Last night at Hanoi Rock City was a subdued affair. A small crowd mingled in the increasing humidity and heat of Hanoi’s early summer evenings. A small crowd anticipating something special happening upstairs in HRC’s black box. This venue is one of the only real black-box spaces in Hanoi, one where you’d feel a little bit wrong in being in during the day, unless you were setting up.

So there were three acts on the bill, Dee.F, Horacio Pollard, and Dan Henneberry + Brett Zweiman + Đào Anh Khánh.

Dee.F’s performance came with a disclaimer “sorry if it’s too subby”, which turned out to be wholly unnecessary. Although Dee.F’s set was primarily bass-driven, neither his nor any of the other sets were ear-shatteringly loud. He started with non-repetitive and very interesting bass loops, but somehow slowly seemed to slip into conforming to the same four-four rules after a while. There were some really interesting layerings of sounds, but all seemed to have the same sense of trajectory, a slow and intense development. That said, I’m really looking forward to developments of his music in the future, the sound world he’s exploring is really rich and varied.

Horacio Pollard was missing his mouth-mic, which adds a huge dimension to his set. Perhaps the noise wall which he subsequently produced was too much for the average HRC experimental music listener, but it was rich, varied, and powerful. It was surprising, and certainly not the average ‘noise artist’s set of white-brown-pink granular speckles. This was a huge mix of overdriven, schizophrenic, and constantly changing hardcore techno records played through a cement mixer, backwards and with intent. Sometimes it really felt like it was going to drop, but it was so intensely varied that it never needed to.

Dan Henneberry + Brett Zweiman + Đào Anh Khánh, a seemingly impromptu collaboration, but this is one that turned out very nicely indeed. Brett’s non conformist laptop ‘beats’ put through heavy delay, combined with quite a few other tricks, combined nicely with Dan’s guitar noodlings, loopings and fx-ing. Somehow they created this constantly shifting, strangely harmonic soundscape (I think it’s Dan’s chord progressions subtly hidden underneath) with which ĐAK’s movements and vocals then seemed to fit perfectly. It was, I hope, more than a happy coincidence, and I really hope they continue to do more together.

Plus Lizo’s visuals were stunning, beautifully complementing the sets. Somehow strangely surreal, and occasionally distractingmy attention from ĐAK’s contortions.

All in all, it’s always a shame not to see more people attending these gigs, especially when they’re so interesting!