Hope springs eternal as a slew of new independent club nights give our king of clubs more reasons to stay out late.

Your often-cynical DJ correspondent this week comes at you full of confidence for the year 2010: the sheer number of awesome events at the end of 2009 and so far this year has got me totally psyched.

I’m not talking about the big parties with Armin van Buuren or Sasha, who have both actually bothered to call through Hong Kong this time. What’s got the red lights on my mixer blinking for this year is the mini-explosion of independently run, self-promoted events – which are a more accurate barometer of the health of a scene than 100 gigs by washed-up A-list DJs anyway.

These examples are just from the past few weeks alone: Songs For Children at Philia, Resonant Frequencies at Space, Decks & Effects at Bassment, PUSH at the Ashtray, Chicks on Decks at V13, plus a variety of events staged by Pimpin’ Ain’t Easy and the Heavy crew all over the place. Add to those one-off gigs by the likes of DJ Koga at Philia and DJ Shiftee at Sugar and there’s no doubt we’re witnessing a revival in the Hong Kong club scene.

Most Hongkongers won’t even be aware these gigs are on and I don’t expect them to suddenly start dominating the city’s nightlife. But it’s heartening to see a proliferation of honest, independent club nights run by DJs and promoters who not only love the music they’re pushing but also believe 100 per cent in what they’re doing.

Sure, maybe only ten people will come sometimes, but they’re punters who are totally there for the music: unlike the crowds at last year’s multitude of miniskirt parties, school uniform events and – my personal favourite – stockings and high heels parties, who are there for basically every non-musical objective you can think of.

What’s up with these kind of events anyway? Nothing says “we have no imagination and don’t really give a fuck about music” like promoting women’s wear instead of the tunes or DJs on your flyer. It’s cheap, it’s nasty, it’s shallow and meaningless, and I guess it’s a pretty Hong Kong thing to do.

There’ll be a lot of these events this year too, and they’ll probably get more people through the door than the kind of events I’m talking about right now. But will the organisers care? Yes and no: they’d love your patronage, but this year they will hopefully go forth and multiply even without it.