David Zhou knew he was onto a winner when he saw the crowd dancing at the first ever Margins United festival at EartH in 2024. Around 1500 people had crammed into the Dalston venue to listen to Filipino trailblazer DJ Love play budots, the Tiktok-viral freestyle dance and EDM genre he pioneered from Davao City. Onstage, Zhou’s then creative director, Lorenzo Landicho, was cutting shapes next to his mum. Heartwarmingly intergenerational stuff. “If Eastern Margins stops tomorrow, at least we did that,” Zhou grins.
If you haven’t partied with the crew from this freewheeling east London-based collective, you’re missing out. “Eastern Margins was literally born in a basement somewhere in Shoreditch in 2018,” Zhou says. Those DIY roots have now blossomed into a record label, an artist management agency and a yearly festival, all with the aim of connecting East and Southeast Asian (ESEA) underground music scenes around the world.
Defining the Eastern Margins sound isn’t easy – its bookings and artists include Singaporean alt-rock artist Yeule and Thaiboy Digital, a Thai-born, Swedish-raised rapper from the hyperpop-adjacent collective Drain Gang. Zhou describes it best as “weird electronic music for ravers and rappers”. As we speak, his team is laying down the finishing touches on an 11pm to 3am party for the Barbican [which was held on Feb 20] – the first of its kind – featuring Lewisham rapper Jianbo and DJ wunderkind Nick Cheo, who is currently opening for PinkPantheress on her US tour.
Born in Nanjing, China, Zhou moved with his family to the UK when he was around eight. “As with a lot of the [ESEA] diaspora, that immigration journey informs a lot of the things that you then go on to do,” he says. Zhou spent his youth driving to car park raves in the heady early days of 2000s dubstep, with Caspa and Rusko’s pioneering FabricLive.37 album on repeat. “That was actually one of the first places where I felt a sense of acceptance and comfort in British society,” he says.
Around the time of Eastern Margins’ formation, he was working a corporate job and was trying to go on a Lunar New Year night out with his friend Anthony Ko, who would go on to become co-founder. “We all thought, ‘Okay, we’ve done KTV every year, we’ve done the family dinners. What can speak to the cultural identities and experiences we had growing up as diasporic East Asians?’” At the time, there was nothing out there in London, and so Eastern Margins was born. While its name references its roots in ESEA culture, Zhou is also keen to stress the “margins” part: “It represents something that sits in liminal spaces – something that isn’t easily defined, that’s a little amorphous and a little between worlds.”
At an Eastern Margins event you’re just as likely to meet a queer alt-club kid from Shanghai or Jakarta as you are to run into British Malaysian comedian Phil Wang or dance to a secret set from legendary actor Benedict Wong. Ultimately, Zhou sees Eastern Margins as a facilitator of these unlikely connections, where second- and third-generation immigrant kids can construct musical bridges with those from their homelands and beyond. It’s a mission that leans hard on the uniting potential of the dance floor.
“In a dark, smoke-filled room where no one can see beyond their own hands, it doesn’t matter what you look like,” Zhou says. “Everyone is kind of driving to the same rhythm.”
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This article first appeared in the third issue of Broadsheet London's magazine. Here's where to find a copy.
