Kai Tak’s collaboration with Chelsey Boy has been a consistently rewarding creative partnership. Their latest release, the Until We Leave From Here EP, offers a refreshed take on their earlier work, as it features a new mix of the original track, first heard on their debut album Designed in Heaven, Made in Hong Kong, alongside electronically infused remixes by House of Harm, Safe Purge, and Plaster 0f Paris. The EP closes with Kai Tak’s own downtempo electronic reinterpretation.
Until We Leave From Here (Redux) signals an exciting shift for Kai Tak toward a slightly more experimental electronic and hip hop–influenced sound, while preserving the group’s signature blend of shoegaze, dreampop, trip hop, and the elegant incorporation of traditional Chinese instruments.
Accompanying the release is a beautifully evocative music video directed by Steven Esquibel of dreampop outfit Sunder. The video captures a sense of wistfulness and longing that mirrors the song’s lush, melancholic atmosphere. Combining new Super 8 footage with archival clips of Hong Kong’s Kowloon Walled City and the old Kai Tak Airport, the video expresses the music’s theme of nostalgic escapism and memory.
Chris King of Kai Tak unfolds: "I've always been fascinated by the phenomenon of how much more generous and tight-knit communities that deal with poverty are compared to the selfishness, distance and lack of empathy that you always feel in communities of affluence. No place exemplified this better than Kowloon Walled City, and while it may have seemed dangerous, scary, or depressing to outsiders, it had a distinct spirit of hopefulness and togetherness that still inspires me to this day. The Walled City was the most densely populated place on the planet. It was also located right by the old Kai Tak airport, and the planes would fly right over it as they made their landing approach. Having watched countless planes fly into Kai Tak as a kid, I wanted to capture that feeling as well."
Chelsey Boy adds: "This song started as a visual journey, with Chris showing me a photo from City of Darkness: Life In Kowloon Walled City, a book by Greg Girard and Ian Lambot that explored Hong Kong's notorious city within a city. The photo depicted kids playing on the dense rooftops of the Walled City, amidst this maze of telephone wires. I was totally transported to this bygone era and knew this song had to reflect that photo’s intersection of history, urban culture, and human resilience. Every song on this album tells a story and it’s been such a privilege collaborating with Chris on it and learning more about the city he once called home."
Reflective and almost dreamlike, Until We Leave From Here is an emotional piece of music with a subtle ache that avoids tipping into despair. It’s about leaving, but also about what remains, and it feels like a farewell wrapped in clarity and fragility.
Each remix deepens the mellow core of the original, adding intrigue and texture. House of Harm’s version stands out immediately with its warped, danceable energy channeling the track’s sentimentality through a lush new wave lens, revealing unexpected facets of the composition. The transformation is striking.
From there, the Safe Purge remix strips things back, introducing a haunting quality that endures, while, the Plaster 0f Paris Remix leans into cinematic tones, rounding out the release with a sense of completeness; an all-encompassing reinterpretation built from a single source.
ZR