Despite strict noise ordinances, high cost of living and an increasingly tense atmosphere in the wake of this summer's protests, Hong Kong sustains a small but dynamic underground music scene. Stalwart promoters, such as Dennis Wong (aka Sin:Ned), gathering places like Steve Hui's Twenty Alpha in the Foo Tak Building arts hub, community building organisations like Hong Kong Community Radio, and labels like Absurd TRAX persist in carving out a space for community and alternative culture despite the factors working against them.

Sin:Ned & Sherman
“Aadam Type 00: Wish You Were Here”
Recorded live at SAAL, Hong Kong, 14 April 2019

Sin:Ned is the solo project of Dennis Wong, a longtime lynchpin of Hong Kong’s experimental music scene. Through regularly curated event series including Noise To Signal and Kill The Silence, as well as the label Re-Records, Wong has been a steadfast supporter of loud, strange, and leftfield sounds despite a lack of venues in which to consistently operate. This recording is from a collaboration with Hong Kong guitarist Sherman recorded in April 2019 at SAAL, a stalwart arts space operating since 2016 in the Kwun Tong district of Hong Kong.

Nerve
“Overload Method #2”
From Overload Method
(self released)

Steve Hui formed Nerve with four friends soon after seeing a show by Otomo Yoshihide and Hong Kong artist Xper.xr in 1993. Initially comprised as a group mashing techno, noise, tape loops and metallic percussion, over the years Nerve has evolved into Hui’s solo project in parallel with Twenty Alpha, an arts space he curates in the Foo Tak Building art hub. A veteran of the Hong Kong scene going back 25 years, Hui today serves as a central node connecting the city’s experimental and electronic music scenes.

Alexmalism
“Junk”
From TKO
(Absurd TRAX)

One floor below Twenty Alpha is the studio of Hong Kong Community Radio (HKCR), a grassroots community of musicians and DJs leveraging the internet to address a lack of physical space. Alex Yiu aka Alexmalism became involved with HKCR after earning a Master’s in sound art from Goldsmiths University of London. His debut album TKO, named after Hong Kong’s Tseung Kwan O Bay, is a collection of jagged club tracks built on a conceptual framework inspired by David Harvey’s geographies of global capitalism.

Kelvin T
“+++++ ft. lujiachi”
From Unlock Voice
(Absurd TRAX)

TKO was released on Absurd TRAX , a label arm of HKCR launched in early 2018 with an EP for then 20 year old Kelvin Tang, aka Kelvin T. Kelvin gravitated to non-mainstream dance music after discovering now-defunct club XXX, which is where the HKCR/Absurd TRAX crew first materialised. This cut from his 2018 debut LP Unlock Voice features background production work from lujiachi of Taipei doom drone duo Scattered Purgatory.

ASJ
“Desolation”
From The Road To Become One
(Absurd TRAX)

Another key member of the young crew assembled around HKCR/Absurd TRAX is Charlisha Leung, aka ASJ. Leung was initially considering life as a nun, but chose the club over the cloister while attending university in Taipei and frequenting underground nightlife spot Korner. Leung began making her own eclectic dance tunes under the name ASJ – which stands for A Spiritual Journey – and connected with the HKCR soon after moving back to her hometown of Hong Kong.

Fotan Laiki featuring YoungQueenz
“火炭麗琪 (I Want Remix)”
(self released)

Fotan Laiki cuts an unlikely figure on Hong Kong’s rap scene. Her lyrics address the struggles faced by her age cohort, the first generation to grow up in the years following the 1997 handover of Hong Kong from the UK to China. Her visual aesthetic is far more tongue-in-cheek, blending tropes of conspicuous consumption usually associated with trap with an infectious, psychedelic sense of irony. See the music video for her collaboration with fellow Cantonese rapper and Wildstyle Records co-founder YoungQueenz, which currently sits at over two million views on YouTube, for proof: YoungQueenz’s grill is conflated with Fotan’s orthodontics, as the duo flex their swagger across warehouse store rooms, clothing wholesalers and an IKEA.

Kimberley Road Union
“Erica”
From Kimberley Road Union
(Qiii Snacks)

Kimberley Road Union – named after an actual road in the heavily built up Tsim Sha Tsui area of Hong Kong – is a relative newcomer to the scene, and a welcome injection of fresh blood. Alex Yiu of HKCR/Absurd TRAX calls their recent, genre-spanning performances “dazzling”. Their self-titled debut, excerpted here, was released in May by Qiii Snacks Records, a DIY tape and vinyl label in the nearby mainland Chinese megalopolis of Guangzhou that puts out a comprehensive catalog of indie, punk, ambient, and shoegaze from the region.

David Boring
“Jane Pain”
From Jane Pain
(self released)

Blistering post-punk quintet David Boring is a scream in the dark, a bright spot in the otherwise anaemic landscape of underground Hong Kong rock. Their songs run long and veer towards the conceptual. “Jane Pain”, released shortly before the band made their US debut at the SXSW music festival this past March, is framed by the band as a psychological “character study” about the “development of a destructive coping mechanism as a response to a profound existential anxiety”.

Samson Young
“Ageha.Tokyo”
From Streya
(New Focus)

Born in Hong Kong and educated in Australia, Samson Young received a PhD in composition at Princeton before launching a career as a sound and visual artist. His work was recently featured in the Guggenheim’s One Hand Clapping group show, as well as the soon-to-open Performa 19. Young’s background as a composer of traditional concert music is evident on recordings like this one from 2018, a delicate balancing of acoustic and digital timbres made for a compilation of new music composition assembled by violinist Olivia De Prato.

Edwin Lo
“11th September. Aberdeen, Hong Kong.”
(self released)

Edwin Lo’s practice as an artist and researcher spans music, video, installation art, sound art, and video game design. “It is not a must to convey politics in art,” Lo tells The Wire, “but I would say we, as human beings, should at least be sensitive to the political milieu, be wise and critical, especially in this epoch filled with misinformation and irresponsible accusations made by the police state.” Lo’s contribution to this playlist is a field recording of recent protests in Aberdeen, an urban area on the southwest of Hong Kong island. Though the numbers of protesters have waned from their peak earlier this summer, Lo’s recording from 11 September shows that the voices of Hong Kongers concerned for the future is a persistent element of the city’s soundscape, as protests enter their fourth month.

Fiona Lee
“Hong Kong 9 June To 12 Sep 2019”
(self released)

Field recordist and musician Fiona Lee has consistently captured the overwhelming sound of the protests from early June, when protesters numbered over a million according to some reports, through to September, as public gatherings persist. The drones of mass movement, chanting, drums and nervous background chatter that she has captured and collaged convey a more direct, visceral snapshot of the protests than any still image could. “Sometimes, visual documentation can’t fully reveal the experience and atmosphere of the protest,” says Lee. “I hope for these recordings to be references for future creators who want to understand the protest from another perspective.”

Read Josh Feola's full report in The Wire 428. Wire subscribers can instantly access the article as well as the full issue via the online archive.