The Best Record Stores for DJs in Southeast Asia
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.
There's a version of this article that lists a dozen "techno record shops" across Southeast Asia and calls it a day. That article would be lying to you. Walk into most of the region's best crate-digging spots and you won't find a wall of white-label 12-inches sorted by BPM. You'll find Thai Molam 45s, Indonesian psych LPs from the 1970s, funk and soul reissues, and, tucked somewhere in the back, a small but serious electronic section curated by someone who actually DJs. That's the real story: the shops that matter to Southeast Asian DJs aren't techno specialists, they're diggers' shops that happen to feed techno sets.
Here's where to go, city by city, and what to actually expect when you get there.
Bangkok: Zudrangma Records
Zudrangma Records is the reference point for the whole region, and it's run by someone who DJs for a living. Owner Nat Siangsukon, better known as DJ Maft Sai, opened the shop on Sukhumvit Soi 51 (near BTS Thonglor) as an outlet for Thailand's own dance music history: Molam, Luk Thung and Isan funk 45s and LPs that had mostly been forgotten outside record-collector circles. That's still the backbone of the stock, alongside global funk, soul, jazz and Ethiopian jazz. There's a house and techno section too, smaller than the rest but genuinely curated, and Zudrangma runs its own label, best known for the Molam Bus and Molam Village compilations produced with Wonderfruit Festival. Open Wednesday to Sunday, noon to 8pm, per the shop's own contact page (a shorter Wed-Sat 1pm-7pm schedule from July 2022 no longer applies). If you can't get there in person, the shop ships worldwide through its own site and sells on Discogs and Bandcamp too.
Singapore: The Analog Vault
Singapore's rents did what Singapore's rents do: The Analog Vault left its ten-year retail spot at Esplanade and is now trading out of a warehouse unit in Midview City, Sin Ming Lane, open Wednesday to Saturday, 1pm to 7pm, with local pickup available if you order online. The genre spread here is the widest on this list on purpose: jazz, funk and soul, hip hop and experimental sit next to an electronic section that explicitly covers leftfield techno, house and ambient, not just chart-adjacent dance. The shop runs its own imprint, TAV Records. It's worth checking their Instagram before you go; a warehouse unit isn't a walk-in destination the way a shopfront is, and hours shift.
Kuala Lumpur: The Groove Room
Be honest about this one going in: The Groove Room, a speakeasy-style shop tucked behind Amcorp Mall in Petaling Jaya, is not a house and techno specialist. It's a general collector's shop, upward of 4,000 records covering everything from rock to jazz to Motown, built around a hidden listening room where founder Mohan lets you sit with a drink and actually play a record before you buy it. That listening-room culture, more than any specific genre focus, is why it's worth the detour, and why touring DJs passing through KL still make a point of stopping in. Open Tuesday to Sunday, noon to 8 or 9pm, closed Monday. We couldn't verify a dedicated house or techno specialist shop in Kuala Lumpur within this piece's reporting; if you know of one, that's a gap worth someone filling.
Manila: Play Record Stop
This is the one shop on this list that leans house on purpose. Play Record Stop, run by local promoter and events crew Groove Manila, sits on Guerrero Street in Poblacion, the same Makati neighborhood that carries most of the city's club scene, and its bins skew toward exactly what a house DJ wants to hear: crates that have carried names like Moodymann and Purple Disco Machine through them. There's a turntable and rotary mixer set up in-store so you can actually cue a record before buying it, and the shop offers pickup and delivery if you can't make it in. One catch worth knowing before you plan a trip: it keeps office hours, Monday to Friday, 1pm to 6pm, closed weekends, which is a strange rhythm for a shop that exists to feed Saturday night, but there it is.
Jakarta: Lian Records
Lian Records isn't a house shop either, and it isn't trying to be. It's a stall on Jalan Surabaya, Jakarta's antique street market in Menteng, run by a woman named Lian whose father opened it in 1963. The stock is rare Indonesian psych, rock and folk (names like Eka Sapta and Orkes Kelana Ria turn up in the crates) alongside American blues and psych imports. No website, no online shop, cash and patience only. It's not where you go for a 4/4 kick drum. It's where you go to understand what Indonesian musicians were doing before house music existed here at all, which is its own kind of education for anyone sampling or producing. We could not confirm a dedicated house or techno record shop currently operating in Jakarta proper; several sources pointed back to the same handful of DJ-run pop-up stalls at record fairs rather than a permanent shopfront.
Hanoi: Totem Vinyl
Vietnam's most useful shop for DJs sits in Hanoi, not Ho Chi Minh City: Totem Vinyl, on Nguyen Khac Hieu in the Truc Bach area, stocks around 1,000 records across funk and soul, electronic, jazz and folk from around the world. It's small by the standards of this list, but it's the rare Vietnamese shop where the electronic section is kept on its own rather than buried inside a general pile. Ho Chi Minh City has record culture too, but we couldn't verify a comparable dedicated shop there with confidence in time for this piece; treat that as an open question rather than an answer.
What's Not on This List
Cambodia doesn't appear here. Phnom Penh's scene, which we've covered before, is real and growing, but nothing we could verify amounts to a dedicated record store for DJs yet, digging there currently means asking around at The Cage or Pontoon rather than walking into a shop. Ho Chi Minh City is a genuine gap too, not an oversight; a shop called VinaGroove appears to exist there, but we couldn't confirm its address or hours to a standard we'd publish. If either changes, this list should update.
How to Actually Dig Here
Bring cash. Several of these shops, especially Lian Records, don't take cards. Bring a bag with stiff sides, cardboard mailers and Southeast Asian humidity don't mix well on the walk home. Don't expect Discogs-grade grading anywhere on this list except the shops with proper online shops (Zudrangma, The Analog Vault); everywhere else, play the record before you buy it if the shop lets you, and most of the good ones do. And budget an extra afternoon: none of these are quick stops, they're places people spend two hours in without noticing.
For the DJs and dancers rather than the collectors, our guide to the region's best listening bars and record bars covers the rooms built to actually play these records out loud, and our Bangkok club guide covers where Zudrangma's regulars end up after the shop closes.
Cover photo: Zudrangma Records, Bangkok, via Instagram (@zudrangmarecords).
