Our friends electric

The people behind festival giant, Midi are organizing their first-ever event devoted entirely to electronic music, which will be held on Saturday.

The organizer, which also puts together the annual rock Midi Festival in Shanghai and Beijing, has invited 27 Chinese and overseas DJs, music producers and performers for this year's Midi Electronic Music Festival.

There will be three stages featuring different genres of electronic music. "The bass stage will be playing high energy electro, dubstep, and drum and bass," said Stephen Dowler, one of Midi's organizers and its director of operations. "The second stage will feature hip-hop, reggae, moombathon and trap music, while the third is dedicated to traditional electronic dance music such as techno, house, minimal and trance."

Raising awareness

Some of the bigger names in the electronic music scene who will be appearing include Victor Vango, Siesta, Cha Cha and Ben Huang.

"China is not really that familiar with other kinds of popular music besides traditional rock," said Dowler. "But DJ music is the music of today. It is popular everywhere else in the world but it is really underrepresented in China. We wanted to give it a platform, and we decided to do it through the Midi Festival."

This year's festival has been set up in cooperation with an international organization called Green Drinks which aims to raise awareness of environmental issues. "We want to use the event to promote green living and to raise public awareness of PM 2.5," said Dowler. PM 2.5 is the measurement of a type of air pollutant particle that is smaller than 2.5 micrometers, and which can cause asthma, bronchitis and cardiovascular diseases. "Through the channels of music and art, we want to promote the ideals of environmentalism," he added. During the festival, organic food and drinks will be available, and the festival volunteers will all be wearing clothes made from reclaimed or recycled garments.

Live action

Apart from the music, the festival will also be hosting live painting, parkour displays, skateboarding and fire jugglers.

The organizers are expecting around 10,000 people to attend the one-day festival. The festival is taking place right around Halloween and organizers are encouraging people to dress up in spooky costumes. "In its beginnings, electronic music was a type of underground music and people used to dress up in crazy costumes to express their eccentric side," he added.

Date: October 27, 12:30 pm to 9:30 pm

Venue: Lujiazui Binjiang Avenue 陸家嘴濱江大道

Address: The audience entrance is in the middle of the channel of Silver City (9 Yincheng Road) near Pudong Road South 觀眾入口在銀城路9號雙輝大廈近浦東南路

Tickets: 120 yuan (pre-sale), 200 yuan (at the door)

E-mail reserve@PubCrawlShanghai.com for details of buses being laid on