Clash was in China’s industrial city of Shanghai to witness a cross cultural musical exchange brought together by Smirnoff, symbolically mixing it up back in the city that helped Senor Smirnoff forge their empire back after the October Revolution displaced the industrialist and he fled his hometown of Moscow.
Now Smirnoff, proving that it’s possible to have original nights both home and abroad, set their cat amongst the pigeons by enlisting the help of one of the world’s most eclectic DJs – Tom Middleton – to blur, then smash down a few musical boundaries in a country where social walls are tumbling Domino Rally style.
As part of their schedule of world events the organisers have demanded that all their talent collaborates with the local music exponents. Whereas Faithless rewrote their music to accommodate Moscow’s Philharmonic orchestra, Tom Middleton devised a clash co-ordinating five Chinese live drummers and five shit-hot scratch DJs to toy and morph one of the globe’s best known loops of music. With the Westerner throwing in samples, loops and presenting the collaboration in his own worldly wise ways, his task was to unite two polarised audiences in a culture he freely admitted knowing zilch about. Recipe for disaster? Read on!
Here we present an exclusive video of Tom’s improvised collaboration in Shanghai with drummer and DJs –
