
Ho Chi Minh City's Longest-Running Techno Club Is Closing in October
The Observatory has run Ho Chi Minh City's house and techno scene from a rooftop for nearly 13 years. In October 2026, after three addresses and more than 800 guest DJs, it closes.
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Techno in Asia: warehouse parties, hard and melodic strands, label news and the crews building the scene in Bangkok, Jakarta, Manila, Tokyo and Seoul.
136 articles / Page 4

The Observatory has run Ho Chi Minh City's house and techno scene from a rooftop for nearly 13 years. In October 2026, after three addresses and more than 800 guest DJs, it closes.

Jongmin Lee has run Oslated from Jeju Island since 2016, no club scene required. The label's 10th anniversary compilation, split across two volumes, pairs Korean and international artists in ambient, dub and organic techno.

Central Vietnam isn't a clubbing capital, and it doesn't pretend to be. But between one red-lit techno bar in Da Nang and a sunset DJ set on An Bang Beach, there's a real, small scene worth knowing before you land.

While RA's anniversary tour picked Taipei over every Southeast Asian capital, Hanoi's Unmute booked a Smoke Machine-affiliated techno DJ for a normal Friday night, no world tour required.

Berghain and Bassiani in the same tour, a DJ Mag nod, and a brand-new track written with Bangkok's Sunju Hargun. Tokyo's psychedelic techno export is having a very good year.

Drop has closed. Volar has closed too. FLY didn't survive under its own name either.

Cakeshop, Faust, Soap and Vurt: what's actually good in Seoul's techno and house scene right now, what it costs, and how you get home after the last train.

Resident Advisor is marking 25 years with ten parties worldwide. The only two stops in Asia are Tokyo and a basement club in Taipei called Pawnshop. Not one Southeast Asian capital made the cut.

House and techno in Hanoi now runs through Unmute and Mirage, and a handful of bars and burger counters doing a club's job, as the scene adapts to a nitrous oxide ban and near-routine police raids.

A year after selling out Mega Star Arena, Evolution Events Asia's hard techno festival returns with Italian duo 999999999 headlining The Arch Galeries on October 3.

The Ukrainian duo behind Upperground make their long-overdue Singapore debut on October 17, inside a decommissioned power station Collective Minds is turning into a venue for the night.

There's a stone quarry on the festival grounds that turns into a minimal house and techno room after dark. Here's what a first-timer actually needs to know about dates, tickets, camping and where the electronic music lives at Thailand's biggest arts and music festival.

Yeti Out started as two brothers and a friend blagging free entry to parties by pretending to write about them. Sixteen years later they run a Hong Kong radio station, a record label, and the crew Boiler Room called when it finally came back to the city.

Nineteen years after co-founding the Korean electro-rock trio Idiotape, Dguru has started his own label, Sangsu Records, built around Seoul's club and live scenes and the sounds that don't fit neatly into either.

Thai vocalist Chucheewa Cheepchoke and producer Vichaya Vatanasapt wrote a stripped-back love song called Galactic Love. Their new label Soundkoh Collective's first release turns it into six versions, remixed across Thailand, Korea and Germany.

In April 2024, Yangon's Red Room club put its own scene on record: twelve local producers, one compilation, no label behind it. Two years into a civil war, the room that made it is still open.

She learned to DJ from a stranger on the third floor of a family bar in Yangon during blackouts and curfew. Now Lynn Nandar Htoo, known as LnHD, throws femme-led parties on Phnom Penh's Bassac Lane, co-runs a platform for Southeast Asian women producers, and has played Berlin's CTM Festival.

Cebu's underground fits in one converted pizza-building basement. Boracay's four stations each pick a different kind of night. Real venues, real prices, and what to skip on the Philippines' two biggest party islands.

Three floors under the Mandarin Oriental in Kuala Lumpur, KYO built a concrete DJ booth to survive a tank and blew half its budget on a sound system Seth Troxler called possibly the best in the world. A decade later, its techno room Ren is still running.

Techno's most influential label boss is going back to Thailand's biggest commercial EDM weekender, this time paired with the producer behind Anyma's arena hit 'Consciousness'.

Contact is a parking structure and ageHa is closed. A room-by-room, honest guide to where Tokyo's house and techno scene actually lives in 2026: WOMB, Vent, Circus Tokyo and Forestlimit.

Once a month, the techno club Undercity turns its dancefloor into rows of bean bags for a silent reading session, DJ included. It's called Reading City, and it's not a gimmick, it's a serious techno room finding a second life.

Chiang Mai's electronic scene doesn't live on a strip. It's scattered across a converted shophouse, a top-floor room above Huay Kaew Road, and a hillside outside Mae Rim where the party runs until 6am.

Zamaera self-funded the first national Malaysian showcase in SXSW's history. The lineup was mostly rap, R&B and indie folk, but the set that closed it belonged to a techno producer nobody outside Malaysia had heard of yet.