THE NEW ATTITUDE OF THE NEON EMPIRE

by Alexander Lendrum

Growing up in a city like Hong Kong exposes you to a very special blend of East meets West. e world has seen the harmony and dichotomy of these two regions through myriad depictions, from films to fashion to food and beyond. What many don’t see, however, is how Hong Kong and Asia as a whole have responded to the long-lived influence the West has had across the continent. Being half Chinese and half English, born in Hong Kong while spending a stint at boarding school in Phuket, ailand, both were essentially a playground during adolescence. My peers and I would sneak out to drink the night away at a ridiculously young age, navigating the streets, bars and clubs as fluidly as monkeys within their own jungle’s turf. Looking back, it’s shocking how easy it was for us to infiltrate the nightlife scene legally reserved for adults, but at the time, we were obsessed with experiencing all the creative ways Asia would o er its nocturnal activities.

Now well into my thirties, it’s a fascinating journey when reminiscing about the way Asia’s nightlife landscape has shi ed and evolved over the years. e cities I’ve experienced were always relatively safe, as many a luent metropolitan cities in Asia are. So back in the day, starting your night with a “7-11 beer crawl” as you drunkenly found your way to an underground BYOB event hosted by a new music collective from France was “just another weekend”. Flash forward to today and you’ve got something similar but now hosted by local communities. Looking specifically at Hong Kong, this is a big step forward for locals, and by that mean both the local Chinese and the local expatriates, which consist of a wide range of non-Chinese nationalities either born or living in Hong Kong. To put it simply, as far as events, parties and concerts go, many major Asian cities have relied on the influence and the production of international names and entities for a long time. If they’re from a recognised Western city, it was worth checking out on that fact alone. My high-school friends Tom and Arthur Bray – who run music and creative collective Yeti Out – can a est to this. “In 2013–14, people in Shanghai would come out to see an act just because they’re from New York City,” they say. That mentality of thinking that something is creatively “worthy enough” because it has stemmed from the West has recently been rapidly changing. ere’s a new a itude throughout the neon empire, where local Asian talent and creative thinkers alike are proud of what they can bring to the table. “More so these days, there are local artists that are much more successful – on-par or even be er than an international name,” explains Tom as we discuss the current state of Asia’s nightlife scene.

Together with their third Londonbased partner Eri Ali, Yeti Out operates as a community and central hub that brings together musicians, designers, event promoters and more from around the world in a refreshingly unique way. They have a tenacity to constantly push the envelope with experiences, utilising abstract facets of traditions and deep-culture cuts to push local boundaries far beyond expectation. “We’re always trying to outdo ourselves and create diversity and inclusion within our programmes,” says Tom.

I’ve seen Yeti Out help to flourish international communities, such as those in Egypt, Los Angeles and London, however Asia sits as a predominant region due to the Bray twins being based there. As such, they’re on the front line when it comes to working with local names. As Tom puts it, “Every [Asian] city that we go to has di erent pockets of music heads or promoters, they just don’t know each other. ey’re the same creative people, just from di erent cultural backgrounds. We’re trying to bring them together to help grow the collective Asian scene while still keeping the diversity alive.”

I’m now living in Los Angeles, but whenever I go back to Hong Kong, see the shi Tom talks about. ere’s this new energy from local talent that is putting forth elements close to home, be it elements taken from their local cultural backgrounds to making good use of traditional spaces that highlights who they are and where they come from. “We did this event in Seoul at these 14th-century traditional wooden houses called hanoks which no one has ever considered as an event space,” Tom recounts.

It’s that Asian creative pride which is now coursing through the entertainment pulse of Asia, and like Yeti Out, what Soho House is doing for the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region is yet another testament to this growth. Tom also serves as Soho House’s APAC Events Curator for its Cities Without Houses, a new programme that extends the social club’s community, membership, events and pop-ups to cities that don’t yet have an official House. His work there offers another avenue to help amp lify the rich cultural sounds and sights of APAC through events such as Soho Rising, Secret Sounds and Soho Sessions.

Stretching across eight APAC countries, with five more to be added by the end of the year, what Tom and Cities Without Houses are doing right now is twofold. ere’s the aforementioned spotlighting of local APAC creative scenes, and then there’s the next step: bringing that to the rest of the world. Asian culture has indeed influenced other regions in the past, but I’m not talking about a “Bruce Lee” sneaker drop at END. It’s about bringing burgeoning acts, sub-genre names and underground collectives from Asia to a global audience.

What was once us kids in Hong Kong having to deep dive for hours on the internet to find that elusive word-of-mouth DJ from Bristol, is now the Bristol kid looking up who the Yeti Out collective from Hong Kong are. “It’s wild to see that when we touch down in Europe for parties in east London or Paris Fashion Week, we’re seeing kids that we’ve met everywhere from Shanghai to Tokyo. And then there are new faces that are fascinated with the Pan-Asian music scene,” describes Tom.

Today’s generation is feeling the influence of the neon empire making its way across seas. Promising artists such as Awich, Shygirl, Charity SsB, Vinida and Gold Fang, to name a few, are ge ing their much-deserved international limelight thanks to the curation of Tom, Yeti Out and Soho House. eir continued effort to bridge the gap between music, fashion, art, film and food are laying down the bricks for a new foundation of Asia-Pacific’s creative landscape, one lambent night at a time.

Alexander

Lendrum is a freelance writer