Josh Cheon has always run a decade or two behind schedule, at least when it comes to music.
“It is so hard to know exactly where it all started,” he says, “but when I was young, my dad had a huge record collection that I would always get into. I grew up listening to lots of classic rock and other music that was not of the time, like 60s music in the 80s. Then as a teenager, I was listening to 80s music in the 90s – while my younger brother was into the Breeders, Offspring and all those indie bands at the time, I was buying The Cure cassettes, which I would make my brother memorize by album color.”
Cheon’s fascination specifically with 80s synth and goth rock as a teenager in the 90s planted the seeds for the launch of his San Francisco-based record label Dark Entries, which re-releases rare and out of print albums from the period.
He named the label after the 1982 song by English goth rock band Bauhaus, which was the first track on a gothic rock album compilation he and his friends listened to over and over as teenagers from a boombox on his lap as they drove around his native New Jersey.
It’s often tricky to track down the artists Cheon wants to re-release, many of whom are now much older and no longer work in music, but the same stamina that helped him coax his brother into memorizing The Cure albums by color has served him well in this area.
“It took over five years to get a response from Jordi Guber of Velodrome, Metropakt and Lineas Aereas,” he says, citing a recent example of a long and laborious artist chase. “I was in Barcelona for a week, renting an apartment on the same street as his business office. I walked five minutes down the block and introduced myself. I was in total disbelief that I was finally talking to him.”
Cheon’s DJ sets span a wide range of influences and sounds, but they always move within the worlds of synth, analog, vocal-driven and irresistibly danceable. He’s also one fourth of gay nightlife collective Honey Soundsystem, who are known for throwing some of the most vibrant and refreshingly inclusive queer parties in San Francisco.
"Dancing is cathartic, and when you throw in a dramatic vocal that people can sing along to, it becomes church"
The two projects ae different, and Cheon says that he notes less and less overlap between the sets he does for each, but there remains crossover between the two, especially as Cheon’s Honey Soundsystem cohort Bezier, a producer who deals in dark, otherworldly disco and who will be performing with Cheon during his China tour at Shanghai and Beijing Dada, has released his latest album, 2017’s Primes, on Dark Entries.
“I like melody and rhythms and have been listening to music with my ear tuned in since I was a kid,” Cheon says of his penchant toward music that encourages people to move. “Dancing can be cathartic, and when you throw in a dramatic vocal that people can sing along to and remember easily, it becomes church – the freedom to express yourself through music.”
Cheon first dropped into Shanghai on a tour back in 2013, where over the course of two nights he flew the flag for both of his projects with a Dark Entries set at Tzusing’s Stockholm Syndrome party at The Shelter and a Honey Soundsystem set at 390 (which is now Lucca). Since that time, he’s incorporated tracks from a few contemporary Chinese producers into his sets, including Tzusing and Mr. Ho.
However, for this month’s trip he hopes to reach back a few decades and dig up some vintage Chinese records for his collection. Should they make their way into his Dada sets, it’s all the better for the dance floor.
Antidote presents Bezier + Josh Cheon
Shanghai: Nov 17, 10pm. Dada Shanghai, see event listing.
Beijing: Dec 1, 10pm. Dada Beijing, see event listing.
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