Name: Lý Trang
Occupation: Producer, sound artist, composer
Nationality: Vietnamese
Current release: Lý Trang's new single "i'm ready to be any animal that's whistled” is out now via Subtext. It's taken off her upcoming album Syenite, scheduled for release on July 7th 2023.
Recommendations: On Not Dying-Secular Immortality in the Age of Technoscience is a good book I finished recently.
And Children of the mist is a great documentary by a Vietnamese director. It’s beautiful and haunting, and it manages to avoid becoming a mere depiction of a travelogue-like untamed landscape.

If you enjoyed this Lý Trang interview and would like to find out more about her music, visit her on Instagram, and Soundcloud.



When I listen to music, I see shapes, objects and colours. What happens in your body when you're listening? Do you listen with your eyes open or closed?

I think of listening more as an immaterial process that my body often reacts directly to the affective force that it created. It can elicit a range of emotional and physical responses that really engage my mind.

I like the way music transmits a surge of energy, a sense of living in the present while transporting you to new places. It sometimes enhances the visual surroundings, so I always listen with my eyes open.

What were your very first steps in music like - and how do you rate gains made through experience versus the naiveté of those first steps?

I started playing guitar when I was 14 and writing some of my first songs when I was around 17.

I embraced the naive first steps with a lot of intuition, which is still part of my current process and I try to balance it with the techniques I slowly learnt over time.

According to scientific studies, we make our deepest and most incisive musical experiences between the ages of 13-16. What did music meant to you at that age and what’s changed since then?

During these ages I was influenced a lot by both the traditional elements of my own ethnic group and also popular culture from the West. My dad was the one that piled up my house with CDs. He went to Russia for more than 10 years, and brought home a bunch of Russian pop CDs from the 90s, and Western CDs titled ‘20 hits of all time’ which look very pirated. It had songs by The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan and many others on it.

Although the music I listen to has changed a lot since then, my dad was still the first one that showed me the big big world of music that was out there. I was living in this small mountainous town, where TV channels that show Western music weren’t a popular thing at that time. And from when I was 6 until I was 16, these CDs were my main source of things.

During that age, I thought so much about what kind of message I would like to convey in my music. I looked at the materials that I chose, some types of indigenous musical elements, both the instruments and the chords and layering style that I was unconsciously influenced by from my childhood (my ethnic group). It kind of urged me to become someone who brings these traditional values out to other groups of people in my country, and then broader.

Later, I made my first album like a layering story about the comfort women who used to be the victims of the war, the Vietnamese ones, the South East Asian ones. Those who survived have come to the very silent villages and live a seemingly peaceful life. They have this positive vibe but somehow their eyes are full of painful experiences. And yet, they continue growing plants, cooking food from their plants, talking to each other, singing and comforting. I watched many documentaries and read books about them, and it was some kind of very emotional experience of empathy that makes me want to express my feeling when hearing their story.

So my first album sounds like different layers of one story and of many feelings, dark and bright at the same time. And once again, another urge came, as I felt this urgent need to stand up for the women who still live with the pain from the past. And at some point, I feel like this urge exceeds the limit of my body, of my ability.

And I grew up realising it’s not a mission of music (or even me) to do that. I did more improvisations and listened back to happy accidents — “filtering out some good stuff”. I realised it’s a process that provided me with a cathartic way of addressing the kinds of problems I wanted to address. And sometimes I don’t really need to plan an initial message of the music that I’m going to make. That’s the biggest change I think - oh it was a cool idea to jump into the sound and let the sound bring out the meaning, and sometimes not necessarily a specific meaning.

Over the course of your development, what have been your most important instruments and tools and how have they shaped your perspective on music?

I would say guitar, synthesizers and the traditional flutes from Vietnam.

I started playing guitar from 9th grade, and I used it for most of my very first songs. Then I got my first synthesizer from my friend, a Microkorg, super classic. I love playing with it and manipulating the sounds, which can turn into something unpredictable and magical. Making some special and new sounds on my instruments is my great musical joy. If I could do that all day and nothing else, I would be incredibly happy.

So my room in Hanoi was getting more and more things. Now I have a guitar, a violin, some synthesizers, some flutes, a lyre and also many toys and things that go beep in the night, and some pedals that somehow I managed to get. I slowly shifted my understanding of instruments from a tool to a complex dynamic and as part of creating, which allows me to become some kind of conducter among an orchestra of instruments.

What, would you say, are the key ideas behind your approach to music and what motivates you to create?

The way I approach music is like underscoring certain moments, kind of invisible but there to bring out certain feelings.

Sometimes I think of my music as a way of storytelling. I’m not writing about literally what’s happening to me, but most of it is based on translating the emotions I’ve felt and the stories I was in. So it’s like my pure state of emotion, a potential vehicle for empathy so that it can engage my mind and disparate people can occasionally feel similar things in it.

I think communication is very hard. Communication is hard; interviews are hard; it’s hard to be articulate sometimes. And what’s nice about music for me is that it’s not about communication, it’s not about language. In a world increasingly impatient for a message, a meaning, a point, I see music as a radically patient space in which one can just be.

Paul Simon said “the way that I listen to my own records is not for the chords or the lyrics - my first impression is of the overall sound.” What's your own take on that and how would you define your personal sound?

I like the fluid way that sound comes for me. I started with chords in my very first steps of writing music. I sometimes still do, but during the listening process I slowly abandon the attention on figuring out the chords in the songs to enjoy them as a whole.

Words tend to come later tham music for me, it takes a little more thinking. Language always has meaning. It’s a whole other element that you need to deal with. It’s fun but also challenging.

Sound, song, and rhythm are all around us, from animal noises to the waves of the ocean. What, if any, are some of the most moving experiences you've had with these non-human-made sounds? In how far would you describe them as “musical”?

I often start with just any sound that inspires me. If I hear some rhythm from a water pump, metal hitting the bannister, some bells, trains, ice-cracking, animal voices and whistles, I would start recording it. Sometimes I leave these recorded sounds as just field recording, sometimes I sample and turn them into a loop.

This recording is like a bonfire in the village, once it starts, everyone gathers around it and tells their story. When I hit playing these random field recordings, or the loop of these recorded sounds, all other layers would take turns to come in and find their way to merge into it.

For me something ‘musical’ is not completely something ‘human-made’. I don’t want to consider the non-human questions from a specific perspective of the humanities, or perceiving them as the 'oppressed' or the dominated tools.

When I put myself and what I do in a somewhat equal position with the surrounding soundscape made of non-human others, I find myself as if I were living in an attachment to it, blurring the distinction between humans and these ‘others’, opening up new dimensions rather than the one-way listening and understanding of the pluralism of music and sounds.

From very deep/high/loud/quiet sounds to very long/short/simple/complex compositions - are there extremes in music you feel drawn to and what response do they elicit?

I feel drawn to all of the extremes like silent and loud sounds, minimal and complex compositions. It is the range of intensity and emotions that music can elicit in many diverse ways that attracts me.

I tried combining the quiet moments and complex compositions on one of my old tracks “Obuki”.



From symphonies and traditional verse/chorus-songs to linear techno tracks and free jazz, there are myriads ways to structure a piece of music. Which approaches work best for you – and why?

I want to believe that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to structuring a piece of music. So during the process I try to blur the distinction between the the traditional structures of verse / chorus formats or chord progressions, and nonlinear composition. I adhere to any of them when I find it suitable, or combining them so the works can be constantly evolving and shifting.

I feel the freedom and experimentation of jazz and ambient for moments that I’m drawn to it, and I’m ready to construct a traditional verse / chorus song approach for the folk and more pop-oriented songs.

In any of them, I enjoy incorporating elements of chance and improvisation, as this creates a sense of spontaneity and unpredictability that can be thrilling for both me and the listeners.

Could you describe your creative process on the basis of one of your pieces, live performances or albums that's particularly dear to you, please?

My latest project was a musical-storytelling performance in the Museum of Cosmonautics.

The abstract dialogue between the captain of a time machine and the main narrator was amped through the utilization of vocoder, which dragged my voice way down to a voice of a non-human character (the captain). It sounds like a low male voice, but also not completely.

The conversation was sometimes highlighted, and sometimes obscured by layers of music, untangled by both the thrill of technology in its content and in its way of producing the sounds. I tried to constantly call to mind human scales of time, science, and presence—even if only in their defamiliarizing absence.

And I lean into the aesthetics of alienation, allowing us to imagine the idea of immortality in the future.

Sometimes, science and art converge in unexpected ways. Do you conduct “experiments” or make use of scientific insights when you're making music?

I used some simplistic self-made contact mics to create sounds, experimenting with the synthesizers I had, messing around with the vocal layers onto the DAW, and using some of the very basic physical logics in working with water and temperature in my sound art installations.

It’s my dream to embrace new technologies in art and performance practice, and use it as a basis to narrate the current problems of our time, and I hope to build something on my own in the near future.

How does the way you make music reflect the way you live your life? Can we learn lessons about life by understanding music on a deeper level?

I don’t really live in a structure way and that might be reflected in my music.

But understanding music helps me navigate balance and silence in general, evoking sensibility and intuition, approaching unexpected twists and turns in a more active way.

Do you feel as though writing or performing a piece of music is inherently different from something like making a great cup of coffee? What do you express through music that you couldn't or wouldn't in more 'mundane' tasks?

They’re both kinds of magical potions that can make me feel awaken (sometimes) and make my heart beat fast (good coffee I mean).

But music doesn’t vanish after one cup and it evokes a range of emotions than just energizing or a satisfaction of practicing a mundane habit.

Expressing through music and listening to it can be sometimes a microhabitat for me to stay, transcending a sense of place or allow me to just stay still.

Every time I listen to "Albedo 0.39" by Vangelis, I choke up. But the lyrics are made up of nothing but numbers and values. Do you, too, have a song or piece of music that affects you in a way that you can't explain?

All of Glenn Branca’s albums, especially The Ascension, affect me deeply in a way that I want to relive it.



If you could make a wish for the future – what are developments in music you would like to see and hear?

More diversity and less distinction, a better appreciation and greater attention on live performances and the communal experience of music.