He might be seated at the back of a bakery café in Sheung Wan today, but Sean Hocking is hoping the noise he helps generate from here will sound out across the globe.
"It's all about getting the music out," he explains. "What I'm trying to do really is install a little of a DIY ethic in music regionally and string a lot of people together. It's about letting musicians who aren't part of any 'scenes' feel confident enough to get their music out there."
The 50-year-old Briton is the founder of Metal Postcard Records which originated in Sydney in 2001, but for the past eight years has called Hong Kong its home
SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST
About
For those of us who grew up with a healthy respect for MC5, The Clash or The Fall, or have children we wish to rescue from the pablum of mainstream culture, understand what independent labels like Metal Postcard Records are trying to achieve - It’s not about the hype, it’s not about the lifestyle or the herd mentality of flocking toward the subliminally marketed trends of the moment, and it’s certainly not about money - it’s simply about the love of music.
AMERICAN NOIR BLOG
DRAKKAR BAND
DRAKKAR 74
We played Rolling Stones covers and things for both Cambodian and US soldiers and they really liked it. They danced and sang along. We loved the music, each other, and the way we all played together in Vietnam. So, a little while after we returned, we formed the second Drakkar. We were very popular. We were the first Cambodian band to play on TV.”
CAMBODIA ADVISOR
MATTHEW EDWARDS & THE UNFORTUNATES
THE FATES
Engaging with The Fates is an often hypnotic experience, these songs are rapturously embossed and for this one needs offer a deep-wasted bow and generous tip of the hounds-tooth hat to producer Eric Drew Feldman (Pixies, PJ Harvey, former Magic Band member) STEREO EMBERS
ASHLEY REAKS
BEYOND KORESH
An appearance on The Dustman from Leonard Phillips of The Dickies evokes memories of the one minute classics Banana Splits and Eve of Destruction ...... Ashley Reaks continues to be an incomparable talent and a true original, and like last year’s album Before Koresh promises to be present in the best of the year compilations. LOUDER THAN WAR
CAMBODIAN SPACE PROJECT WHISKEY CAMBODIA
The Space Project was founded by an Australian, Julien Poulson, joined by some of the veteran Motown players Cambodians would have heard on records blasting in from US forces' radio stations in Vietnam. The key figure here is guitarist Dennis Coffey, who played with the the Funk Brothers and recorded with the Temptations, and sounds rejuvenated backing the energetic Srey Thy. .. Quirky and enormous fun. THE GUARDIAN
OLLO
APE DELAY
Searching, electronic-based music, which evokes old and new possibilities, combines accessibility with stark exploration. This album will be right up there on my end of year lists."
CYCLIC DEFROST
RST & LENZ
HEAVY WITH ILLUSION
The two together create a special sort of minimal musical magic. Pretty amazing, we gotta say! AQUARIUS ( SAN FRANCISCO)
DJ FOUNDATION
GOD IS DEAD / SUNNI & SHIA 7"
It’s a remarkable single, then – one which perhaps has to be heard to be believed, and which ultimately bolsters popular music’s status as an art form. DROWNED IN SOUND
PAIRS
IF THIS COCKROACH DOESN'T DIE I WILL
Sounding a bit like a cross between early Jesus And Mary Chain and The Fall, or a punk version of a vintage Neil Young and Crazy Horse jam session albeit with much shorter songs, the album opens with the wonderful "Permanent Residence" which whips up an almost trance-like drum and guitar punk riff before the vocals come screaming in. At times, those vocals sound like they're being shouted from the room next door, sung through a loud-hailer or dispatched from a hospital bed. MAK COLES ( THE SHED / BBC)
KROM
TALIBAN MAN
Taliban Man invites the listener to consider the impossibilities of man-kind as only Krom can. Murder, death, manipulation, all Minko's signature themes are in here.JAMES NEWMAN FICTION BLOG
WHITE FANG
FULL TIME FREAKS
Between its niggling sense of doom, backwater weirdness and absurdist sense of humour, White Fang's new record lends Wavves-style bro-fi a much-needed outsider authenticity. Despite hailing from Portland – America's hipster capital – the undertone of contrived nonchalance that usually blights beach-boy slacker bands like White Fang is nowhere to be seen. As the album's title rightfully proclaims, in a genre rife with fair-weather frauds the four-piece are indeed full-time freaks. In the tradition of Gen X-era lo-fi, the tracks are both dazed and confused: jangly, messy garage-rock thrashers that grin inanely behind a fug of bong smoke, shit production values and goofy nihilism. All of which makes for the most natural stoner trash since the Smell bands burnt out. NME
PULCO
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Solid Geometry
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Bandcamp
If there is one thing that is predictable about Pulco (aka Ash Cooke), it is that he is 100% unpredictable.
Said to have been influence by the book First Love Last Rites by Ian McEwan, the sound blends Daniel Miller’s The Normal (Warm Leatherette) with spots of early Cabaret Voltaire and sees Cooke with his often characteristic spoken meanderings over original soundtracks. Epitomising the D.I.Y. artist his sound is crisp and honest.
The Solid Geometry EP once more confirms the unquestionable talent bursting from Pulco’s seams and rubber stamps the approval given to him by many fellow artists.
Paul Scott-Bates – Lounder Than War
Fancy some dystopian trip hop, well there’s a ridiculously limited 7-inch EP heading out of Welsh imprint Recordiau Prin that might well be up the street of those among you impishly tuning your frequencies and realities into 1981 and finding yourselves somewhat crouched on a cold waving axis located somewhere between Mute’s the Normal and Alrealon Musique’s Black Saturn. .. as were, score for a Cronenberg interpretation of a forgotten William S Burroughs script crookedly grooved by a Mk 1 version of the Human League, something we suggest that ought to be an essential record collection acquirement for those subscribing in all things Polytechnic
The Sunday Experience – July 2016
HONEY BUCKET
Magical World
LP
Digital
Bandcamp
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Sounds like: Jonathan Richman reuniting the Modern Lovers for a one-night-only gig in the basement of a coffee shop. For fans of: Twerps, C86, Flying Nun Records, the Fall, Woolen Men.
WILLAMETTE WEEK (PORTLAND)
"A tastefully muddied canvas of end-of-summer campside nostalgia and good ol’ Oregon feel. With more pop sensibility than expected of a Pacific Northwest act, and a sound teetering on the edge of lo-fi"
SPIN
Lots of people have rad record collections, but few synthesize those sounds into something that’s uncomplicated and irresistible. Honey Bucket has figured out that formula. The band’s new album, Magical World—released by Portland label See My Friends—is a mid-fi wonder, packed with woozy DIY spirit and wily hooks. Across 13 tracks, Vince Skelly (bass/vocals), Matt Radosevich (guitar/vocals), and Jon Grothman (drums) are somehow disheveled and charming, urgent and easygoing.
PORTLAND MERCURY
ZOE ZAC
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Hearthbreak & Scopolamine
Sleepless Nights
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Digital Single
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Bandcamp
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This superb Tasmanian artist has once again delivered the goods with these tracks. Heartbreak & Scopolamine is a mighty slab of power it is true, but I like the B Side Sleepless Nights even better, with it's slightly off centre slow and moody structure.
LATEST RELEASES
Contact
Metal Postcard Records
Hong Kong