Spykee is launching a new Thursday night series at Korner and it's free

Weekends in Taipei have become inundated with parties that center around big DJs, supercharged dance floors and epic hangovers. What ever happened to sit and chill?

Spykee is about to change all that.

The much loved local DJ, who is well known for his Dance Rock Taipei parties, an indie music shop called 2manyminds and was also one half of the DJ duo Tomodachi even before that, has been rather quiet as of late but this week he launches a new Thursday night series at Korner that is the opposite of what every other promoter in the city is doing.

“This past year I just realized that the city doesn’t need any more hype weekend nights – in fact we have enough, don’t we?”

But Thursday’s are a still a tough sell in Taipei, with many weekend events in the city still struggling to draw crowds, but Spykee says that selling tickets and crowds are not his intention. In fact, there will no cover at Korner on Thursdays.

“It will be more of a casual and mellow night to drink and just chill, just like my resident set at Underworld in 2009,” he explained. “There should be a place/bar/event like this in every modern city but since we can’t find one in Taipei, I decided to make one.”

Underworld was a small but very popular basement bar in that served up chill underground electronica and rock music with a side of cheap beer and good conversations. It closed in 2013.

The music direction of the night might feature a bit of dance music, but Spykee plans to run the gamut as far as genres go. He says the playlist will be made up of mellow grooves in all genres, like indie rock, Motown soul, 90’s Ninja Tunes, 70’s grooves, hip-hop, Taiwanese pop and some indie stuff of course.

“I just want to make a music bar. Artists I’ve been listening to a lot these days include Detroit Emeralds, Fatima, Tatsuro Yamashita, Hot Chocolate, David Bowie, Emerson Lake & Palmer, Nas, The Herbalist, Kid Koala, Nina Kraviz, and Maya Jane Coles.”

Fans of Spykee will be happy to know that he is the only resident for now but plans to invite guest DJs in the future.

Korner will be open from 9pm to 2am every Thursday beginning Thursday October 29th, 2015.

See our spotlight on Korner here.