News to Ooze: Strawberry 2013, XTX, Juratt, Jue ….

so, with May approaching, Strawberry Festival draws first press blood: Dates have been announced for April 29-May 1 for both Beijing and Shanghai. This is gonna be a tricky one if they have to use the same bands to play both cities. It will also present an interesting dilemma for some of the acts that tend to play both MIDI and Strawberry. I wonder if they’re gonna be locked in to similar contracts like they had last year. If so, MIDI has their work cut out for them.

You might remember Juratt and his Sans-Famille album from year and a half or so ago.. well, he’s back with a new album and has a release date set fro 3/28 at Yugong. This one really came out of nowhere! I’m actually listening to it right now and he’s gone completely progressive on this. It feels like he’s taken a few pages out of mamer’s book but without the gloominess.

Jue Festival is slowly winding down but there are some good shows left in them this week, especially with Gang of Four hitting Yugong Wednesday alongside AV Akubo. They have put together a nice mix tape ( can you call it tape if it comes on a USB stick? that sound soooo wrong!) with tracks from pretty much everyone that participated in the festival including Gang of Four, AV Okubo, Grimes an my grandma. You can get it apparently at any of the next Jue shows, 50 bucks, and all proceeds go to morning tears. That’s worth it in my book y’all. and you get to keep that shiny 4GB USB card.

The Wacken 2013 elimination rounds kicked off last weekend at Club 13 in Wudaokou with an eclectic mix of heavier bands taking place in the event. It’s not all death/trash this time around with even the likes of Jacky Danny taking part in the whole thing. Keep up with the action on the Painkiller Mag website. If i were to believe the rumours, some interesting delegation will be leaving China for the festival in August.

Tickets for Xie Tian Xiao at Gongti have already started moving with the two lower priced tiers sold out. Your next cheapest bet is the 380 to 1K tickets and something tells me they will be selling quite a few of them tickets. The PR behind this record release is gigantic with his face and his new album all over the place. They’re sold through Chinaticket right now. After initially being weirded out by the new songs, they’ve started growing on me like a fongus. Old Xie has a knack for writing songs that resonate in the brain’s membrane.