I first met Mak Wai Hoo at Lucfest, then at GMA in Taiwan. After that we kept crossing paths at music events around Asia. You accumulate a picture of someone through that.
In the late 1990s, during a rough period in Malaysia, political instability, economic crisis, Mak and a group of friends started a record label. They called it Huang Huo: “Yellow Fire.” The goal was to bring alternative and underground music to a Chinese-speaking audience that was mostly being given mainstream pop. They had almost no money. They booked gigs, recorded bands, worked with what they had.
The tensions inside the group built up gradually. A trip to Beijing, intended as a cultural exchange with Chinese bands, turned into the point where it became clear how differently everyone involved thought things should go. Huang Huo fell apart.
Mak started Soundscape Records after that. The instinct was similar, support local artists, bring in people from elsewhere, but the operation became bigger and more organized. Chinese indie bands were still central, but the events grew to include artists from further afield.
This conversation goes through all of it: what Huang Huo was trying to do, what actually happened, what Soundscape turned into, and how Mak thinks about the whole arc now.
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