When Clockenflap was last staged, indie venue This Town Needs had just risen from the ashes of its earlier outpost Hidden Agenda, The Wanch was still in its OG Jaffe Road spot and Peel Fresco was alive and kicking. All of these venues – just three of many where Hong Kong’s local talent have cut their teeth for years – have now sadly closed (though The Wanch eventually made a glorious comeback down the road, two years later). However, there’s hope to be found in a new raft of lesser-known underground venues, often makeshift borrowed spaces that would likely be better known today if not for the Covid-19 restrictions that kept them under the radar for so long.

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We’ve sorely missed the opportunity to collectively experience the annual changes – sonically, aesthetically and visually – to our music scene, but in 2023, Clockenflap promises us many new diamonds in the rough.

So, from the dozens of home-grown acts on the bill, here’s our pick of the lucky eight you absolutely cannot miss because of what they currently mean to the scene and, of course, because their music is phenomenal.

1. Arches

After both the closure of Yau Tong’s This Town Needs in early 2020, and the closure scare of The Wanch in Wan Chai later the same year, guitar fans were left rightly fearing for the future of the city’s storied rock scene – in all its myriad subgenres – after two strong decades. However, there’s hope yet with the ascent of alt-rock duo Arches.

Formed in 2020 and citing alternative stalwarts Sonic Youth and The Smashing Pumpkins among their influences, Arches channel the frustrations of Hong Kong’s millennials, long prevalent in the city’s underground rock movement of the 2010s, but now exacerbated through the pandemic.

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2. Cehryl

Though she hasn’t released a full album since 2019, her Time Machine EP from 2021 and pandemic-era singles (especially the most recent “Sorry It’s December”) show how much she has polished the sonic and lyrical safe space that her music creates – a warm hug for the world-weary.

3. Charming Way

In a decade already knee-deep in nostalgia for the blissful earlier years of the millennium, Britpop-vibed quartet Charming Way bring the best of the movement into the 2020s. With Aaryn Cheung on vocals and keys, KaLun Wong on guitar and synths, Ajax Li on bass and Terry Chan on drums, the group has been judiciously releasing singles since its inception in 2018, leading up to its 2021 self-titled debut album.

Charming Way’s sound is polished beyond a shadow of a doubt, a refreshing blend of synths, and clean and reverberant guitars set against an unmistakable mid-2000s rock groove.

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4. Code

Jazz and metal aficionados strike a rare agreement on the lasting impact of the dense arrangements and driving grooves found in vintage fusion. While the jazz establishment has made an uneasy peace with the subgenre over the last 20 years (à la Snarky Puppy, uneasy upstarts Domi & JD Beck and the evergreen Herbie Hancock), bands like The Mars Volta, Meshuggah and now Hong Kong’s own Code meet nerdy ideas like modality, extended chords and polyrhythms in the middle.

Though the quintet have only been around for a few years and have just one single out on Spotify called “Brunch”, it is one of the most intricate bands to come up during the pandemic era, sporting a polished book of original arrangements that feature heavy synth and guitar sounds, antsy rhythmic modulations and unabashedly dissonant chord progressions. For those who feel that the metal and jazz scenes in Hong Kong have reached a plateau, Code may be the antidote.

5. Luna & The Bosin

Some 50-odd years from its inception, rap as a technique and trope has seen heavy application across almost all genres. Most recent to jump on the wave is Cantonese songstress Luna Is A Bep. Though her most recent album So I Have Heard is a pop-heavy return with more singing than rhyming, she’s likely best known to most through her hit “A Day With Me” on which she raps existentially about millennial/Gen Z listlessness, softened and made accessible via acoustic instrumentation.

For the festival, though, Luna subsumes herself with her sextet now known as Luna & The Bosin and featuring friends and fellow creators on guitar, drums, keyboards and bass, plus rapper OJ Reambillo and DJ Johnnie Darka.

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6. Merry Lamb Lamb

Visually and sonically, Merry Lamb Lamb’s all-neon wardrobe, tinted glasses, high straight fringe and upbeat, melodic dance tracks evoke something of an early-millennium fever dream brought to the now (her 2021 single “Insomnia” combines all of the above with autotune while musically heavily invoking Mariya Takeuchi’s city pop hit “Plastic Love”, which sparked renewed interest in the genre in 2017).

It’s a challenge to pin down at first glance where she is from, but perhaps that is the point as she writes music in both Mandarin and English, resulting in fanbases in Shanghai and Beijing, as well as Hong Kong, while her fashion-forward ensembles are sure to bring her to Europe and New York. She takes the stage with DJ Yum! Laksa for a back-to-back set.

7. N.Y.P.D. 南洋派對

Perhaps the most sonically independent in the classic sense – think washed-out vocals coupled with distorted guitars – post-punk group N.Y.P.D. (nan yang pai dui) released its self-titled album on Yeti Out’s Silk Road Sounds label in 2020. The group eschews melody in favour of raw sprechgesang, weaving Cantonese folk music inspired by legend Huan Du in front of a wild alt-rock backdrop.

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8. R. I. D. D. E. M

Of all the overseas genres that have caught on in our city, neo soul is perhaps the most nebulous. At its core, the genre should involve irresistible groove, socially conscious writing and lush instrumental textures, all to fluidly combine ideas from across African-American genres such as soul, funk, blues, hip-hop and jazz. In this sense, no group has evoked the aesthetic attitudes of D’Angelo, J Dilla, Madlib and Erykah Badu (who herself closed Clockenflap in 2018) as well as R.I.D.D.E.M.

The quintet features Reggie Yip (a.k.a. Reggie The Leaf) on vocals, Arizton Pamplona on guitar, Mat Lui on bass, Aldous Yu on keyboard and synths and Akira Mimasu on drums. Forming just a few months shy of the pandemic, the group have gone from strength to strength, growing their catalogue of originals on the foundation of virtuosic basslines, avant-garde synth moments, blues-inflected guitar solos, raw and polished vocal and lyrical energy, all tied together with firm and driving in-the-pocket grooves. They are one of the few bands from whom you can expect nothing less than an overwhelming, electric blend of musicianship, artistry and stage presence.