Modern Sky’s Strawberry Fest is rolling out over 10 cities this year including Wuhan, Xi’an, Shenzhen, and the music centres of Shanghai and Beijing. We’ve delayed this post, as we were sure the topic of Strawberry would crop-up during the panels at this year’s Sound Of The Xity conference in Beijing.
They’ve stacked an impressive lineup of foreign acts, having announced a couple of days ago that Justice would be performing their first live China show (bar their appearance at Bar Rouge in 2012). The duo will be joined by Cut Copy, HiM (with their unique brand of ‘love metal’ as per their 2003 album title), post-rockers Explosions In The Sky and AC Slater. They’ve really honed in on all the core audiences here, with this being the first year they have booked international headliners that are also near the top of bills in other more developed markets; an interesting move in lieu of the likes of Travis who headlined last year.
Indeed, the festival has garnered itself a great deal of praise, with DJ WENGWENG (Founder of INTRO Electronic Music Festival) noting that China’s festivals need to support local talent to sustain their futures. Strawberry is a great example of a festival that has managed to balance the need to attract top talent, with the need to build brand credibility with local audiences and support the local talent which will (hopefully) rise to the top of the festival bills in the near future.
UPDATE:
Strawberry has also confirmed movie star and singer Maggie Cheung and her band, more at CityWeekend Beijing.