Yuen Kok Leong never quite had the commitment to form a band, but has spent much of his life orbiting the DIY music scene anyway. He currently serves as a Senior Research Officer at a state think tank in Malaysian Borneo, where he works on issues of socioeconomic development by day.

Outside office hours, he is part of the Noise Not Bombs collective, which organises its namesake annual DIY music festival and smaller shows across Sarawak. He previously edited and published Shock&Awe!, a zine documenting the DIY hardcore punk scene in Southeast Asia, driven by a passion for physical media and the smell of fresh offset print.

Yuen completed his Master’s dissertation on the ideology and identity of the punk subculture in Kuala Lumpur, and has since published two academic papers examining the commodification of punk, while remaining ambivalent about the idea of “selling out.” Somewhere between participant and observer, he continues to navigate punk as both a lived culture and an object of study.

A firm believer in punk’s ethics and underground networks, Yuen credits the scene with shaping his worldview as much as providing him with enduring friendships, floors to crash on, and a lifelong suspicion of neat conclusions.