The Nangang district of Taipei, Taiwan’s capital city, is fringed by green, peaceful mountains. As the sun set last month, a quiet temple in the hills began to throb with the bass of a DIY rave soundsystem. 

The surreal scene was the latest party by Temple Meltdown, a rave collective started by Andrew Dawson (陳宣宇 or Chen Xuan Yu) in 2023. Dawson has been organising parties and DJing since he was 18. At first, it was because he couldn’t find any parties in his home region of Taoyuan. One day, he needed to change venues in a pinch and had the idea to ask the owners of a secluded temple if he could host his party there. 

Now 24, Dawson lives in Taipei and regularly hosts raves in temples across the country. He’s smiley and laidback, touting a snapback and hair down to his shoulders. Meeting him, it’s hard to believe he regularly stays up for 48 hours, lugging speakers up mountains and setting up DJ decks in altar rooms. Specialising in dub, jungle, and reggae, Temple Meltdown is fast becoming an institution of Taiwan’s music scene.

Taiwan is a land saturated by temples, with the country averaging almost one religious building per square kilometre. Most temples practice a blend of Buddhism, Daoism and folk religion, and each houses specific gods. They are community spaces where people pray, drink tea, eat and socialise.

Sometimes, Temple Meltdown throws parties in abandoned temples. Image from one such rave, in a massive unfinished concrete temple, went viral in a documentary by Bruno Pruhs, recently covered by Dazed. Yet the majority of the collective's raves take place with the owners’ blessing, which often comes as a surprise to foreigners used to more controlled religious expression.

Attracting gods through revelry is already a big part of Taiwanese folk religion. “Besides the act being spiritual and a physical way of talking to gods, it’s about throwing the biggest, loudest, and most hospitable bash possible for the resident deity,” Dawson explains. “This is also what Taiwanese people call 熱鬧 [renao], which can translate to lively, busy, or bustling.”

“So when we talk with the temple owners [to get permission for a rave], they always feel like we are bringing lots of energy to the temple and therefore it’s good for them and the gods too,” he continues. Ravers are encouraged to respect the sacred space, and before the party begins, Andrew prays and makes offerings to set the scene.

Temple Meltdown's creative director Olivia Delacour, 24, is originally from the UK and moved to Taiwan for the music scene. “It’s full energy. It’s being cracked wide open in real time,” she says. Delacour, as a sculptor and painter, sets the artistic tone for Temple Meltdown’s raves. 

“Temple owners always feel like we are bringing lots of energy to the temple and therefore it’s good for them and the gods too”

She and Dawson, who are partners, are the main force behind Temple Meltdown. The duo were set up by a mutual friend, who met Delacour when she was helping them craft soundsystems. Their combined creative abundance is responsible for increasingly intricate visuals, sets, and storytelling, which are tailored for each event. The next rave, marking the Lunar New Year, is themed with a motif of mysterious, video-game-like keys. 

Today, Temple Meltdown is one of many distinct vibes available in the Taiwanese music and party scene. Club darling Coral, best known by her DJ name Public Property Princess, tells me this is a recent development. “In the 90s, there were a lot of clubs,” she explains. “But the government shut [them] all down because of drugs. So we had this dead period.” 

Coral has been DJing since 2016 at the staple Taipei nightclub, FINAL. When she started, the Taiwanese music scene was just beginning to recover, with techno at the forefront and not many options beyond that. Today, she says the scene is completely different, with far more genres available. Coral spins deconstructed club music, mixing genres like Man-yao, Mandopop, Taike, and baile funk. She says it’s become more commonplace for people to throw informal parties and raves outside of the nightclub scene. 

Rave culture in Taiwan is still fairly young and developing rapidly post-Covid. DJ nc.n2o (難吸n2o) is a founder of Rave Fun Taiwan, another legendary collective and music scene pillar, which laid the groundwork for newer groups like Temple Meltdown. nc.n2o began throwing parties in the mid-2010s and built a soundsystem in 2019, which many hail as the basis for rave culture in Taiwan today. “There was no such ‘scene’ here around 2019,” nc.n2o says, “but now everyone knows they can do a party anywhere they like, and they’ve really started doing this.” Nc.n2o explains that since soundsystems have gotten better, bass-heavy music has become more popular, with the Formosa sound system widely considered the first that could handle dub. 

Similar to Temple Meltdown, Rave Fun Taiwan creates an elaborate atmosphere to tease the party before it’s begun. ”I’m more interested in participation as a kind of game, rather than viral visibility. The party starts months before the actual date,” nc.n2o says. Rave Fun Taiwan also supported the Sunflower Movement, a major student-led protest against China in 2014, which featured speakers and DJs. nc.n2o says that the vibe of the music scene changed completely after the Sunflower Movement, and that today things feel more optimistic. 

Despite harsh policing and strict drug laws, Taiwan’s rave scene is flourishing like never before. Temple Meltdown’s raves, which honour the country’s strong roots of folk religion, offer a uniquely Taiwanese spin. In that sense, they are an expression of a modern, youth-driven national identity which appears to be under mounting threat. Taiwan currently functions as a sovereign state and wishes to maintain its independence, but its status is unsettled: China still sees it as part of its rightful territory and in recent months has been accused of intimidation, or perhaps rehearsing for an invasion, by staging large-scale military drills nearby. Yet when asked if the tense atmosphere is impacting the music scene, the answer is typically a blunt no. “Not at all,” says Dawson. “You don’t really see that news in Taiwan because people just don’t care,” says Coral. And as nc.n2o puts it: “They have threatened us for decades. There’s no end of the world vibe.” In Taiwan, the party continues.