Moments from Fingerprints’ four-night run at Seoul’s new club, Hertz

Over the long weekend from April 10 to 13, Seoul’s underground music scene got a fresh new take on music, literally.

Fingerprints, the cultural collective and record label known for its dedication to house and subcultural music, curated a four-day party series that turned the newly opened Hertz Club into a memorable experience both for artists and the audience.

Held over four nights at the industrial venue in Itaewon District, the line-up was like fallen from a dream.

Chaos in the CBD kicked things off Thursday, followed by the b2b of Octo Octa and Eris Drew on Friday. Saturday, THC and DJ AYA took the decks over, with LSDXOXO closing the weekend with an eccentric and loud Sunday.

If the energy felt festival-like, that’s because it nearly was.

According to Fingerprints, the long weekend was originally planned to be a small festival, which the team had planned for 2025—an event that would’ve blended house with live jazz to honour the genre’s roots. Unfortunately, due to the escalating political tensions and uncertainties surrounding South Korea’s president, organising a festival during this period proved unfeasible for the team.

Instead, Fingerprints transformed the envisioned festival into a series of closely curated club nights. The result was a more intimate yet no less ambitious event, which allowed the headliners to enjoy a crowd for themselves and for the audience to celebrate their artist's sound in full spotlight.

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Founded in 2020 amid the pandemic, Fingerprints was born out of a desire to share multifaceted house music experiences in Seoul, while connecting local audiences with global subcultures. The official launch came in October 2022 with a Halloween party at MODE127 that featured HAAi, Peach, JNS, and more, an event that took on even deeper meaning when the Itaewon tragedy occurred the very next day.

The Hertz Club weekender marked a milestone not just for Fingerprints, but for Seoul’s scene. With Hertz positioning itself as a new player in the city’s nightlife ecosystem, the expectations were high, but they were all met. Across four nights, dancers, diggers, and diehards alike found a rare kind of synergy between venue, vibe, and sound.

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What Fingerprints has managed to build in just a few years feels full of possibilities. Whether or not a festival materialises next year, one thing is clear: their blueprint for house music in Korea is already here, and it looks like it will continue to set very high standards for what music can be in Seoul.

Daniela Solano is a freelance writer for Mixmag Asia, follow her on Instagram here.

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