scene in Terminator 2. Getting there wasn't that bad. You basically had to rinse out every single stop on Line 1 -- it was the second to last one -- and then catch the festival-organized shuttle bus, a city bus, or black cab at the subway stop. The volunteer directing people to the shuttle was super nice. Super duper nice considering her job placed her about 1.5 klicks outside the actual event itself for the day. The production: Sound on all three stages was passable with the standout being The Syndicate stage, who were relying on Sennheiser to drop the hammer. And they did. Robustly. Apparently, the bass was so thunderous, when they were sound-checking that morning, the adjacent warehouse structure started crumbling down. They also had more structures enclosing their space, which compressed the sound into the audience area. Sound quality on the other two stages -- the Main Stage and the Disobedience Movement stage -- was decent but flawed. Main stage was a bit washed out in attempting to pump predominantly house and tech beats to a massive open-air courtyard. The Disobedience Stage was a bit shrill and harsh in stretches. Sulumi's set on that stage cut out a few times, but that was probably his own gear struggling under the stress of his spazzoid electro -- didn't notice any other performers having that problem on that stage. No real complaints though. It was definitely ON. The festival layout was great. Very well-organized. Virtually no sound bleed between the stages and the idiosyncratic location was exploited to the effect that each stage had its own distinct backdrop and feel. Moving around the grounds was a breeze and it was just really the perfect size for the amount of people there. These guys actually invented dubstep back in 1973 but back then it was called "pounding on some shit with giant sledgehammers 'cause we're making some steel, son" The music: With almost no international bookings, the line-up at INTRO deployed on three stages was more of a snapshot of this current point in time of electronic music in this city, and thus emblematic of both the good and bad present in Beijing's electronic music scene. There's a nice, begrudging sense of community in Beijing's electronic music, but it's not necessarily the most forward-thinking place on earth. The main stage in particular was dominated by house, tech, house, tech, house, tech, house from the more well-traveled cadre of Beijing DJs, and that's all well and good -- it was the mandate of the stage after all -- but, in my opinion, they could have switched up the bookings with some fresher sounds to break up the 10-hour block of straight nnn tsst, nnn tsst, nnn tsst, nnn tsst. At times, they were throwing down that good ol' taxi cab advertisement house music, which is alright, I suppose, for a nightclub at late night, but maybe harder to get behind at some big-ass open-air festival. At any rate, the crowd was definitely down with what they were hearing. Both the secondary stages were moving people, and the main stage itself started working out when the sun went down and that unreal light show started. One thing Beijing does very well is dish out the drum 'n' bass, and The Syndicate stage had people flipping the fuck out from about 4pm onwards with a mix of hard bass sounds, a bit of hip hop, wobble drop dubstep, and, predominantly, that d 'n' b. The booze: …was plentiful. But damn it was pretty pricey. Options were vodka and red bull (of course, damn ravers) for 40rmb and / or canned beer -- Yangjing, Tsing Tsao -- poured into a plastic cup for 40rmb. Yeah, a can of beer for 40rmb, which is, of course, fucking shenanigans -- that's just the truth -- but at the same time you kind of didn't mind so much because it was tossing some coin back at the promoters who had so exceeded expectations for the thing. Rumor floating around was that INTRO somehow managed to secure the location rent-free, and that's great, but with virtually no commercial branding at the thing, the money had to come from somewhere. In terms of the black market, it was scarce at the start of the afternoon but by around 8pm at night every second guy in attendance was slinging cans out of a backpack. It got real excessive, to the point that the touts were setting up their own tables of beer and selling with impunity. Option C was finding anyone wearing an "artist" badge and telling them, "oh, wow you're such an incredible DJ" and trying to scam out some of their backstage booze. Drum 'n' bass DJs -- bunch of suckers, let me tell you. The shitters: Could have been more of them. Lines got a bit long as the evening waned on and your humble faux journalist was witness to a solid throw-down between some irate ladies at one of the port-a-potties, which was possibly sparked due to the difference in opinion at the necessity of the practice of queuing. The security: Super rad dudes as always. At the Disobedience Stage the crowd actually mounted the stage and speakers and the security guys looked at each other and shrugged. There was no stopping it. These white people are crazy. The crowd: This guy won. This guy came in second. *** The Bottom Line: Give it up to these INTRO cats. And the organizes of the respective stages. It was an incredible festival. The bar is set really, really high not just for electronic festival events but festivals in China in general. REWIND. * Big thanks to Mao, for being the nicest guy to ever shove a camera people's faces. If you'd like to see SmartBeijing's full photo gallery of INTRO 2013, click here.