Playing Underground:
Hong Kong’s lesser-known independent music scene
Alive and thriving: The uncertain future of indie music in Hong Kong
Despite being driven out from band studios due to rising rents, indie bands in Hong Kong are alive and creating music online.
By Stephanie Ma
To Ip (left) and Hans Au (right), guitarist and vocalist of Indie rock band TYNT performs onstage during “Not Cancelled”, an indie music gig held at MOM Livehouse in Fortress Hill.
Get to know Hong Kong's indie music!
On a cool Saturday evening in March, the white walls of MOM Livehouse, in the basement of an outmoded shopping centre in Fortress Hill, shook to the beat of thumping bass.
At the 4800 sq. ft. venue, Hans Au, lead vocalist of indie rock band TYNT, swayed and softly sung to an ethereal, psychedelic melody as the band rehearsed for a gig to be held later at night.
Microphone in hand, Mr. Au’s expression was unreadable, concealed by a white surgical mask, as beads of sweat formed on his face, slowly trickling down to stick his curly black fringe to his forehead. Next to him, his three bandmates, equally sporting surgical masks, bobbed along as they played in the nearly empty livehouse.
The indie music gig, deliberately named “Not Cancelled”, is one of the few shows that went ahead in Hong Kong amidst the ongoing coronavirus epidemic that has gripped the music industry globally since January.
As the daily tally of COVID-19 infections surges and authorities enforce stricter social distancing restrictions to order a month-long closure of some 1,200 pubs and clubs, the local indie music scene is one of the hardest hit industries in Hong Kong.
Live music is almost entirely gone, filling the virtual commons with live-streamed performances instead. Most large-scale events are cancelled or indefinitely postponed, and underground live music venues have been forced into permanent shutdown.
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Diminishing
performance venues
That was the particular case for Hidden Agenda: This Town Needs (TTN), a 300-capacity indie live music venue in a ground-floor warehouse unit that was forced into closure in late February - for the fourth time in its 10 years of operation.
Opened in 2009, TTN’s former incarnation Hidden Agenda quickly attracted hordes of die-hard indie music fanatics, and has since been a live performance hot spot for both local and foreign underground acts.
Yet, due to failures in obtaining public entertainment licenses and visas for visiting bands, the business was deemed illegal by authorities and was forced to close in 2017. In 2018, Hidden Agenda moved locations, and was rebranded into the now legal TTN.
The announcement came in the format of a Facebook post, citing no income and rent arrears due to cancelled and postponed events as the major reasons leading to the club’s inevitable shutdown.
“Hong Kong’s music business has always been bleak, and with pandemics like this it will just go into a grinding halt,” the post continued. “With a lack of government support and other financial incentives, it is just exhausting and unrewarding to independently run a performance venue because the costs are just too high.”
The costs here refer to the HK$300,000 in monthly rent and other expenses needed to keep the venue running in the Kowloon burb of Yau Tong, despite making almost no income since December last year, said co-founder Joshua Chan.
“Our business model relies heavily on cash flow and future bookings to keep the venue running. When the coronavirus hit, we lost bookings for visiting bands, local artists and even small-scale events like garage sales, so it just became impossible for us to try and stick it out until the pandemic was over,” added Mr. Chan.
With the closure of TTN, Hong Kong is only left with four performance venues that host mainly indie bands, said Medius Chung, an editor at music page Zenegeist. Indie music here, as a music genre such as indie rock and shoegazing, refers to the non-commercially driven, DIY guitar-led music that evolved from post-punk alternative music in the UK during the late 1970s.
Under the influence of punk subculture in the UK and US in the 1970s, and the “do-it-yourself” ethos that it embodied in opposition to the predefined tone and style of mainstream music, the genre first surfaced in the local music scene during the late 1970s and early 1980s with first-generation indie bands such as Beyond and Blackbird.
The four venues include Sai Coeng in industrial Kwai Chung, Music Zone at Emax shopping centre in Kowloon Bay, lounge bar Terrible Baby in Jordan and MOM Livehouse in Fortress Hill, according to Mr. Cheung.
Hong Kong is left with four performance venues that mainly host indie bands, said Medius Chung, an editor at indie music page Zenegeist.
Indie music first emerged in Hong Kong during the late 1970s under the influence of UK and US punk subculture in the 1970s. Click on the video above to watch local rock band TYNT jamming at a gig in MOM Livehouse.
The vibrant stage lights dimmed as Mr. Au sang his late note. The band walked offstage, crouched down to pack up their instruments into several black, hard cases lying scattered on the floor.
For local indie musicians, the closure of TTN is a severe blow to diminishing performance opportunities when music venues are already so scarce, said Stephen Pang, synth player of TYNT, as he headed out the venue for a break.
“For smaller-bands like us, the closure of TTN meant we lost a middle ground between small and large-scale music shows,” he said.
At small venues such as MOM Livehouse, he said, the maximum capacity is around 200 people. But with the closure of midsize TTN, which can accommodate 300 to 400 people, the capacity of the next available performance venue, usually around 600 to 700 people at E-max Music zone, is already too large for lesser-known bands and newcomers to the scene.
“No promoters are willing to organise any shows and no bands will come because of the coronavirus outbreak. After today, I don’t know when we will be able to have another show again,” added Mr. Pang.
With social distancing laws in force, public gatherings of more than eight people are banned in Hong Kong, while bars, nightclubs and other public entertainment venues have been forced to close for a month-long shutdown in early April.
But even prior to the outbreak, Mr. Chung said Hong Kong indie music venues are already struggling to survive in the world’s most expensive property market. In 2018, things were made worse for bands and live houses when the city’s Lands Department reintroduced the industrial building revitalisation scheme.
The program gave landlords financial incentives to convert industrial buildings aged 15 years or more into offices and hostels, but it also drove up the capital values and rents of these spaces in districts such as east Kowloon, where many live houses and practice studios are located.
When Hong Kong transformed from a manufacturing-based to financial activity-oriented economy in the 1980s, local manufacturers relocated to mainland China, where operating costs were cheaper. Vacant industrial buildings were left behind, many of them in east Kowloon such as Kwun Tong. Over the years, these large, cheap warehouse spaces were rented out to local bands for practicing, performing and even living.
Rents and capital values for industrial buildings in Kwun Tong jumped at an annual rate of 15.1% between 2010 and 2018 after the conversion, according to a research conducted by real estate surveyor Colliers Radar in 2019. For example, rent for a 7,500 sq foot space in Kwun Tong’s The Wave building cost about $262,500 in 2015. After its revitalization in 2016, the rent rose to $338,535 in 2018, according to data provided by Midland Realty, a real estate agency.
In another report published by the Rating and Valuation Department, the rental index of private flatted factories, which calculates their annual rental price change, also climbed 15%, from 181.4 in 2016 to 209.7 in 2019.
After the revitalization scheme was introduced, these industrial spaces were refurbished and rented out for retail, leisure and office uses. Live house and nightclubs that could no longer afford the rising rents were driven out, while indie bands had to search for other spaces to perform and practice, said Mr. Chung.
Although the policy has created more office spaces, hotels, shopping centres and short-term housing, he thinks it has killed indie band’s space to create music even though government-funded institutions such as the Hong Kong Arts Development Council (HKADC) offers grants to support the scene.
After an industrial revitalization scheme was re-introduced by Hong Kong’s Lands Department in 2018, rents in industrial spaces jumped, driving out live house and bands that could no longer afford the rising rents.
“Hong Kong’s music business has always been bleak, and with pandemics like this it will just go into a grinding halt.
Joshua Chan and Steveo Hui Chung-wo, Founders of This Town Needs
HKADC Funding
Upon Mr. Pang’s return to the live house, his band met with five-member shoegazing outfit Thud, also set to play at the gig. As they unpacked and finalised their set-up onstage, strobe lights flickered on, casting the venue in vibrant hues of violet and blue.
At 9 p.m., To Ip, guitarist of TYNT, put the strap over his head, hoisting the guitar to press its weight against his body. He closed his eyes, played a chord, and the band kickstarted the gig with a fast-paced, psychedelic rock melody interweaving of plinking synths and electronic sound effects.
Downstage, an energetic audience of 70 - equally sporting surgical face masks of all sorts - closed their eyes and bobbed along to the music.
Rothchild Wong, synth player at TYNY, said HKADC subsidies are important to the indie music scene because it is difficult for indie artists to make a living in Hong Kong’s small, mainstream music-oriented market.
But Mike Mak, guitarist of indie rock band Chochukmo, said these project grants are usually catered to registered music organisations and businesses, as HKADC application rules state that applicants must provide proof of business registration and other official documents like a name list of its board of directors.
He said these criteria makes it hard for indie bands to fulfill as non-registered music organisations.
The result is that the number of applications from indie music projects for the Council’s Project Grant scheme is relatively small, accounting for merely 1.6% of all music applications it has received from 2015 to 2020, according to an email reply from the HKADC.
Support for the local indie scene from the Council usually comes in the form of promoting indie musicians in local and overseas music festivals, such as the annual Jockey Club New Arts Power Festival, where local bands such as GDJYB and tfvsjs were invited to perform at the event.
To be eligible for HKADC's Project Grant scheme, organizations must be registered. This makes it hard for indie bands to meet the requirements as non-commercial organisations, said Mike Mak, guitarist at indie rock band Chochukmo.
Shoegaze band Thud performs onstage at MOM Livehouse during a gig in March.
Making use of online platforms
Just as TYNT finished their set, five-piece shoegaze band Thud walked onstage, as the crowd behind them erupted in cheers and applause.
Frontwoman Kim Ho sang behind her white face mask, moving her fingers on the keyboard, as the band jammed to fuzzed-out, guitar-heavy tracks characterised by obscured vocals that were distributed onto the band’s Youtube channel.
The band does not make profit off streaming services like Youtube and Spotify, she said, but is using these platforms as promotion channels for their music.
“These platforms help us gain exposure and bring in more audience, so people would pay to see us perform at live shows, which is our main source of income,” she added.
With more platforms available, Mr. Wong of TYNT said the local indie circle has seen more opportunities to perform and promote their music than before. But he said, indie music in Hong Kong is still a niche subgenre that only appealed to the minority in the city’s Cantopop-dominated market.
With a relatively small audience, the market demand for indie live shows in Hong Kong is not great, added Andy Tsang, guitarist at Thud.
The result is that the band cannot schedule performances so closely together, he said, as their listeners are always the same circle of people.
Traditionally indie music has been non-mainstream, he said, unlike other larger music genres like rock and blues, it has never been easy for musicians to reach and maintain a steady listener base.
The band’s style of music is characterised by fuzzed-out, guitar-heavy tracks with obscured vocals. Click on the video above to watch Thud’s performance.
But for indie music to reach more audiences in Hong Kong, musicians have to explore more ways of distributing their music, said Cheung Chi-Wai, an associate professor at the Department of Humanities and Creative Writing at the Hong Kong Baptist University.
Live music must continue, he stressed, since it serves as a platform of practice and interaction for bands with the audience. He said bands have to also find new ways to make profit off existing streaming services, such as Spotify, to gain an audience locally and internationally.
The Hong Kong Arts Development Council must also extend its function to help artists and performing groups settle performance venues, facility support and business creation, said Chung Pei-chi, an associate professor at the Department of Cultural and Religious Studies of The Chinese University of Hong Kong.
“An ideal is to create a working system where musicians can be very professional to work full time making music,” she said.
Although Thud does not make profit off distributing music on streaming services such as Spotify, the band is using these channels to promote their work and gain more audiences, said Kim Ho, Thud’s keyboardist.
For the time being, Thud said they would continue making music despite performances and gigs being cancelled across the city because of the coronavirus epidemic that has gripped the global music industry since February this year.
“You can only find ways to make yourself more capable in order for others to know your true worth".
Chan Cheuk-wai, drummer at Thud
But for now, Mr. Wong said it is difficult for indie artists to make a living off music, with venue closures and rising rents the scene has witnessed within the past two years.
The situation is made worse this year, he added, as gigs were cancelled across the city because of the coronavirus pandemic. But despite the challenges, Mr. Tsang said, he is positive that indie music in Hong Kong will only get bigger.
“We have online platforms to gather more audience, and more advanced technology than 10 years ago to improve our skills and techniques,” he said.
For the time being, the bands said they will continue making music even if prospects are dim.
Mr. Tsang and his bandmates hope they could break even with music releases this year.
“But it is not something we can control, but we are working on to present the best version of ourselves and our work,” he said.
“You can only find ways to make yourself more capable in order for others to know your true worth”, added bandmate Chan Cheuk-wai, drummer at Thud.
Amidst cheers from the crowd, the gig drew to a close. As lights flickered on inside the live house, the crowd slowly filed out, abuzz with excitement. The bands packed up their equipment and left, determined to sustain their passion despite challenges ahead.