Get your dancing shoes on for Taipei’s best-loved festival of all that is weird and wonderful: The Urban Nomad Opening Freakout. Here’s all the info on the festival including the timetable, music clips and top tips.

The News Lens
Date: 2019/04/11
By: Cat Thomas

Credit: Urban Nomad

Urban Nomad Opening Freakout has a firmly established reputation for bringing the deeply weird and quirky right to Taipei’s doorstep and this year promises to build on that tradition. The festival proper – which features 30 bands and DJs performing across three stages alongside other performing arts and a dash of installation art – is happening from 2 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday (April 13-14) at what is arguably Taipei’s best festival spot: Tiger Mountain.

Freakout is well-known for upping the ante each year. Previous years have seen bands with giant shrimp costumes: Drowned Shrimp (Japan), electropop wonder Trippple Nippples (Japan) with their deliciously weird stage performance and numerous other delightfully odd yet excellent indie Japanese bands headline the festival. Last year Angelo Moore of Fishbone stole the show somewhat with his funk set which had the crowd jumping on the closing night. This year the organizers have cast their net wider with acts from Korea playing for the first time, plus bands from Canada and the U.S. From its roots as a one-night party in 2008, Freakout has grown into a weekend-plus event: This year will see pre-party events on Thursday and Friday, along with warm-up gigs in Kaohsiung.

Opening Freakout is not only a music festival: There is a strong emphasis on performance art threading both through the carefully curated music acts and, since 2018, in the form of the circus stage. There’s also an Art and Merchandise market onsite, and a positive smorgasbord of food and drink available.    [FULL  STORY]