It’s strange to think of November in Bangkok without Maho Rasop. The annual gathering – once a shorthand for discovering music you didn’t yet know you loved – has been a fixture in the city’s cultural calendar, a rare blend of precision and chaos, polish and grit. Last year, it was Air who drifted into the skyline, their set suspended somewhere between nostalgia and dream. I remember it not just as a performance, but as a collective hallucination; a crowd swaying in a rare moment of perfect weather.
This year, though, the festival is on pause. In its place comes something that feels at once smaller and more deliberate: Maho Rasop Series, a chain of standalone concerts unfolding across November and December 2025. Less sprawling field, more curated rooms. The same people – HAVE YOU HEARD?, Seen Scene Space, Fungjai – but now playing with intimacy as their headline act.
The absence of the festival was not a creative decision alone. The press release didn’t dress it up. The global economy is fragile. Artist fees keep climbing. Audiences are cautious with their spending. The regional circuit has grown more crowded, each city trying to host its own miniature Glastonbury. And so, Maho Rasop – usually a sprawling, weekend-long escape – is sitting this one out.
It’s a sobering reminder that ‘support your local scene and festival’ isn’t just a nice slogan to print on a tote. Without audiences, without sponsors who understand the worth of these events, without the often-invisible crews who make them happen, even the most beloved gatherings can vanish.
And yet, from that pause comes a pivot. Maho Rasop Series promises to keep the spirit intact – introducing listeners to acts they might not stumble upon otherwise, making each show its own world of light, sound, and atmosphere.
Three names are already on the poster. Let’s have a closer look at them.
Black Country, New Road
The first to be revealed, announced in July. They arrive on December 13 at Search Studio, Ramkhamhaeng 81. Black Country, New Road (BC,NR) are not a band you half-listen to. Their sound spills across experimental rock, touching post-punk’s nervous edges and the wistfulness of klezmer. Their debut, For the First Time (2021), landed like a thesis statement. The follow-up, Ants From Up There (2022), was heavier with emotion – and also the last with vocalist Isaac Wood.
Their debut, For the First Time (2021), sounded like six people running in different directions but somehow keeping pace – jagged saxophone, angular guitar, lyrics you weren’t sure you’d understood but couldn’t stop replaying. Then came Ants From Up There (2022), warmer, more melodic, and bittersweet, now considered one of the defining records of the decade’s early years.
When frontman Isaac Wood stepped away in 2022, many thought it might be the end. Instead, they dissolved the idea of a single frontperson altogether. Forever Howlong, their latest, feels both lighter and more fragile – all shared vocals, quiet pastoral interludes, and words that cling like half-forgotten dreams. Live, this shift has given them an almost theatrical fluidity, with members swapping instruments and roles mid-set.
Tickets are available now via Ticketmelon right here. Regular price B2,200 or B2,400 at the door.
Suchmos
Next, the Japanese rock collective with a taste for groove. Formed in 2013 in Kanagawa Prefecture, Suchmos pull from African-American genres – rock, jazz, hip-hop – and their name nods to Louis Armstrong’s nickname, ‘Satchmo’. Catch them live on November 30 at Ambience Space.
Their debut THE BAY (2015) gave us ‘YMM’, all funk and disco lift, and won them Apple Music’s Best New Artist of that year. THE KIDS (2017) leaned further into rock and hip-hop, with “STAY TUNE” sending the album to the top of Billboard Japan’s charts. In Thailand, they became familiar faces after their Big Mountain Music Festival slot in 2018, just as THE ASHTRAY brought a ‘70s haze to their catalogue. THE ANYMAL (2019) – part Beatles homage, part experiment – proved they could keep evolving without losing their rhythm-first DNA.
Tickets are now available on Ticketmelon – grab yours here. Zone A: B2,400, Zone B: B1,800.
L'Impératrice
Presented by Seen Scene Space on November 27 at The Street Hall. The Parisian group weave electropop, funk, and nu-disco into something lush and cinematic. Members Charles de Boisseguin (keyboard), Hagni Gwan (keyboard), Achille Trocellier (guitar), David Gaugué (bass), Tom Daveau (drums) and vocalist Flore Benguigui build songs that glide – silk basslines under disco shimmer.
The name means ‘The Empress’, a nod to transformation and quiet authority. Flore’s presence is both magnetic and political: she writes about sexism in the industry, about being second-guessed as an artist because she is a woman, about resisting any attempt to reshape her identity. On stage, those politics become euphoria.
Albums like Matahari (2019) and Tako Tsubo (2021) show their range – the former a cascade of glittering dancefloor anthems, the latter dipping into more introspective textures without losing groove. Live, they’re masters of atmosphere: coloured lights curling like smoke, bass lines you feel in your ribs, and an audience that inevitably starts to sway by the second song.
Tickets will be on sale via Ticketmelon here, with early bird pricing at B1,900 from August 16-22, and regular tickets at B2,200 starting August 23.
What’s being offered here isn’t a consolation prize. It’s a reminder that live music doesn’t always have to be a sprawling field and a weekend lost to mud. Sometimes it’s a single night in a small room, the air thick with anticipation, where the distance between audience and artist is short enough to see every detail.
Maho Rasop Festival will be missed this year, but Maho Rasop Series might give us something else entirely – a season stitched together from singular moments, each one designed to be unrepeatable.