“I was always into music growing up, but it wasn’t until university that I began exploring music production,” says Chan. “I learned a bit of guitar on YouTube. Back then, we were playing a lot of post-punk, noise, shoegaze and psychedelic rock, which didn’t require much skill.”
His solo work deviates from NYPD’s chaos, and is mostly indie dream-pop tunes. While he cites jazz and soul as his main sources of inspiration, “it’s a mix of everything. I guess you can call it ‘world music’, as I listen to a lot of different things. To be honest – even now, I don’t really know. I’m self-taught, after all.”
The way he composes and writes songs, too, he says, “is quite patchy – I just put things together, which is not very academic or systematic. Technology has been helpful in this aspect”.
He still considers himself an amateur when it comes to his guitar playing, and sees the instrument as an important crutch when he performs. “I don’t know where to put my hands when I sing. It feels awkward. Holding an instrument helps.”
Despite his self-deprecating attitude, Chan has garnered 18.7k followers on Instagram – a respectable number for an indie musician in Hong Kong.
“They sent my demo and tracks to Kay Tse, and she okayed it – that’s how it all happened, quickly and casually,” says Chan. “I edited two of our songs with the same key and similar themes together; the lyrics were also not too far off, so it didn’t require too much effort. The whole thing started and ended within two weeks and I only met her in person when the time came to record the session.”
The songs were Room307’s “Mountain to Sea” and Tse’s “Haru” – the Cantopop singer’s first release since she became an independent musician in 2021. The compilation video has clocked 56,000 views on YouTube, while the full-length version – which adds Chan’s interpretation of Tse’s “The First Day” – is currently at 122,000 views.
“It was during Covid. I think everyone wanted something new, and I just happened to be one of the people that benefited from it.”
In October 2023, Room307 performed at Taiwan’s Asia Rolling Music Festival. He is not a frequent performer and thinks his work is “too boring to perform by myself”.
“My solo stuff is what people listen to in the background before they go to sleep. Playing live would require a full jazz band of more than six people, which is limited by budget.”
“I want to be a well-rounded musician that does it all,” he says.
Room307’s first full-length studio album, Memory Boy, will be released at the end of March. The tunes came before the lyrics for the tracks, which he reveals mostly revolve around romance and fantasy as he focused on writing in the style of Chinese poetry, with the same amount of characters and rhyming patterns.
“The album title is self-explanatory. I try to pierce together scenes from my memory in a surrealist way,” says Chan. “I’d say it’s 70 per cent fantasy and 30 per cent reality.
“I’m a romantic, so my work can be somewhat sentimental – it’s a summary of everything I’ve learned in the past two years. The EPs and singles I’d released before were more ‘back room’, and while this is self-produced, it’s a little more refined and complete after a two-year marination.”
At the end of the day, Chan’s TCM education holds importance to him still, and he plans to study music therapy to blend his formal education with his passion – a truly holistic approach to healing.