In-depth articles
Phuket's clubbing scene isn't Bangla Road neon. It's four rooms spread across the west coast: a sunset beach club, an Ibiza import with a real booking policy, one underground bar in Rawai, and a 5,000-capacity room if you want the big room instead.
Southeast Asia doesn't really have record shops built for house and techno the way Berlin or London does. What it has instead, city by city, is more interesting: soul, funk and reissue specialists who happen to stock the electronic stuff too.
No DJ booth, no dance floor, just a serious hi-fi rig and a wall of records. A guide to the listening bars and record bars actually worth the taxi fare in Bangkok and Tokyo.
Korner closed in 2018 and took Taipei's underground techno home with it. The same crew reopened one floor under a gym, called it Pawnshop, and Smoke Machine has been playing there almost every week since.
Phnom Penh will not hand you a scene the way Bangkok or Bali will. It has one club that used to be an actual floating boat, one alley that actually pulses after midnight, and a handful of people building the rest from nothing. Here is where to go, what it costs, and how to get home.
Finns, Potato Head's Klymax, Mrs Sippy and Karma Beach: Bali's real house music scene now happens in daylight, feet in the sand, hours before the island's night clubs even open.
Bandung producer Munir has spent over a decade digging up and re-splicing Indonesia's forgotten 1970s and 80s disco records, from a Cultures of Soul compilation named after Jakarta's first discotheque to his own synth-driven Komputer EP.
The best nights in Bangkok don't advertise. Here's where a newcomer actually starts, from a 120-capacity bar with a lit sign that just says BAR TEMP to a weekly hard techno ritual at RCA.
Jakarta's house and techno rooms are real, they're just hiding in office towers and mall basements. A working guide to Vault, Le Cirque, Zodiac and the mega-clubs, with what's actually still open in 2026.
Fifteen years after two friends got tired of watching visiting DJs get the credit, Darker Than Wax has built Singapore's most quietly respected house and jazz label, with a Brooklyn radio residency and a roster nobody else has.
Manila's house and techno scene runs through five small rooms in Poblacion and Makati Cinema Square, from Apotheka's split-level policy to The Void's no-frills basement. Here's where to go, what it costs, and how to get home after.
While XX:XX, TIME, Today x FUTURE and Pineapple Lab all shut their doors, one Manila collective kept moving from room to room until it didn't need a room at all. Ten years and one 16-hour anniversary party later, UNKNWN is the closest thing the city's underground has to an institution.