After Megadeth, Crystal Castles, Mew and more last week, this weekend is another busy one live music-wise in Shanghai. And what with the arrival of Low, Cold Cave and Years & Years in town you could be forgiven for overlooking the fact that a major new gig venue will be 'soft opening' in the city in the next few days.
But that's what's going on in a shopping mall in Hongkou this weekend, as Modern Sky Lab (softly) opens to the public for the first time. (They say their proper opening will come in August with a series of big shows - more on that soon.)
You'll likely know Modern Sky as the organisers behind the annual Strawberry Music Festival in Shanghai; you might also know them for their EDM festival Myth and for being a record label. Not content with taking their Strawberry festival brand to Chinese cities you've never heard of, opening offices for their label in Liverpool and hosting occasional international fests (including New York and Helsinki), Modern Sky have also been rolling out their own gig venues over the last few years.
Beijing has had a Modern Sky Lab since 2015 and Kunming got one last year - now it's our turn, with Modern Sky Lab Shanghai opening in the new Hall of the Moon shopping complex near Linping Lu and Youdian Xincun metro stations.
We got a sneak preview of the place a couple of weeks ago when they hosted a mini-after party for Strawberry Festival there, with a bloke from The Vaccines playing one of the worst DJ sets we've ever seen to a handful of over-excited competition winners.
Still, although the space was a bit of a work in progress (they hadn't completely finished the main floor area yet for example), we got a pretty good idea of how it's going to look and it's a well laid out venue. It's like a slightly more compact MAO Livehouse, though thanks to a mezzanine and a narrow third floor balcony they reckon they can hold around 1,500 people.
There were still lots of hoardings up when we were there, but the Modern Sky people are promising a café, merchandise shop (they're on the third floor of a mall after all) and also some sort of craft beer offering as part of the venue. That last bit might just amount to them serving the 'Rock Beer' bottles that come with artwork of Chinese bands on (Duck Fight Goose IPA anyone?), but we shall see.
The venue will be properly put through its paces this weekend when it opens with a show from long-running Ningxia folk-rock act Buyi, followed by a gig from Beijing garage rockers Casino Demon. Beyond that, if the country's other Modern Sky Labs are anything to go by, we can expect a mix of DJ and live band events, probably weighted toward Modern Sky signees.
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