“I had underestimated the local scene. When I moved back to Hong Kong from the UK last April, I noticed that record stores like the ones in Tai Nan Street [in Sham Shui Po, Kowloon] were stocking more alternative music, and people here read The Wire magazine,” says Scott Young, 32, a Hong Kong-born DJ and producer, referring to the well-established UK music monthly.

The other half of the “Repo Populace” team, called Xper.Xr, another Hong Kong-born artist who lived in Europe for years, says the city has an edge over places like London and Paris.

“I know a lot of geniuses there who are so talented but they will never get anywhere. People in Europe get hassled by gangs, things get stolen, and then there are the drugs. Hong Kong is very fortunate. We have finance, infrastructure and logistics. The sad thing is, people don’t always make use of the opportunities here,” he says, speaking from decades of experience of living outside the mainstream.

Large mainstream venues are increasingly eager to embrace alternative music. In August, the Applause Pavilion at Ocean Park, a marine theme park in the city, held a five-hour underground and indie music festival, “Tune-A-Can”. Jazz and electronic musicians are regularly asked to perform at The West Kowloon Cultural District, Hong Kong’s emerging arts hub. This year’s Clockenflap music festival will feature more local indie bands, since there won’t be as many overseas acts as usual.

Independent performing spaces are popping up too, such as Saturday’s venue. The Catalyst is a low-key, multipurpose art space hidden in plain sight off busy Hollywood Road. It is as far removed as you can get from the usual out-of-the-way industrial building live-music set-up, and is run by a group tantalisingly called the Xevarion Institute.

Xper.Xr (“you can call me Chris”) is one of its founders, along with a number of other Hong Kong-based artists, who arrange exhibitions and art lessons there when it is not hosting live music performances.

Young says, apologetically, that the line-up of “Repo Populace” features some rather familiar local names (Feaston, Alok, Nerve, Meter Room, Sin:Ned, Fiona Lee and Young himself) because of Hong Kong’s continuing quarantine rules. But he says the gig will introduce to the audience unusual musical styles such as “lowercase music” (a minimalist approach to music that uses amplified ambient sounds.)

Fans of Xper.Xr, widely considered a pioneer of electronic music in Hong Kong, may be disappointed that he plans to stay in the background on Saturday. He is in a phase of transition, he says, and wants to draw a line between his past and his future projects.

Recently, he donated his personal archives to Empty Gallery, which showed a selection in the form of a retrospective exhibition recently. “I have too much history behind me. For me, it’s a burden. I don’t want to keep repeating what I do, or even have the possibility of people thinking I am back to my old tricks,” he says.

He is working on a new show at Empty Gallery that will be “dangerous”, he says.

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“What I mean is something that will give people a nudge, that will trigger certain thought processes and emotions that tell people all isn’t what it seems,” he explains.

He is not out to send out any overt political message, because he makes art for art’s sake. The one thing he wants to promote is that there will always be a need for a counterculture in any culture.

“Counterculture is always the same fight – be it the 1990s when I started out or today. It is to do with creating other … aesthetics. I could just play something beautiful. But I choose to play noise that is an expression of putting your foot down, of saying we do not comply, we do not agree,” he says.

“Repo Populace”, The Catalyst, G/F, 2 Po Yan Street, Sheung Wan, from 6pm, September 25. Tickets are HK$150 each and can be purchased online via Eventbrite or at the door.