Worship the Beat: An Evening of Adventurous Electronic Music at HRC

Worship the Beat: An Evening of Adventurous Electronic Music at HRC

Posted on
0

Hung Trangear
Featuring: Cot.4 / Space360 / Luong Hue Trinh / Dee.F / Duy / Nguyen Do Minh Quan / Visuals provided by The Onion Cellar. Experimental Electronic Trung Thu with Space360 Live

It has been a rather good year for lovers of good music in Hanoi with bands and artists from almost all imaginable corners of the alternative musical spectrum (from dark twisted techno to black metal, via harsh noise and psychedelic pop and progressive hardcore) making their way to this modest city we call home.
But sometimes I cannot help but wondering if it might be time the locals ‘fought back’. Though there is no shortage of adventurous Hanoi-based musicians (both Vietnamese and foreign) doing interesting things and constantly reinventing themselves, I could not pinpoint the last time coming across someone totally new in the scene who managed to catch me off guard – like, out of the blue.

So with expectations set at a reasonable level I make my way to Hanoi Rock City for an evening of what is touted as “experimental electronic music”, not quite knowing what to anticipate, excited nevertheless at the prospect of catching Dee.F (Phu Pham) and Luong Hue Trinh live – whose recent works (including Phu’s new project Cot.4) I have been really into.

Nguyen Do Minh Quan
Nguyen Do Minh Quan

I am soon in for the first pleasant surprise. Upon entering the Red Room whose setting has been drastically changed for the occasion (2 pieces of black curtains ominously hanging facing each other, one completely blocking out the stage, the other (attached to it a full-sized screen) the bar area, leaving an intimate space in the middle centred by a long-tableful of electronic gears (the sight of which apparently manages to wow some members of the audience) – implying that the musicians will perform, not on stage facing the audience, but, amongst the audience – who will be stood or seated (some comfy chairs are in presence) around – perhaps a rare chance for some to see for themselves how laptop musicians do not actually check emails during their sets; the only source of ‘proper’ lighting comes from 2 stage-lights placed on the floor level, and all in all it looks like any minute now someone will bring in a webcam and Boiler-Room us all – it is the perfect setting for that purpose), one has the feeling something unusual is about to happen.

During my pre-show dinner in the company of the artists and their friends there was a nice little moment when Nguyen Do Minh Quan and I realised we had crossed each other’s path once, nearly 8 years ago – he was playing guitar in this student band called Hunter which, many line-up changes later, would become one of the biggest names of Vietnamese hardcore: Nuranium. Despite (quite reasonably) not expecting the guitar to make any cameo, it turns out I am not at all prepared for how far removed from his heritage Quan’s tonight’s performance is. Gone are his days of headbanging and of massive armies of rockfans, in front of me now is a calm figure steadily unleashing waves after waves of icy drones and menacingly sluggish dub-like beats that slowly put the audience into a trance. A journey through the vast dark unknown of space. And indeed, at one point distant bell-like sounds and futuristic textures conjure up the image of a cavernous chapel of extra-terrestrial nature. Undoubtedly, there are potentials for even more twists and turns but a later Soundcloud-listen of one of his sets 2 months prior confirms that this young man has already matured a great deal over a short period of time. Who knows where he will be in 2 months’ time?

Luong Hue Trinh
Luong Hue Trinh

Up next: an amazingly hypnotic loop that I really would not mind going on for the whole night forms the backbone of an equally-hypnotic opening of Duy and Quan’s collaborative set, while all kinds of manners of electronic manipulations are on show. One could say the visuals and the music mirror each other, as on the screen behind the musicians, scientists fiddle with various machinery knobs and dials, cables, graphs and diagrams – the clip used here is a slo-mo version of this archival instruction video from America in the 80s. A particular moment of surrealism (my personal favourite from a night that has these aplenty) happens when a blue title card reads ‘inductive loop detector’ and just that instant an incredibly nasty beat lurches right in (talk about perfect timing – no one but the god of chance is responsible for this, if you were there you will surely know what I am talking about). Later on, especially when Quan decides to call it a night leaving Duy in full solo mode with his glitches, the music seems to involve too much gear-twisting for my taste, which affects the set’s flow (and the adrenaline-inducing repetition they have been laying down) a bit. Nevertheless, it is overall an exciting display that quite successfully combines dancefloor aesthetics with artistically experimental elements. And yes these first two performances totally catch me off guard.

The concrete-cold greyness assembled by Duy and Quan earlier then makes way for Dee.F (Dirty Fingrz / Phu Pham)’s warm and lush-sounding (though obviously also not lacking in weight, punch and groove) beat-worshipping set. Phu is another person whose ‘evolution’ has been really impressive. Moving away from DJ sets he is now a confident techno producer in his own rights, constantly pushing his sounds and approach towards outer frontiers. Throughout his three highly-calculated pieces showcased tonight the sounds of snares and kicks rise and swell before exploding into glorious rave-like sonic workouts; but it does not simply stop there, much credits to Phu’s sense of dynamics as he does not forget to bring out his intricate and trippy textures to the foreground for some much-needed breathing space, before launching into another onslaught of hyperactive beats that messes with your mind and gives the impression of a machine gun in close proximity.

Dee.F
Dee.F

There is a mysterious darkness to Luong Hue Trinh’s music that I have always loved, so it is a surprise to see/hear her opt for something rather lighter this time, in mood and in ‘appearance’ (image of a field of reeds fluttering in the wind lighting up the room – and this is a visual choice made by an artist whose past song-titles more often than not refer to the colour black). Make no mistake – it is not like Trinh has gone pop on us, most of her trademarks are still present, only oozing a refreshingly new feel this time: samples of a Hò Huế tune floating in and out of the mix amidst an ephemeral soundscape but the whole thing here seems a tiny bit more inviting and less sinister-sounding; on a related topic, I just have to state how I love the way she incorporates elements of traditional Vietnamese music into her compositions – the former goes along with the latter so naturally it becomes an integral part of Trinh’s own feminine brand of dark ambient. Looming over her Mac and controller, Trinh gradually guides the sounds towards a seemingly impending crescendo – but here again the artist demonstrates an admirable restraint that plays no small part in forming her enigma – ever flirting with the audience’s expectation her journey towards the light stops short of reaching its ultimate destination, briefly hinting at a lurking presence before dying out into thin air.

But if you are a card-carrying member of the World Association of Worshippers of Crescendos in Music, good news: Space360 delivers, though he is not in any hurry to do so. After 10 minutes ebbing and flowing through a jungle of subtle bass and synths and fragmented echoes and distant chimes and distorted white noises, dreamy but unfortunately losing a bit of momentum along the way, Space360 launches into a brief sojourn of industrial 4-to-the-floor-ism that gets some serious head-bobbing going on in the crowd, before bringing back the delicate concrete of the first section which probably would work better in a home-listening setting and with headphones. Half way through his set he decides to shake things up a bit (read: a great deal), aiming straight for celestial terrains. But if Quan’s cosmic voyage earlier was one of dread and suspense, here Space360 summons an almost-Fennesz-like energy and volume, pulling us all into a space-time portal leading to where nothing exists but pure bliss. On the screen, mind-altering images from the cult French animation Fantastic Planet (which during the artist’s first track proved a tad distractive a companion) works its own magic. It is apparent everyone else is just as spellbound as this writer, as the piece’s ending immediately bursts the audience into the most enthusiastic round of applause tonight. What comes next is a much more experimental and abstract affair but with the power of his transcendental middle segment still fresh in my mind, this final piece seems to be a bit of an anti-climax. Still, I look forward to his 5th concert in Hanoi one day.

Cot.4
Cot.4

What is the ‘4’ in ‘Cot.4’ supposed to mean? Obviously, the group is made up of 4 musicians on electronics, keyboard and trumpet (I think at least one of them takes on percussion duty some time too, but not tonight) – all of them students of the DomDom project, all of them, save for Dee.F/Phu, relatively unknown in the scene. What we are just about to witness is then perhaps a fine testament of the talents they possess and DomDom’s great potentials in helping initiate young musicians into ‘career’ paths more unpredictable than what they would normally choose. Anyway, I am getting ahead of myself again. So the ‘4’ thing in ‘Cot.4’ – I would like to think of it more as the dancefloor-at-4am mood that they create – but it is not a sweaty kind of dancefloor with blinding euphoric lighting and the sheer volume of the bass constantly vibrating through your body – this is something much more laid back, dance-able all the same. Atmospheric, artful, exotic, and dare I say, jazzy at times (thanks in no small part to the trumpet and the airy keyboard lines), Cot.4’s music is a well-crafted union of techno and noir, the sort of sound championed by the likes of Nicolas Jaar and early Apparat. At this stage there is only a handful of people left in the room (on my visit to the loo later I realise a lot more have been hanging around in the garden downstairs, chatting drinking socialising doing the things people are supposed to do on a Friday night, unaware that the future is being made upstairs – you guys, your loss, not the band’s), no one seems to mind the lack of attention though and the young musicians are clearly enjoying themselves / doing what they love – it is visible in their faces and in Phu’s dance moves. Unfortunately it looks like this would be the last show in a while for the quartet, as Phu briefly acknowledges with his bandmates just before their set: “Ok, anh em mình chơi nốt lần cuối nhé”.

Space360
Space360

All the other musicians (Quân, Trinh, Space360) then join Cot.4 for a little improv session to close out the night. Despite criminally lacking even the tiniest of audience to feed some energy off of, it does feel interesting but, by now a bit tired and sleep-deprived myself after a long (and rather bizarre) Friday the 13th, I decide to head home, happy though as I recall something Josh Kopecek (Gentle Ohm) once wrote in a review: “…in Hanoi they know what’s going on, and although the scene is a world away from Tokyo, it knows where it’s going, and it has a voice”. Damn right.

(Words by Hung Tran / photos by Mathias Rossignol, except Luong Hue Trinh and Space360’s photos by Jackson Garland)

Hung Tran makes music on an amateur level and runs The Onion Cellar with the help of some lovely human beings. That is all he wants to tell you.

NO COMMENTS

Leave a Reply