_ _ _ | |__ ___ _ __ __ _ | | _____ _ __ __ _( )__ | '_ \ / _ \| '_ \ / _` | | |/ / _ \| '_ \ / _` |/ __| | | | | (_) | | | | (_| | | < (_) | | | | (_| |\__ \ |_| |_|\___/|_| |_|\__, | |_|\_\___/|_| |_|\__, ||___/ |___/ |___/ _ _ _ _ ___| | ___ ___| |_ _ __ ___ | |_ _ __ __ _ ___| |__ / _ \ |/ _ \/ __| __| '__/ _ \ | __| '__/ _` / __| '_ \ | __/ | __/ (__| |_| | | (_) | | |_| | | (_| \__ \ | | | \___|_|\___|\___|\__|_| \___/ \__|_| \__,_|___/_| |_| _ _ | |__ _ _ _ __ | |_ | '_ \| | | | '_ \| __| | | | | |_| | | | | |_ |_| |_|\__,_|_| |_|\__| A report on gear-hunting activities in Asia's world city from our special reporter in Hong Kong BoeufStroganoff: Living in Hong Kong has its advantages and disadvantages. The city is build in a very dramatic fashion. It is a string-shaped city, sandwiched between the sea and jungle-ish mountains, and high-rise buildings pop up wherever there is a piece of land flat enough not to be hazardous to live on. Every squared centimetre is busy and people "live" in rabbit cage- like apartments. There is just no space in the city. Hong Kong is also addicted... to cash. Money flows in here like sweet drug in the veins of a shemale crackwhore. It is constantly on people's mind, turning them into money zombies.This kind of created a society landscape that doesn't contain all the flavours you would find in a more balanced society. You meet a lot of bankers, import-export guys, fashion industry bitches, vacuous appear- ance-related people or Chinese factory coordinators,... but never will you meet any astrophysicists, biomedical-scientist, anthropologist and of course very few artists or musicians. Rent is so damn high that you just can't afford having a non-conventional lifestyle. Artists are not rich enough to dedicate a room of their tiny apartment to make big metal sculptures, a paint studio or a music studio with machines instead of just a laptop computer. As a consequence, the city's cultural offer sucks big time. But all this has created a unique setup for someone like me. There's a neighbourhood in Hong Kong called Sham Shui Po. It used to be one of the poorest district of Hong Kong, but it's under heavy gentrification lately. It's a place where you can find a lot of electronic stores, second hand shops, LED's, photography gear and a few block of electronic junk places. I call them "places" because I have never understood if they were shops or not, since sometimes people would yell at you to get the fuck out (in cantonese), but a week after the same people are happy to make business with you. It is especially good after dark, because you'll have a lot of people running around with electro junk and sitting on a pile of cassette recorders smoking, drinking and gambling in exotic languages. It has some ´ rebel spaceport market on an asteroid ª kind of a vibe to it, and it is the only true multicultural district of Hong Kong in that regard. Anyway, those places are basically just piles of TVs, aircon units, DVD players and all sort of weird machines that come here to die. It feels like an electronic machine death row, the last place where they are stocked before being pulled apart. They can hear the sound of the electric screw driver, the same way cows and pigs can hear screams of animal being killed at the slaughterhouse. Some of those machines will be offered a second chance though. Maybe a black Jesus will save them, by buying and putting them into a container bound to an exotic African country, where they can be repaired and enjoy a nice sunny lifestyle or something. Shipping junk to Africa seems to be a big business here. Where am I going with all this ? Well, since there is only a handful of people making music in this place, and especially making music with actual space-hungry gear, this is kind of a paradise for gear-hunting activities. But forget about mint condition. Whatever you can find here will be run down, missing limbs, or mentally deficient. But dirt cheap !! One cannot describe the pleasure of finding unique musical gems amongst dead 80's karaoke amplifiers. You can never predict what you will find, and many trips are unsuccessful, but there are some good picks. Like this Pearl syncussion SY-1 analog drum synth I found on top of some poor plasma TVs. The guy didn't know what it was and got it for a ridiculous (small) amount of money. The wood is destroyed, the metal has dents everywhere, but plug it in and it makes amazing bliiip and pooings, as to thank you for having rescued it. Inspiring bubbly drone-ish tones can be achieved with it. Once I saw a concrete-covered Roland super-JX, barely recognizable (4 euros). Turned out that when I removed the concrete, it was rusted to the extreme as if it stayed under acid rain for a few years. Considering it's state, I have to say that I was quite surprised to see it turning on and making sweet melancholic pad sounds flawlessly. Has the machine acquired new deep sound quality because of it's difficult life experience ? Sometimes making a deal is difficult, because of the locals not willing to deal with gweilos ("white ghost" in cantonese, used to describe westerners). I had to lie to an old lady who was not willing to let me save a Siel DK80 from certain destruction. I told her I made an arrangement with her boss previously and that she's going to get in trouble for not letting me have it. The concept of ethic becomes blurry when one see a machine with a Chord Memory function. A Tama TS202 and the almighty AMS RMX16 reverb where once sold to me for a price fixed by the weight of the metal. The RMX16 is still in a coma state but I'm sure it will rise one day. It is such a great way to tap into a new sound source as you're bringing home weird sound modules you would never find anywhere else. Ever heard of the Kawai Phm pop synth module ? Or the Yamaha PTX8 Drum synth ? Great at making dark electronic oil refinery drum sounds. Or the strange and elegant Tascam CF-20 dual analog flanger/chorus rack module. I could also talk about a couple of ensoniq ESQ1 keyboards in a special asian version build by suzuki, sold for less than the price of a single CEM chip, of which it contains 8 units (I made this random patch generator for it and it sounds just like an episode of Ulysse 31). Sweet... Or the 50 euro deal for a Roland D50 and a Korg M1 that a Nigerian dude helped me secure with a reluctant canto boss. Nigerians junk dealers and Cantonese Chinese seem to be able to communicate in a weird form of mutated transgenic english, a language I'm not familiar with unfortunately. Or an amazing sounding BOSS DM300 analog echo that i bought "just because I need those big black and orange knobs for an art project" for 3 euros. BTW, If you see one of these passing by, get it on the spot, you'll never regret it. Juicy soft distorted feedback sound that can beef up the thinnest sound. Anyway, loads of unexpected finds in that hood... Replace some fuses, turn the machines on and if you don't die from an electrical shock, a new sound palette is offered to you, with scratchy pots and digital glitches as extra bonus. It's like seeing new colors in the rainbow or something. I don't lust after vintage legendary analog synth anymore. Now my thrill is to find the most obscure, unknown, off-market sound module and make electricity pass through its circuits again, after all those years in a dark, warm and humid, rat infested Hong Kong warehouse. Not to mention that it actually helped me learning some Cantonese which is a fucking difficult language. One may also learn a lot about their negotiation techniques, which consist mostly in smoking some hardcore chinese cigarettes, and faking being busy and annoyed when you try to show interest in a piece of crap. Nobody seems to be interested in old gear in this city, which is super duper cool for me, but eventually those old bastards keep filling up the space in my tiny tiny place. I need more money to afford a bigger place ! If one of you guys ever visit Hong Kong, and unlike mushroom hunting afficionados, I'll be happy to offer a tour of the best "places" (contact the editor ) BoeufStroganoff some pics here : http://www.thomasbouffioulx.com/hktrash.html