Something big is happening in Hong Kong.
The fascinating, multicultural metropolis has never been on many people’s lips as a hotbed of forward-thinking electronic music, but a series of eye-catching events by the Hong Kong-based Magic Room have raised the bar to exciting new levels.
Earlier this year, they attracted nearly 2,000 party people to Hong Kong Island’s Vitality Park to dance under the stars to US deep house duo Bedouin and Danish DJ Nandu, alongside Magic Room residents and local up-and-comers.
Heavyweight names like Andhim, Mano Le Tough and Nic Fanciulli are among the other DJs that have headlined Magic Room events in Hong Kong within the past 12 months, and the promoters have been extending the invitation across Asia and beyond, with events in Thailand, Macau, Singapore and even Mexico City under their belt.
That’s in addition to the team’s other ventures – record label Nodes Rec. and recording studio 22Systm – which together with the parties are beginning to cultivate an ecosystem of creativity and opportunity for DJs, producers and dancers across Asia.
The 10-strong team behind Magic Room, Nodes Rec. and 22Systm is led by Frenchman Léo Arbez, a DJ who spent many years working in label management in Europe before moving to Hong Kong – initially for two years and then permanently in 2019.
“The first time I arrived in Hong Kong was in 2013,” he says. “My business partner brought me here for the first time to play for a club. It turns out that I really loved the city.
“I spent two years here and then moved back to Europe, but I really always wanted to come back again because the city is very unique, and there was nothing much being done about music and culture in the past few years.
“When I came back, I could feel that house music was rising up from 2017-18. And I said, ‘Wow, maybe there is something to do here in Hong Kong’.”
Arbez started small with a series of illegal parties, “playing cat and mouse with the police”, as he puts it. Six years later, they are attracting crowds of highly discerning clubbers to dance to some of the biggest and best names in global house music, as well as incubating a new generation of Asian talent.
“We started with 25 people, under the radar,” Arbez explains. “At the time, the clubs didn’t want to give us a chance, but instead of saying, ‘we can’t do it’, we found a karaoke place, turned it into a club and we were doing rave afterparties until 7am.
“After two or three weeks, we were at 250 people and I said, ‘oh, there is something happening here’.”
After that, things started to grow incrementally with events in various venues, before the blockbuster event that Arbez describes as Magic Room’s first turning point – 500 ravers on top of an iconic shopping complex, with breathtaking views over the city below..
“We did an event at The Peak Tower on Hong Kong Island, where no one had done it before, with the first live stream of Magic Room, which you can see on YouTube.
“At that point in the city, people said, ‘Wow, I can’t imagine that you guys did that, because it has always been the dream of everyone’. But we really did it.”
The exposure from the event and its live stream opened doors. Investors came on board and things got bigger, but always with the same ethos. For Arbez and his team – some of whom were members of the Magic Room community of clubbers before coming on board to work for them – house music is in the blood, and quality matters.
“We’ve seen that the people now have taste compared to four or five years ago, because not only us but many, many promoters really promote that music in a good way,” he says. They really took risks.
“People are already sick of afro-house, they really want to push forward, listen to new music. They want to discover. This is what is really important.
“Before, it was the mindset of going to a club to listen to Top 50, but now they go somewhere to experience something and listen to new music and new genres, which is completely different.”
Arbez sees Magic Room, Nodes Rec. and 22Systm as a way of helping local artists to find their way in electronic music, and promoting cross-cultural exchange.
“For all the events we do, we want to have at least one or two local DJs,” he says. “If we go to India, we want to have one or two Indians opening, and then we have international artists and us, the crew of Magic Room, playing.
“This is why we have the record label – we want to find people that can be part of the team of artists of Magic Room, that they can grow, benefit from the ecosystem, grow their career, and then go to conquer the West without us.
“I think Asia suffered a lot of missing soft power in music, especially in house music. I think it’s time now to rebalance everything a bit. House music has always remained in Europe, but now I think there is a moment where Asia can stand.
“Trust me, musically-wise, there is a lot to do. I recorded a Tibetan monk playing some instrument that is very uncommon and doing the voice of meditation, very deep, and it’s so amazing. To combine this with the drums of house music and mixing that with synthesiser, it’s just different.”
You can hear that blending of sounds in the first album project released on Nodes Rec. Handle With Care is a collaboration between the core Magic Room team of Milam, Leon (Arbez’ music alias), Mo-Shi and Tushido, along with the more established names Colossio, ReiRei and Ken Fan. Its mix of sumptuous deep house with Asian voices and instrumentation points the way forward for the label and the scene at large.
“We want to show to the West that this record label is representing Asia,” Arbez says. “We’re going to release a few EPs from Hong Kong artists and Asian artists. We also have two radio shows; one will be showcasing artists from Asia, and one will be more international, to recognise the brand and do that crossover.
“For the recording studio [22Systm], word of mouth needs to arrive in Hong Kong, in the city, so slowly but surely people start to come, and then we just keep pushing. We have everything now ready, we just need to keep doing and doing and doing, every day.”
And as for where it all started – the Magic Room parties – the plan is to keep expanding across Asia with events before the end of the year in Thailand, India, the Philippines, and Japan – as well as back home in Hong Kong.
Arbez adds: “There is a movement, and it’s changing. People from Asia are starting to go to Burning Man, they go to Ibiza, so they are starting to understand what we’re trying to do. And they are happy to see that we want to combine that movement and represent Asia.
“We want to create something that people can follow and keep the movement going – not to expats but to the locals that embrace the movement, and leave the creativity to them.”
Follow Magic Room, Nodes Rec. and 22Systm at magicroomhk.com