"Tired of having a plan": COSMOS goes Behind the Scenes in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam with Rắn Cạp Đuôi

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COSMOS: Behind the Scenes with Rắn Cạp Đuôi

In 'Behind the Scenes', COSMOS dives into local stories from across the world together with our global partners.

Vietnamese experimental music collective Rắn Cạp Đuôi have been expanding their vast auditory spectrum since forming back in 2015. On their first two albums, Ngủ Ngày Ngay Ngày Tận Thế (2021) and *1 (2023), the group shifts between experimental rock music and rapid-fire digital collages. Their idiosyncratic performances, such as their storied Boiler Room set and celebrated Le Guess Who? shows, have further cemented their name. Following last years COSMOS Embassy in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, put on in collaboration with V2X Mag and Rắn Cạp Đuôi, we checked back in with the crew to learn more about what has happened since.

Words by COSMOS
Photography courtesy of Rắn Cạp Đuôi Collective & 36framez

2023 was a breakout year for Rắn Cạp Đuôi Collective. The glossy maximalism of their sophomore album *1 scored rave reviews across the board and their tireless touring ethos gave them notoriety in music circles everywhere. On the occasion of their 2024 European Tour and Roskilde Festival appearance, COSMOS reconnected with RCD core members Phạm Thế Vũ, Zach Sch and Đỗ Tấn Sĩ to discuss the status quo of their band and home scene, and the issues with touring internationally while trying to make a living.

Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) and Saigon are used interchangeably in this conversation.

What time is it in Ho Chi Minh City right now?

Vũ
It’s six o'clock. PM.

Zach you're in, in Paris, right?

Zach
Yes, I'm in Paris.

And that's because you’re on tour with RCD. At least partially.

Zach
Yes, we've done two RCD shows already. We're technically based out of The Hague, The Netherlands, our other guitarist lives there. So we made him let us sleep at his house.

The idea for this was to check in with you guys about what happened since you performed at Le Guess Who? last year. I remember you played multiple shows in different iterations in Utrecht as well.

Zach
We played at EKKO the first night and then we played at TivoliVredenburg the second show. The first show was just us three, and then the second one was with everyone available in Europe.

For people who have never seen you live or experienced the whole RCD thing: can you explain who's the core group and how many people are in the wider collective?

Zach
Vũ, Sĩ and I are the three main people. At some point we realized that Đỗ Hoàng Tuấn Anh has been my replacement, because I started off as one of the guitarists. When our original drummer left, I was the only one who could play drums. Although I wasn't very good at it at the time. We asked Đỗ Hoàng Tuấn Anh to join the band and he kind of replaced me on guitar for a couple years before he had to go study in Europe. Then there’s Tran Uy Duc, our sometimes vocalist, and then we have Vuong Thien, who is our DJ cool girl.

When your duties on instruments changed, how did it affect the way that you create your music as a whole? Because it has always been jam-based, right?

Zach: No, we did try to write songs at one point {laughs}. We had a post-rock phase, a post-punk phase, an indie phase, a math rock phase… Finally, we got tired of having a plan and we started doing more improvised stuff. As I was learning drums, I was following Vũ a lot. It created a cohesive dynamic between the two of us. Vũ is the main melodic center and I followed the melodies with the drums instead of the rhythms.

Vũ
I would agree, but it's pretty much shared between all of us. We don't really think, we just jam. And then Zach makes arrangements out of our sessions.

Zach
Some of these arrangements are easier than others. I’m most worried about those when we were drinking a little bit, or were talking in between sessions. I'll be listening to the recording like ”wow, there's so much here!” and then *k-kchh* you’ll hear the cracking of a can, or somebody walking into the room like, “what's up guys?” {laughs}. We don't always have the most sterile of recording environments.

The idea of having a communal space, as opposed to a studio that's hermetically sealed, that seems kind of important, right? You recorded most of your tracks in a living room…

Zach
In fact, we went and recorded in a proper studio space recently. But I still think our best stuff comes from the living room.

Vũ
Yep. We just didn’t get used to it, and the studio people don't get used to us. It’s like we’re a different genre. We just rent out the space and get the raw file at the end. But the engineer wasn't used to people like us.

Zach
Very nice guy tho! It wasn't like a clash of personalities, he was just like… what's going on?

Vũ, you're not joining this leg of the European tour?

Vũ
Unfortunately. We have a little issue with the visa. Big issues actually.

Can you elaborate on that? RCD have gained so much attention everywhere last year and people often don’t think about that specific reality of touring musicians with different passports…

Vũ: For us, there's no such thing as artist visas. There's only a business or tourist visa, and we can’t get the business one because there are too many tourstops in different countries. We want to go all over Europe, and the regulations wouldn't allow us. Especially for Vietnamese citizens it is only expected to stay in like one or two countries. It is just not usual and really hard to come around it. Unless there’s a big institution involved or something. We were lucky last year that we could come to Le Guess Who?, to be honest.

You would think that for artists who have toured the year before, it would be easier the next year…

Vũ
Well yeah, that’s what we thought as well. But it's not happening for us. It’s always hard, especially when you come from Vietnam.

Zach
That's what it was saying online, like, it shouldn't be that difficult.

And is it difficult because of the Vietnamese bureaucracy or the European? Probably the European…

Vũ
Yeah, yeah. The European offices. Not the Vietnamese.

You’ve been around for almost 10 years, but RCD gained a lot of momentum recently. Your first two albums were released, both got reviewed very well, you toured internationally… How did your lives change since then?

Vũ: I guess we’re still trying to survive {laughs). We do different jobs. Music is still our second life. I mean, there has been an effect. We’ve been getting all these invitations and all, but it's not like a professional thing. No actual managers, no fixed spaces. Home studios, still.

And is that something you actually aspire to? A professional music life?

Vũ
Hm. What do you think, Zach?

Zach
I feel like that’s ideal. But it's really difficult to do in Vietnam. Maybe my work is a bit more music focussed than Vũ and Si’s, because I do music for films. But it's still not really based on Rắn Cạp Đuôi. I have a background in classical music, so I'm working more in that style.

Can I ask what fields you and Si are working in, Vũ?

Vũ
Sĩ has no job right now.

Zach
Sĩ never has a job {laughs}.

Vũ
I work at a contemporary art gallery. Yeah.

That's interesting. I remember when I went to Ho Chi Minh City finding quite an established art scene, but not so much underground music. Is there a big overlap between visual arts and music?

Vũ
Not necessarily, I wouldn't say there’s a big merge. There's no sound artists, really. And most people in the arts scene don't really go to music shows. Nor the other way around. We used to play and hang out in art galleries, but not anymore these days.

Zach
I often say, like, we’re not big enough to be a big band in Vietnam. But we're a little bit too big to play the old spaces that we used to play in. We can't really play in the smaller art galleries that we grew up in.

So how big is the following in Vietnam for you guys now, then?

Vũ
It’s still really only our people. And a bunch of young kids.

That’s the hardest group to grab, young music fans! Everyone’s competing for their attention.

Vũ: I mean, most of the art people know us. But the kids who still go to school discover more ‘good’ music than anyone else. The rest of the music scene doesn't really pay attention to us, or ignores us altogether. There are certain festivals we never get invited to. I don't know why {laughs}.

Zach
It's a bit of a double edged sword. It’s similar to why we don't play the galleries so much anymore. Funding is just so limited, that it has fostered an “If I succeed, you must fail” mindset. When we were a smaller band, we were less threatening, I guess. If something gets funded, that means that somebody else's project doesn't get funded. It creates this atmosphere where people don't want to give us any more space. And to a degree, I think it's fair, because we have the ability to go and play in Europe and get our name out there a bit more. Currently, we're the only band that tours outside of Vietnam. A few people have done like one show outside of Vietnam. And there's a couple of bands that will tour in Southeast Asia. So it should be a little bit more egalitarian in Saigon and Vietnam.

When you’re putting on a DIY show, is that how you would go about it, applying for public funding?

Zach
It'd be like the Goethe Institute or Idecaf, the British Council or Japan foundation. We've worked with all of those and since COVID, especially like the Goethe Institute and British Council got hit pretty hard with budget cuts. So they've been less active in the scene.

Now you’re touring Europe again, at least some iteration of RCD. How do you finance these tours?

Zach
Solely through our artist payments. The shows pay for tickets and living costs. On this tour, we got really lucky that Roskilde is paying us well. So we have a bit more breathing room with everything, which is nice. But I think European bookers are just now realizing that we're not based in Europe. We were getting lots of opportunities to play and they're like, “oh, but you guys are based in Berlin, so you guys can just…” and we're like “no, no, no, we're not!” {laughs) Very far from Berlin!

The core of the group is still permanently in HCMC. When you get together, do you rehearse at all? Or do you just press record at the start of every session?

Vũ
Oh, we do rehearse.

Zach
We just never play stuff from the records. If we do, it will be a fully electronic version of it. With the exception of maybe two songs, they're not super playable live. We could do “Pressure” live, but “Pressure” would be such a pain in the ass {laughs}. We started improvising, because we did write actual songs that we were practicing, multiple times a week, trying to get a body of work that we could record and play live. And we just found it really boring. We all showed up for practice one day, and we were like “I'm not really in the mood to play this song.” And then it just went downhill from there.

Not getting bored seems to be a key incentive for the whole project…

Zach
Yeah, because there's no other purpose. If it was like, “Oh, if we just play this same song 70 times we'll be millionaires”, well, of course {laughs}!

Speaking of millionaires playing the same song over and over again: is it true that you met on the Coldplay Facebook message board?

Vũ
That was me and Sĩ, yes {laughs). It's kinda like a Vietnam thing. We were very young and we were in different cities back then and communicated through that page. That's a fun story, yeah.

For the near future: what would you like to see happen with the scene in HCMC? What would make it nicer for you, and for everything to come more together?

Zach: More clubs would be cool. There used to be more clubs and then they all shut down. In Saigon, a club will open for a year, do like three events and then will close. The economy is really bad this year and money is scarce. Slowly, there's more bands and projects, too. A couple other bands are offshoots of Rắn Cạp Đuôi, they all have some members of RCD.

Vũ
But everyone is always close to giving up. We need proper record labels here. Some form of management, agents for bookings and touring. People with experience who studied this stuff. Most of the labels in Saigon are from the metal and punk world, they’re doing pretty well. But those bands are not touring so much, the farest is probably Malaysia. There is not really an infrastructure for us in experimental rock music, or whatever you want to call it.

Zach
This is gonna get me in trouble. But I think the reason why a lot of the metal bands and punk bands don't tour that broadly is… I mean they don't even go to Indonesia, and Indonesia is a big hub for metal and noise music and punk music. Cynically, it really is a case of quality. In Malaysia or Thailand, it’s kind of like a novelty, “oh, a Vietnamese punk band? Wow!” But in Indonesia and Japan and South Korea, where they take the music very seriously, and the scene is really mature, this doesn’t work. Which I think is a bit unfortunate. Oh, Sĩ is here!

Sĩ enters the Zoom.

Hey Sĩ, how are you doing?

Sĩ
{holds up a drawing} I’m drawing right now, because I’m in a lot of debt. I haven't been in employment for two months. Drawing used to be a hobby of mine.

Sĩ, before we wrap up: how about you recommend some music for us?

Sĩ: Oh. I guess this is very cliche of me. But I'm going to recommend every band from the Louisville scene from the 90s: Slint. Rodan. Rachel's… Who else? That scene has been instrumental for me as an artist, but also Pilot RedSun. He is an experimental cartoonist who also does music. He did a single album under that name called Achievement. And I will recommend everyone to listen to the ECM Records label in general. That’s all I do: listen to mid-90s music (mid as in nondescript, mediocre)… and SMOOTH JAZZ.