RẮN CẠP ĐUÔI - Interview

ETHEREAL.PRESS

So, first off, tell us a bit about your collective...

RẮN CẠP ĐUÔI

Hey! so we're Rắn Cạp Đuôi (RCĐ) from Ho Chi Minh City.--- its kind of pronounced Ran (but either roll the "r" or pronounce it with a Z like Zan), Cap (say cap but faster than you usually would), Duoi (like buoy with a D). We're a music and visual arts collective but we mostly focus on music/sound related stuff and when we perform live it's typically as an improvised band. We have a lot of members but the main ones are: Đỗ Tấn Sĩ, Phạm Thế Vũ, Zach Sch, Lý Trang, Spencer Nguyen, Trần Uy Đức, Trần Duy Hưng, Đỗ Hoàng Tuấn Anh, Vương Thiên, and Trần Thảo Nguyên.

We have projects together with most members on it, and then there are also a variety of solo projects that all fall under either the name of RCĐ or we'll release in conjunction with the band's bandcamp/ social media stuff.

ETHEREAL.PRESS

@ ETHEREAL, we loved the release of your project 'Ngủ Ngày Ngay Ngày Tận Thế'; such an interesting experimental project! How did the project come to be?

RẮN CẠP ĐUÔI

Ngủ ngày ngay ngày tận thế (we shorthand it as N4T2) is sort of the culmination of what was the past 3 years (2017-2020) because of how we record our work. Typically we go up into the mountains to shack, and we'll just set out Tascam recorders (digital)/zoom mics and play all day. But then we end up with like terabytes of music eventually, so Zach just went through everything one day and started overwriting and arranging a bunch of it into the songs that became the album.

ETHEREAL.PRESS

What was your intention behind it?

RẮN CẠP ĐUÔI

There wasn't really any specific intention, but it did come out of wanting to find a way to work with what we had and to re-explore some of our past "sessions". But Zach was interested in working with collage elements at that time, so the huge amount of archived shit we had worked well for that. (everything we do is kind of "hillbilly" style, (maybe so I don't know) what to call the "sessions" really T^T).

ETHEREAL.PRESS

Does your band's nationality in Vietnam influence the type of music you make?

(maybe it doesn't)

RẮN CẠP ĐUÔI

We don't think it's super influential in an obvious way, but we do utilize a lot of traditional Vietnamese instruments in our recordings, and also when we play live we take a lot of queues from local tài tử improvisational music. Vũ is the most traditional of all of us, with Sĩ, Spencer, and Zach being a bit more international. We're all pretty influenced by Japanese music and American Primitivism as well, and Spencer is really into midwest emo and skramz and Thiện is into hyperpop and its adjacent genres. I think Vietnamese culture may affect our outlook the most though in like the way we DIY everything and are really into changing up how we do things a lot.

ETHEREAL.PRESS

Tell me about the visuals for the track Aztec Glue. What was the inspiration behind this music video?

RẮN CẠP ĐUÔI

Honestly not sure, one of our friends found some animators named Hachul (@hachulsg) and Bored Kid (@very_bored_kid) and sort of felt like that was the best way to do the video since we were under lockdown. Originally most of it was meant to be live-action but the directors Bo and Angelo managed to find a way to translate that to film. The initial idea was there to be a big riot in the middle section, but yeah the lockdown in Saigon ruined that hahaha.

ETHEREAL.PRESS

For our English-speaking audience who may not know about bands in Vietnam (or surrounding countries), what bands/artists would you recommend they check out?

RẮN CẠP ĐUÔI

Vietnam has a lot of great bands. Most are commercial sort of pop bands, though, Trần Uy Đức is probably the best "art pop" or experimental musician we know, Ocean Mob is kind of like cloud trap, Nam Thế Giới is a young band from Hanoi they make excellent shoegaze/ indie-ish music, ĐBB is an accidental noise rock band they're super cool, and there is some other band in Hanoi that's like Fisher-Price RCĐ and likes the Beach Boys and Standing on the Corner.

ETHEREAL.PRESS

We loved your live performance for the Boiler Room YT channel great energy and vibe! Do you plan on doing more live-streamed concerts?

RẮN CẠP ĐUÔI

Yeah, we don't have any planned at the moment, but we're hoping to tour soon if anyone gives us the opportunity. Visas and everything are kind of hard right now, so we're trying to find the money or right venues to let us play abroad now that everything's opening again.

ETHEREAL.PRESS

What inspires you about the experimental genre?

RẮN CẠP ĐUÔI

Just the freedom of it, like we can do whatever. It's a cliche answer, but we don't like sticking to one thing or repeating things unnecessarily, so i guess we're often classified as "experimental". Still, we feel most of what we do isn't super experimental, except for a few tracks.

ETHEREAL.PRESS

What’s next for RẮN CẠP ĐUÔI?

RẮN CẠP ĐUÔI

We're releasing a new ep or album with our friends from Nhạc Gãy (it means broken music in Vietnamese). They're another collective from Vietnam, mostly making club music. Still, we have lots of electronic material that's a bit different from our other work. Suitable for clubs we think.

We're helping them launch their collective's new label! Hopefully, it will be out before the end of the year. Many songs are heard towards the second half of the boiler room set.

After the release, we'll begin working on our next album for Subtext, which we're playing with right now.

We're also playing Pestapora Festival in Jakarta in September.

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