There have been strange goings-on in southeast Asia’s indie rock scene of late. Like when legendary post-rockers Mogwai last month played Bandung, which is, by the way, a city in Indonesia. Could there really have been a paycheck involved? Is Singapore really now cool enough to host the Flaming Lips, as it did in late 2010? And can we believe that Hong Kong, that once dithering cultural desert, last year sold out a 3,000-person venue for a hipster band like MGMT?
Until now, no rock promoter has ever conceived of Southeast Asia — Taipei included — as a cohesive market, much less a profitable one. But this is exactly the vision that Hong Kong’s Untitled Entertainment has been developing over the past two years, and its wave is finally beginning to break across Taiwan. Last month, the company brought Brooklyn-based indie rockers The Pains of Being Pure at Heart to Taipei as part of an Asia tour, and on Wednesday, it will bring over four young bands with lots of British music industry buzz for a showcase comparable to what you could see at the world’s top-tier music festivals, like Glastonbury or Australia’s Big Day Out. The showcase, called the People’s Party, will assemble the groups Bombay Bicycle Club, Metronomy, The Naked and Famous, and The Jezabels for single-day performances in Taipei, Hong Kong, Jakarta and Singapore.
Then next month and in March, Untitled will produce Taipei shows for UK rock groups The Vaccines and The Horrors. In Taiwan, all of these concerts will happen at Legacy Taipei.
Photo courtesy of Untitled Entertainment
“We’re trying to create building blocks that make touring for rock bands feasible on a regional basis,” says Justin Sweeting, music director at Untitled Entertainment.
If most of these bands — and especially those chosen for the People’s Party — have something in common, it’s that they are very up-and-coming. In other words, they run counter to Asia’s reputation for hosting aging rockers who come simply to cash in — like Bob Dylan and Deep Purple. These are bands that have probably not yet peaked.
The Jezabels (from Australia) and The Naked and Famous (from New Zealand) both released debut CDs last year. Both groups also feature dynamic female vocalists, intense guitar-based atmospherics and have played some pretty big stages between them.
The Naked and Famous wowed both SXSW and Fuji Rock audiences last year, and The Jezabels will play at this year’s NME Music Awards ceremony in the UK. London’s Bombay Bicycle Club is a darling of BBC Radio 1 and is also known for rousing stage shows at top UK festivals. The band performs with a rowdy, slightly retro guitar sound, and though it has three albums, the group’s members would just be graduating university now had they not chosen rock ’n’ roll instead.
Metronomy, also UK-based, is an indie group with a sound that’s moved from catchy electronic twee to radio friendly indie-pop with its 2011 hit album, The English Riviera.
Taipei gets such bands occasionally, but seldom all in one shot. For most local promoters doing concerts at mid-capacity live houses like The Wall (600 people) and Legacy (1,200), the cost of such a showcase would be off-putting, to say the least. But operating on a regional scale may help Untitled solve the problem of travel costs, and Sweeting says they hope to do this without taking ticket prices to Japanese levels. This is possible, Sweeting says, because he believes that Asia is one of the world’s fastest growing music markets.
“In terms of the number of shows happening, the number of acts touring across the region, everything is scaling up,” he says.
Western music markets may be bigger and more mature, but they are also relatively saturated, he says, adding that some Australian and UK festivals are closing down and that artist agents from LA to London are increasingly interested in Asia.
The trend mirrors what has already happened with dance music. From Tiesto to Snoop Dogg, the world’s top DJs and rappers have been regulars in Taipei for a decade, but because DJs often travel solo, they are in many cases cheaper to book than multi-member rock bands.
Untitled will also differ from most other Taipei promoters in that it looks to Australia, not Japan, for its musical pipeline. As a result, there is a distinctly Brit-pop twinge.
Last week, the company formally partnered with a big, new Australian agency, Artist Voice, that handles about 50 of Australia’s edgier acts, including Bob Log III, Cloud Control, The Jezabels and others, as well as international acts touring through Australia. The joint venture is called Artist Voice Asia.
“By hooking Asia up with Australia, we can turn this half of the world into a single market, and this way we can make a lot more things happen,” says Sweeting.
“The fact that everyone’s got access to the same information is a great equalizer,” Sweeting continues. With virtually all the world’s music now on YouTube, “kids in Taiwan or Hong Kong or Singapore want to see the same bands that kids in New York want to see. We see this as a really great opportunity.”
Still, success is hardly guaranteed. “We’re optimistic that we’ll continue to do shows in Taipei [after the current series],” Sweeting says, “but the bottom line is, if people don’t buy tickets to come see shows, there won’t be any more shows.”
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