Hardcore meets MTV's Total Request Live
Introducing Hate5sixTV and an interview with the extremely cool Sunny Singh
Early into being housebound and searching for live show recordings, I was introduced to Hate5six, an archive of thousands of hardcore shows filmed nearly entirely by a single man named Sunny Singh, using a handheld camera. The crowd-feel in these videos is incredible, the camera tumbling and soaring across a hundred dark and glowing basements and back rooms.
Sunny conceived of Hate5sixTV as a hardcore version of MTV's Total Request Live. A 24/7 viewer controlled live stream of clips from the over 7,000 videos Sunny has filmed and collected. Hate5six is one of the largest and best laid out community-based archives I’ve ever seen, and this new tool makes it easier than ever to explore.
I first reached out to Sunny to ask about the watch parties he had hosted during lockdown, sharing how much I missed watching music with other people. Would they ever be coming back?
Through a really beautiful stroke of luck, he'd just finished coding Hate5sixTV, a project with the same aim, to connect digital audiences again, and he was kind enough to let me test it out before its official release.
I had never met Sunny before sending that message. He and I hung out in the chat while he demo’d the the different features like the band request que, and he generously answered some questions for me.
Warm, friendly, passionately intense, Sunny has a sharply honed vision of his work as an archivist and a member of a principled community dedicated to authenticity. While not initially conceived as a disability tool, Hate5six is at its core an accessibility project: building digital bridges, rejecting the demands for polished perfection, and creating kinship in unexpected modes and places.
MERLIN:
What inspired Hate5sixTV.
SUNNY:
A driving factor with everything I do for the channel is rooted in wanted to build digital bridges and communities. For the last 17 years hate5six has been a place for people, bands, and scenes to discover one another. It's been a gateway for people to hear and about "see" bands they haven't encountered before, and it's allowed bands to get a feel for what scenes/venues to play in the future.
There are over 7,000 videos I've filmed and archived on the channel and it would take over 2,800 hours to watch all of it. As a kid I found so much music just by leaving either MTV or the radio on so my vision was to create my own version of MTV's Total Request Live — a 24/7 stream of all things Hate5six, selected at random and through viewer request. The hope being this would be a new avenue for people to gather and enjoy bands together.
During the lockdown I did many "watch parties" which brought people together. I'm hoping this will fill that void for people who are looking for an online community, or even for places like bars, tattoo shops, skate shops, et cetera, that want a fresh loop of live hardcore/punk videos.
MERLIN:
You've already talked about the importance of institutional memory on your website and I think that's a really interesting concept for something like hardcore because it is so fringe, the idea of the institution of hardcore feels a little oxymoronic, but as the genre ages I think it is settling into, if not a traditional institution, its own history and memory. Hardcore community is something that is very tied to "who is in the room" with you. What does the act of putting that on film do in your opinion?
SUNNY:
Videos should never and will never fully supplant the visceral feeling of being in a room with people. Even if we extend this out to a time when we're watching shows on VR headsets. It won't feel the same, nor do I want it to.
My vision with preserving these moments is more about creating a record of what both the band and room were like at a certain moment in time. I want the channel to serve as a time capsule of sorts, as a resource that enables people to move through time and see a band's evolution from playing small rooms to big arenas. For me, the purpose of tracing that affords people the ability to recognize their own potential through dedication and perseverance.
Lately there's been a trend of bands asking to have certain sets redacted to put on hold because of imperfections. This has forced me to stop filming those bands altogether, because revisionism of this order is a betrayal of the integrity and mission of the channel. Obviously there are really bad sets where everything is out of tune, instruments break and the band never recovers… But getting those requests for minor flaws goes against the organic and unrefined nature of what hardcore punk is meant to be. There are no perfect sets and expecting such creates an unattainable standard. You can't appreciate the highs in life without knowing the lows.
Reference and context are key. We are constantly living in a digitally curated world where everyone is the happiest and the prettiest at all times. I want Hate5six to reflect the raw nature of this music scene in all its unfiltered forms. That, to me, is a rejection of the standard of perfection that is constantly forced upon us.
MERLIN:
Have you ever conceived of your work as a disability access tool? And what do you think makes a strong online community as opposed to irl?
SUNNY:
I always viewed my work as forming bridges that span spatial and temporal divides, by enabling people to watch a band's live presence regardless of restrictions that keep them from physically attending.
I had not considered it being a disability access tool, rather ignorantly, until a few years into the project when I started getting feedback from viewers. I was hearing from people laid up in hospital beds, to others struggling to leave the house due to anxiety, who universally felt the channel was both creating spaces for them to experience a show and giving them hope for a day when they could physically attend.
Some of the feedback included recommendations for streamlining the channel to help the visually impaired, which I went on to implement. Others who were at shows I shot, but were relegated to the back of the room for safety reasons, have also said they enjoyed reliving a show from my close-up perspective after the fact.
The strength of an online community is rooted in communication and gathering people around a shared interest. Trolling and negativity are endemic in any community, but I believe the vast majority of people who enter underground music scenes are there to find kinship and share interests. I remember being in Japan for some shows and talking to locals about their influences, specifically late 80’s New York hardcore. The fact that art has the ability to make an impact across decades — on the other side of the world — is evidence of the need to continue finding new ways to increase accessibility and foster cross-cultural exchange. Online communities afford us opportunities to raze the spatial silos that prevent us from seeing ourselves in other people, their lived experiences, and how they interface with this world we share.
It was serendipitous that you reached out to me about reviving the "watch parties" I hosted during lockdown, on the day I finished coding the prototype for Hate5sixTV no less. That to me was all the validation I needed — to see the utility in creating a new virtual community for people seeking alternative modes of camaraderie.
Sitting in a chat with Sunny, watching band footage and testing his new site features, was fun as hell. Whether you’re yearning for the experience of being back in a small sweaty basement, looking to help build the hardcore scene in the modern digital landscape, or just interested in exploring an incredible archive, you’ll have to join me in live chat.
You can watch Hate5sixTV and submit requests at https://hate5six.tv or youtube.comhate5six/live, if you also want to access the live chat. Go check it out now.
This interview was lightly edited to correct spelling and grammar.
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dang this rules! i was peripherally aware of this site before but i had no idea how cool it was.