Baybeats 2026

This year is the 25th anniversary of Baybeats. Gawwwd I feel old. I've been catching Baybeats since 2003! The programming team went all out this year, and we see it in the awesome line-up. Four days of great music! I'm still reeling from the sheer gloriousness of it all. 

All the shows are free, courtesy of the Esplanade. I love this music festival and its ethos. However, we would need to register for many of these shows, by way of crowd control since the indoor venues have a capacity to adhere to. Getting those tickets was such a pain. The backend was so laggy, full of glitches and problematic. Anyway.

I didn't think I would catch that many shows. But I watched more than I thought I would. I didn't stay for the whole set, and ran between stages. What fun! I began the festival quietly and softly with Soft Pine (Thailand) and Kin Leonn (SG). The haze was manageable, and there was a gorgeous sea breeze wafting in at the Arena (Outdoor Theatre) for all the nights. 

Then it was Typecast (Philippines). I haven't heard them for eons. It was a really fun set. Even I knew the closing song of the set — 'Will You Ever Learn' (from 'Every Cloud and Moss', 2007). I really wanted to like Bugs of Phonon / 聲子蟲 (Taiwan); I appreciate the layering, but they were a bit mehhh and very low energy. Then their drummer kept missing the beat, in all the songs. Walao. How could a drummer not catch it in a band like this? Tsk. I managed to catch the start of Solitude in Bliss (Thailand) before zipping into another show.

I caught a bit of David Boring. The band has been around since 2013, but they haven't been too active since their first album 'Unnatural Objects and Their Humans' in 2017. The post-punk, art-rock and no-wave band released a new album 'Liminal Beings and Their Echoes' in mid January this year. I dunno how indie bands can make music in Hong Kong now. Look at what is happening to the city's booksellers and bookshops every now and then. I suppose if they veer away from politics, they can. But who knows what would run afoul the National Security Law? Anyway. I didn't stay for too long, because their music gets repetitive, and I can't deal with vocals like this. . And tonight, the drummer is behind the synths; he couldn't catch up and that made for a bad anchor. 

It was very nice seeing friends and old acquaintances. There was plenty of young bands, experienced acts and loads of fabulous music for this four-day festival. Here are my two favorite bands of the festival... ... ... 

Dabda (South Korea)

It was by pure chance that I heard the band two years ago. Their genre isn't my usual. But I was looking for music to put into Choya's playlist. She likes this sort of sound. Dabda's first album 'But, All The Shining Things Are' was released in 2020. 

The math rock / dream pop band describes their music as 'pastel psychedelic'. Yes, Choya likes them. I obviously didn't get the lyrics since I understand no Korean. But I get the music. Dabda was really good. Great energy and showmanship on stage. It was really enjoyable. The drummer was awesome live.

Boris (Japan)

OMG OMG. WHAT A SHOW. I can't believe this band has been around for 20 years! It's their 20th anniversary, and they have a mad tour schedule. They named this the '20th Anniversary Tour: 'Pink' (2005), "Do You Remember Pink Days?" '. Hell yeah.

There's much to be said about their work ethics and how good they are. Formed in 1992, this experimental rock band plays music in a genre that I love. This is the very first time I saw them live. What a treat! I knew the band when they were three members. I didn't know Nagata, the previous drummer who left in 1996. Since then, it has been just three musicians — drummer Atsuo Mizuno, bassist Takeshi Ohtani, and guitarist/keyboardist Wata (Yoko Mizuno). I only just learnt that Wata and Atsuo are married with a daughter! But they're so private about it. 

And the sound is HUGE. I saw all the amps and grinned. They blew our faces away. Loud, atmospheric and soul-reaching, prog rock is something elAse. They're also doom metal and experimental rock. 

There was an encore — I was hoping they would play it, and they did — 'Korusu 殺す' (from 'Volume 4: Evil Stack Live', 2020). Boris closed the festival at the Powerhouse. They played for 1.5 hours. WOAH. It's unprecedented for a Baybeats show to last this long! (Most bands play 45 minutes, max. I only recall Amberlin to play an hour in 2009.) This was a full-on show. I LOVED IT SO MUCH! I am so pleased to close out my Baybeats 2026 with Boris. 🖤

Godson #2 is One

My godson #2 turned ONE. The parents threw a party for him. They put in so much effort into it. Bouncy castle for the kiddos, and loads of food and drinks for the adults. There was a grill station that churned out loads of meats (chicken, pork, beef of a rib-eye and a tomahawk), veggies and lobsters. They also had to consider food to feed the kids with as well. L was pleased that her back-up plan of McNuggets didn't have to be used. 

A prata station fed many adults and the kids! Springleaf Prata does this mobile tawa station really well. Freshly made and piping hot prata is such a treat! It was absolutely divine. I had an onion prata and it was soooo good. Apparently chocolate prata was a hit today. The station ran out of dough within two hours, and had to officially close. LOLOLOL

Godson #2 was in a rather swell mood. He was happy to simply hang out, and have his dinner among the festivities and chatter. Godson #1 was spotted but plastered himself in the bouncy castle and didn't really want to come out. Ahahahah. He only came out to get hydrated, have a tiny bite of prata, and to give Choya head rubs. The other humans didn't matter, except for his playmates. Okaaaaay, at least he would be knocked out in the evening and bedtime wouldn't be a fight. 

Choya was just pleased to be lounging around. She walked around for a bit, checking out the scene and sniffing at things. She found spots to chill out at. She liked being included. I do like having this Smol Girl come along, especially when her temperament is this chill at parties. 

Mending Familial Relationships

Woah, the storyline of dementia hits so hard. It's scary. It can be any one of us. We wonder who we would want to make peace with in our old age, or when facing impending death. This is 'The Blight' by Emma Cline, published in The New Yorker on August 9, 2026. This is adapted from the author's recently published novel 'Switzy'.

Protagonist David Hastings is grappling with the onset of dementia. Along with his dedicated assistant Cody, he's traveling to Switzerland for a voluntary-assisted death. Before that, he stops in London to visit his daughter Rebecca, and have one last dinner with her.

David is a flawed character, and hasn't been the best father to Rebecca. He and his ex-wife Annabel divorced when Rebecca was ten. He didn't tell her about his diagnosis. He didn't want her to know. He only said something about retirement. And mentioned about a work project in Zurich. He didn't tell her what he would be doing there in truth. Rebecca didn't quite know how to have a relationship with him. But she tried to be civil.

We don't know if David's cognitive declined allowed him to see more of his life and what remains of it than when he was healthy. At this point, Rebecca only assumed he's retiring, and helpfully sent a string of articles about filling up leisurely hours and reminding him about taking supplements in order to keep healthy and prevent decline. However, he kept his vitamins away in his drawer. "The blight had come for him; it was too late."

Many opportunities to extend the meal. Coffee? Dessert?

To not choose these offered extensions seemed sad, an acknowledgment that the night had been only O.K., that no spark of familial magic had overcome them. And they were as they had always been, stiff with each other, missing the mark.

Like those holiday outings, post-divorce, with itineraries planned out by Annabel. Even at the peak of her anger, she’d remained the wholly capable stage director of everyone’s emotions. Take the girl here, look at these lights, these window displays, there’s a holiday village in the children’s department, get an early dinner reservation at the restaurant on the highest floor—she’ll like the glass elevator.

He’d been grateful. Enormously so.

It seemed to be an awkward meeting. The conversation topics are stilted. He seemed to be out of it. The story ended on a neutral note. Dinner and dessert were all done, and they were about to leave. There isn't a hint that Rebecca is aware of what her father has planned. There isn't an indication that she thinks something isn't quite right with David, at least not from what we have read. It was just another thing, like she would have to meet her father at some point, of which was tonight's meal. 

In an interview with the same journal, the author is asked if David and Rebecca had similar ideas about this meeting,

We see the dinner through David’s eyes. Rebecca seems nervous, on edge, unsure how to communicate with him. Do you think that her take on the meal would be different from what he imagines her experience to be?

Who can ever know for sure what another is experiencing? Whatever David imagines is, of course, just his imagining. She brings her own little universe to the dinner, in the same way that David does, and these universes intersect but don’t really illuminate each other in any helpful way. Or maybe there are flashes of it—of genuine understanding—but those are rare. That distance—the difficulty of truly making contact with another person from the limits of the self—interests me as a writer. David is especially marooned, a man of a certain generation in a culture that’s rapidly slipping into illegibility for him.