This week we chat with Adam Wright, who’s been a part of Hong Kong’s nightlife scene for many years. Adam was a music journalist for the South China Morning Post (kindly writing about hkclubbing.com over the years), is a DJ known as AKW and was also part of the group behind the PUSH events.

Now Adam has been working on Omni Agency, an electronic music events and design company he co-founded with his wife, Petra Greening. Omni has been organising some exciting pop-up outdoor events since the end of 2021, with plans for more outdoor events and gigs with international artists from September this year.

Hkclubbing: So what led to the birth of Omni Agency?

Adam: I fell in love with the Off-Sonar events when I started going to Sonar in Barcelona more than 10 years ago. They’re held before the main festival during the daytime, in beautiful outdoor locations around the city. The music curation is excellent, there are great drinks and food, the vibe is warm, welcoming and inclusive, the crowds are diverse in everything from age to ethnicity to sexuality. And they usually run from 2pm to 11pm, which - let’s face it - is the best time of the day. All of this really appealed to me as an older clubber, who appreciates a slightly elevated experience and is mostly done with staggering out of a club into the daylight at 7am. These events were the main inspiration for Omni - we knew there was demand as these were the kind of events that we wanted to attend ourselves. And after the forced separation of the Covid years, bringing people back together felt more urgent than ever.

Hkclubbing: What do you feel is the difference between your outdoor events and the others in Hong Kong?

Adam: Now there’s a bunch of great promoters doing fantastic outdoor events in Hong Kong - Pitch, the crews behind 15 Grams and The Mansion, Dimension 5 and so on. We have great respect for these guys as we know how hard it is. So instead of talking about what makes us different, I’d rather talk about what we are trying to do ourselves. First, we are trying to create experiences, not just throw parties. You might not remember that one night at that club even last year, but you’ll definitely remember that time you travelled all the way to a rice farm on Lantau for an Omni event. We choose remote locations for our pop-ups on purpose. The journey there and the discovery of the location is part of the experience.

Our events also celebrate Hong Kong’s incredible natural environment. The locations we select play an important role in each event, setting the tone for the artwork and the vibe. We are hippies at heart really - we live on a beach, we treasure our outdoor locations, we only use biodegradable products for our F&B, and we have a strict policy of leaving our venues in better shape than we find them in. We insist on quality food and drinks. These details matter.

I guess one difference between Omni and other events outfits is that we are also a design agency. Petra handles the design side of the business, and is responsible for all of our artwork, which I think is pretty unique. We don’t want our imagery to look anything like “rave party” flyers and we love to use vintage source material (such as old scientific illustrations) to show our respect for the past. Petra does a lot of work for a wide range of clients, from clubs to start-ups, website design, photography and all that creative stuff too.

Hkclubbing: Do you have a specific music direction for each of the different stages?

Adam: Our outdoor events have always featured two stages - house/techno and bass/drum n bass. I have always loved all these genres. It felt natural to create spaces for both the house/techno crowd and the bass music crowd, and bring both of these scenes together. A lot of events I’ve done before Omni have been quite heavy, dark techno. I will always love that sound, but we wanted to move on from that with Omni and create a more positive, uplifting vibe that reaches more people. The DJs on our house/techno stages mainly focus on deep house, acid, electro and techno, and the bass stage mainly focuses on drum n bass, dubstep, jungle and dub reggae. People into banging commercial EDM won’t find what they are looking for at Omni events.

Hkclubbing: How do you select the international and local artists that match the vision for your events?

Adam: Of course we’ll only work with artists who are on the same page as us musically, but attitude is just as important. We’ll only work with artists whose hearts are in the right place. We don’t have time for big egos. And we’ve made a point of getting as many women on our lineups as possible, considering that female DJs have often been overlooked. We have the same mindset with the international bookings that are starting now.

Hkclubbing: What kind of audience / crowd do you attract to your events?

Adam: We have been very vocal about our values - our goal is to create an environment where everyone feels welcome, safe and respected - and this has led to us attracting a diverse, positive crowd.  We get everyone from university students to mature seasoned ravers, a selection of faces from all around the world, and the queer community is quite well represented too. One thing the crowd mostly has in common is that they are musically well educated - and are super welcoming of anyone else too. It’s been awesome to see a lot of the cool young local kids coming. They’ll be creating the future right here in Hong Kong, and we are inspired when they react to what we are doing. We’re all in this together.

Hkclubbing: What have you found to be the toughest barrier to getting your events off the ground and how have you overcome these to make them successful?

Adam: Our events seemed to strike a chord right from the beginning. People responded positively and understood what we were doing. The weather is always an issue when planning outdoor events in Hong Kong - you can be wiped out by rain at any minute, it’s too hot to dance outside for most of the year, and finding suitable venues on privately owned land can be a bit tricky. But we’ve been lucky - we haven’t been rained out yet, but we’ve baked several hundred people in unexpectedly hot weather (sorry you guys). But It’s worth taking a gamble. Nothing beats being outside with your mates, dancing under the sun or the stars, and listening to great music on a clear sound system.

Hkclubbing: Have you considered taking your event to other countries in Asia?

Adam: We have a plan for slow, organic growth as we are in this for the long haul. We started out small with strict limits on ticket numbers - our first events were limited to 100 people,  and we slowly increased the capacity to 200, then 300, and we’ll keep going. But as a boutique agency we have no interest in doing super large-scale events for thousands of people. We’d  lose the intimate and friendly vibe that people have come to expect from Omni. But we’re in contact with other promoters around the region - hopefully we’ll be collaborating on trans-regional events in the future.

Hkclubbing: Over the next couple of years, what would you like to achieve with Omni Agency and its events?

Adam: Our vision for Omni is intimate and manageable. It’s about creating experiences and building connections. We absolutely love our outdoor pop-ups, and we’ll focus on finding locations and fine-tuning what we do. As well as adding more little details: zines, gadgets and other weird shit. We hope to scale up gradually without losing sight of our original vision for Omni.

Hkclubbing: Can you share any more details with us about your event planned for September?

Adam: Our first international artist is Nicole Moudaber, a techno artist who we’ve been trying to bring to Hong Kong for almost a decade now. She’s representative of the kind of international artist we want to bring out - an artist with broad appeal. We’re targeting artists who’ll bring in the underground types of course, but also young club kids, the older ravers, and even newbies who may be dipping their toes into the scene for the first time. Whatever we do or whoever we bring, Omni will always be about creating a positive experience for everyone. And hopefully making the world a slightly better place, one track at a time.

Thanks for your time Adam, it was great to connect with you again and to find out more about Omni Agency you can follow them on https://www.instagram.com/omniagency.asia/ or visit https://www.omniagency.asia/

Check out the latest performance of Nicole Moudaber and the upcoming event in September below,

(Image source: Provided by Adam)