Hong Kong post-punk band David Boring talk Anthony Bourdain, their South by Southwest debut, and protest art

Outspoken Hong Kong post-punk band David Boring perform this weekend for the first time in more than five months, a notable period of absence that coincided with some of the most intense street protests the city has seen. The group had been scheduled to perform at the Clockenflap Music Festival, Hong Kong’s biggest live-music event, in November until the festival joined a long list of events cancelled because of the civil unrest.

Their show on Sunday will be the group’s first with new guitarist Kit Yip, who joins from experimental shoegaze act Murmur. Known for their dark, wild and often shocking image and sound, the band will bid farewell to guitarist Dave Cheng, who is leaving to pursue his studies.

The band owes its formation to the anger stirred up by the 2014 Occupy Hong Kong protests. They quickly rose to prominence in the Hong Kong independent music scene, and their infectious and cathartic brand of nihilism earned them attention abroad.

Seated in a cafe in Tai Hang, around the corner from Victoria Park – the starting point for several big marches in opposition to a proposed change in extradition law, the spark for the ongoing protests – lead singer Janice Lau and guitarist Jason Cheung acknowledge the compulsion in the artistic community to be creative during tumultuous times, yet say that they chose to hold back amid the noise.

“This might be a controversial opinion, but I think times like this always encourage bad art and music,” Lau says. “Every time something is a piece of political art, people become much more forgiving or the focus becomes the message rather than the quality of work. I think everything we do is still highly political [but] it’s more unspoken than what is written out.”