Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) and music? It’s what Allex Chan, aka Room307, wants – singer on his songs, being ‘sentimental’ and his guitar

Allex Chan, who performs under the stage name Room307, talks to the Post about how he first became a musician and his work with Cantopop veteran Kay Tse

He wants to study music therapy to blend his traditional Chinese medicine training with music – and his coming album has lyrics in the style of Chinese poetry

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Allex Chan, indie dream-pop singer-songwriter and the guitarist of band NYPD, talks to the Post about his music. Photo: Elson Li

Published: 5:15pm, 8 Mar 2024Updated: 5:33pm, 8 Mar 2024

Allex Chan Cheuk-lik, 29, was studying traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) at university when he started playing music with his friends. He did it for fun and because “it looked cool”.

“It started as an extracurricular activity after work. We didn’t think anything would come of it, [but] Jon and Chau [the other two founding members of the band] fed me a lot of good music.”

Now, not only is he the guitarist of local indie darling Nan Yang Pai Dui (NYPD), he is also a creative powerhouse in his own right under the stage name Room307, and he made his Clockenflap debut in 2019 a year after starting NYPD.

“I was always into music growing up, but it wasn’t until university that I began exploring music production,” says Chan. “I learned a bit of guitar on YouTube. Back then, we were playing a lot of post-punk, noise, shoegaze and psychedelic rock, which didn’t require much skill.”

Chan was studying traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) when he started playing music with his friends. Photo: Elson Li

His solo work deviates from NYPD’s chaos, and is mostly indie dream-pop tunes. While he cites jazz and soul as his main sources of inspiration, “it’s a mix of everything. I guess you can call it ‘world music’, as I listen to a lot of different things. To be honest – even now, I don’t really know. I’m self-taught, after all.”