He's probably the most highly acclaimed Hong Kong indie musician you've never heard of. He's got a real amateurish air about him. His name card is printed on plain white paper, with uneven edges and lines - the result of being cut with scissors by hand. Looking at him, you'd never even think he is a musician, let alone one of the most innovative in the indie scene.
The self-dubbed 'One-man Electronic Unit', Choi Sai-ho blends audio and visual elements to create a one-of-a-kind multimedia extravaganza. Accompanying him at live gigs are his trusty laptop, mixer, cross pad, electric keyboard, Tenori-on (an electronic instrument with a LED grid used to manipulate sounds) and, at times, a violin.
Choi's set is commonly accompanied by a visual projection in the background showing looped videos. 'Some of the songs must be matched with a particular visual,' Choi explains to Sunday Young Post. 'For example, for my song Lottery Players vs Games Console People, I use a Mark 6 visual. But for most songs, I don't really have a 'must' visual. Sometimes I'll use a cityscape visual to mix with songs.'
The result is an all-out sensory overload of audio-visual stimuli - and Choi understands that for some it might be overkill. 'I know that for an audio-visual performance, something like an hour and a half is too much,' he explains. 'It's not like a concert. For the audience, at some point their eyes and ears will get tired. So I try not to let my live shows drag on. I just keep the most entertaining parts.'
Specialising in audio-visual arts, Choi is a part-time teaching assistant at City University, where he attained a Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Media. His students know him primarily as a lecturer, but for the electronic music enthusiasts, he's 'ST'.
'I used to listen to a lot of DJ Shadow, Fatboy Slim, and those types of artists,' Choi says. 'They would all use stage names, so I thought I should come up with one, too. My English name is Steven. So I decided on 'ST'. But after some years I sort of got tired of it. So now I just use my [birth] name. But a lot of people are used to 'ST', so they still refer to me that way.'