Sibling DJs, a sweaty basement and Bangkok beats

Every generation has its underground. The kids in Detroit had warehouse techno, Berlin danced through the night under broken roofs, London rewrote its adolescence in basements. Bangkok, a city that can swing between holy silence and frenzied chaos in the space of a tuk-tuk ride, is no different. Here, underground music is less a trend than an ongoing negotiation between heat, noise, police raids and sheer determination.

One of the names whispered most insistently in these circles is Kangkao. The collective, formed just a few years ago, has become less a crew than a cultural experiment. It throws parties that are meticulously unpolished, gatherings that foreground vinyl in an age of USB sticks, spaces where fashion, art and music cross-pollinate without ever needing a press release. Kangkao doesn’t aim to be glamorous – it aims to be necessary.

The brothers Payu Von Bueren and Jakrin Von Bueren, both Kangkao residents, are among the figures keeping it alive. When we meet at the Trinity Complex – still echoing with last year’s Halloween set that ended in police intervention – they are thoughtful, candid and unusually unguarded for DJs whose job usually requires them to deflect behind a booth.

Brothers before decks

The story begins at home, before either of them knew what ‘underground’ meant. ‘Our dad was always collecting records,’ Payu recalls. ‘So we grew up surrounded by vinyl. There was a turntable in the house and of course we wanted to play around with it.’ That simple access – needle on wax, sound erupting in the living room – seeded an obsession.

When the brothers moved to London for university, the itch deepened. Payu studied film production, Jakrin film photography, but both spent as much time in basements as in classrooms. ‘The parties there had this whole different energy,’ Jakrin explains. 

“You’d meet people, talk music all night, then follow them to another space. It felt like one long conversation with strangers.”

The London years did not just feed their record bags, they embedded a certain philosophy: music was about community first, performance second. Bangkok would soon inherit that lesson.

Playing together, never the same twice

Sibling DJs can go two ways: rivalry or rhythm. For Payu and Jakrin, it is the latter, though not without a hint of competition. ‘Each time we DJ, we try to surprise each other,’ Payu says. ‘Sometimes I’ll play something we both loved years ago, just to see his reaction.’

Rules exist, though they are hilariously pragmatic. ‘B2B has one golden law,’ Jakrin laughs. ‘Don’t leave ten seconds left on a track for the other guy. That’s just evil.’ Beyond that, their process is intuitive, an unspoken conversation through beats and tempo.

They have played in places that barely survived the crowd: basements with sweating ceilings, rooftops that felt one stomp away from collapse. But the chaos peaks at home. ‘Halloween 2024 at Trinity was wild,’ Payu recalls. 

“DJ Masda was headlining, everything was building beautifully – and then, the police. Right when it was about to go off. Classic Bangkok.”

A city still inventing its scene

Bangkok’s underground is still growing, but that, the brothers argue, is its strength. ‘The venues here make it unique,’ Jakrin notes. ‘You might have a warehouse that by day is a flea market, by night a party, with food stalls in between. There’s this sense of everything colliding in one space.’

Yet gaps remain. ‘We need more venues, more places that reflect different backgrounds,’ Payu adds. Growth is slow, fragile, but not impossible.

What distinguishes Kangkao is precisely this refusal to flatten into ‘just another party crew.’ From its earliest days, the collective imagined itself as more than a DJ line-up. ‘We wanted art, fashion, multimedia – something that brings everything together,’ Payu says. 

The tools, the tunes, the secret weapons

Talk to any DJ long enough and they’ll reveal their superstitions. For them, it’s vinyl. ‘You can always come back to the records,’ Jakrin insists. ‘It’s physical, it’s grounding. You feel it in your hands.’ The brothers dabble in USBs, digital crates, Dropbox surprises, but the weight of vinyl defines them.

Every selector has one track that rescues a dying floor.  They smile when asked. ‘Santiago Uribe’s ‘Montevideo Electric Sound’,’ Payu admitted instantly. ‘We first heard it at the Wonderfruit Festival, at the Quarry Stage. We just looked at each other and knew – this is the one.’

Asked to recommend a night out to a visitor – no influencers, no curated lists – they are decisive. ‘Bar Temp. for sure,’ Payu says. ‘It has this solid vibe, and the attention to sound is incredible. Or Culture Café, all-analogue set-up. Then Elsewhere for the afters.’ It is a roadmap designed not for visibility, but for survival – the kind of night that leaves you raw, sweaty, fulfilled.

And then there’s the dream booking: unlimited budget, one night, anywhere. Their answer is telling. 

‘Outdoors, in nature. Woods, breeze, from early evening until late morning. Multiple stages. Local and international DJs together.’ 

The line-up? Old London favourites, plus Thai figures like DOTT or Elaheh. A fantasy, yes, but one that hints at the collective’s ambitions: global in outlook, rooted in Bangkok.

The collective heartbeat

Kangkao is not just Payu and Jakrin. Members like Mo and Nic shape the sound and ethos too. ‘We’ve been doing this for two years now,’ Mo reflects when we speak later. ‘I didn’t expect it to grow this fast. But the journey, the challenges, it’s been fun. Playing abroad in places like Savage in Vietnam or Klymax Discotheque in Bali – it pushed us further.’

For him, the real bonding happened during the pandemic. ‘We were living, playing, even sleeping together. You learn how to push each other, how to support each other. That’s when Kangkao really became a family.’

The word ‘family’ feels apt. Kangkao is not a slick export-ready brand, but a collection of relationships, rehearsed every weekend on dancefloors. To attend a party is to witness that intimacy: records pulled from private crates, looks exchanged across the booth, a sense of collective authorship.

The unfinished party

Bangkok’s underground is still writing itself. For some, it is precarious – police raids, vanishing venues, shifting regulations. For others, like Kangkao, it is precisely that precarity that gives it life. The fragility keeps it inventive, keeps it hungry.

In the end, Kangkao is not about perfection or permanence. It is about moments: a record dropped at the right time, a floor that feels like it might collapse, a collective of friends who believe music can still build something that lasts longer than a night.

“That’s the thing about parties here, they don’t just happen, they’re fought for.”

And perhaps that is why Kangkao matters – not because it is the biggest or the flashiest, but because it insists, week after week, that underground music in Bangkok deserves not just a space, but a story.