What started as a group of friends sharing beers outside a Family Mart next to the club has become a full movement. It may have begun as a Line groupchat named after those goofy street sessions, but it’s grown into Suburb Sound, a group of 16 DJs and designers solidly tied with the Blaq Lyte fam. While several of them can be found in our offices at any given moment, the team is always somewhere in the city, part of the party, with each member bringing their own particular flare to the night’s sound. They also see that original curbside sense of fun and friendship as central to their goal as an established crew.
Seven years ago, it was just DGST and JWP, two friends studying design at university, bonding over music and culture. The pair had an alternative interest in music that contrasted with nightlife at the time, leaning more towards trap and electronic similar to Mura Masa and RL Grime. When DGST graduated, he threw a party with JWP at a restaurant near his school with two other friends and SBS was officially born. They soon added members who tapped into the house and techno sounds that still dominate Thailand to this day and also gravitated towards Soulection vibes. SBS began by playing at bars and festivals since their sound didn’t suit the clubs back then, but they found their first real home at WHVCK, a beach party in Bangsean, where they threw their 1st-anniversary party as the sun went down over the ocean.
In 2019 they joined the Blaq Lyte squad, doing design by day and DJing at night. SBS fits in as part of our Blaq Lyte Digital label, which is meant to capture the entire experience surrounding music, not just the music itself. During lockdown, SBS was doing livestreams from the office, setting up a controller in the kitchen—cooking oil splattering and spices in the air and everything. Everyone was either working, smoking, or partying the pandemic away, holed up in the office as the cameras rolled and the music bumped. Good music, good people, good friends: it’s still the anthem to this day.
The first post-lockdown party for SBS went crazy—people were ready to get back to life with a vengeance. The feedback from the crowds stayed lively and the parties kept growing, with the team playing at bars, the original Blaq Lyte 11, and even a capsule hotel. They started adding a new generation and expanding, welcoming partygoers into the family who show an investment in their community, and inviting them to the late-night Discord chats to help answer whatever DJ questions they may have. With a new generation comes new values. While DGST and JWP stick to a more proper mixing approach, the newer members are less concerned with BPM or genre and more about a vibe. But they all keep a theme going depending on the party they’re playing, and while each of them has their own tastes, they always play back-to-back with other members on a similar wave.
SBS is ready to take the next step and expand beyond Thailand now. They’ve started with the Noise Axe parties, booking regional artists like Marco Pedro from Manila and Bad Mob from Malaysia who are on a similar music vibe that brings global genres to global dancefloors. They want to become a hub for like-minded outsiders to stop by and remain a bridge for locals to discover the community-driven mindset that birthed their crew.
The growth hasn’t changed their energy though. SBS still considers themselves a meme crew, embedding humor and fun into everything they do. They try not to feel cool, even when they are, and they’re often the source of some of the best moments at a party. If you’ve checked the photos from our Rover events, someone from SBS is usually at the center of something. Come through and see for yourself.
