Eastern Resonance, 5th Harmonic: A Brief Interview with Mona Evie Collective

Eastern Resonance, 5th Harmonic: A Brief Interview with Mona Evie Collective

by ESS Curatorial Fellow James Gui

Leading up to Eastern Resonance, the October 30 Quarantine Concert featuring experimental pop and club musicians from Asia and the diaspora, Curatorial Fellow James Gui sat down with each of the performers to get an idea of their background and thought process behind their music. In this edition, we’ll get to know Mona Evie, a Hanoi-based collective whose experimental hip hop and sound collage textures draw from influences ranging from JPEGMAFIA to Otomo Yoshihide.

In January of this year, Mona Evie released their first single “T0MI3”. Significantly, they also published the track on Newgrounds, a site that some might remember from the height of Adobe Flash (RIP) and Limewire. That gesture alone might signal to some the type of people that Mona Evie are: tinged with a brand of irony unique to those who grew up overly online, browsing forums in distant corners of the web. Make no mistake, however: peel back the veneer of memes and you’ll find music that pushes boundaries of genre and sound design. 

The collective today consists of Long Trần, Thien Vuong, Ha Anh, Gia Duc, Spencer Nguyen, Hong Phuoc, Nguyen Nguyen, and Zach Sch, most of them still in their teens. Most members have various other musical projects: Trần and Vuong collaborate as Pilgrim Raid, their maximalist electronic experimentations debuting on Chinabot earlier this year; Ha Anh makes ethereal R&B as 444; Spencer Nguyen and Zach Sch contribute to fellow Vietnamese experimental project Rắn Cạp Đuôi; and Nguyen Nguyen produces club tracks as NguyendowsXP. 

Pushing forward Vietnam’s electronic music scene alongside a new generation of musicians, producers, and DJs, Mona Evie might be the youngest of the bunch. Even their own members were surprised before joining; Ha Anh had listened to Trần’s music on Bandcamp and thought that he was in his 20s or 30s (he was actually 16 at the time). Their collective musical knowledge is expansive, however, aided by the encyclopedic catalogues on websites like rateyourmusic.com. Their irreverence for genre categories bleeds into their online presence, as the brief interview below might indicate. Read at your own risk!

How did y'all meet up?

We met on the internet and started out as a group of Tyler, the Creator fanboys with Long Tran, Thien, Phuoc back in 2019. Later, Spencer, Gia Duc, Ha Anh, Nguyen Nguyen and Zach joined.

How has the internet shaped your musical journeys?

The internet is literally why this band exists haha, so yeah the internet definitely play a huge role in our musical influences. 

What is "experimental music" to you?

My World 2.0 - Justin Bieber 

Jk, we think experimental music is crossing boundaries in-terms of genres, sounds, song structures,..etc and not bound to any certain limit of what music should sound like. Having fun in the process too ofc.

What's the music scene around you in Vietnam like? What are the differences between Hanoi and Saigon?

Ha Noi has Mona Evie (very good), Sai Gon has Ran Cap Duoi (terrible, not christian music)

What is your plan for 2021 world domination?

Finishing our first mixtape (very good) and moving forward to our next project (hopefully better).

What does each of you contribute to the band?

Long Tran: producer, CEO, chef, joker vn, drug dealer

Thien Vuong: engineering, Justin Bieber, sugar baby 

Ha Anh: sing, design, CEO of fat forehead

Gia Duc: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, sing, stole money from his dad for our studio equipments

Spencer Nguyen: draw, guitarist, scream, gay, sussy baka

Hong Phuoc: rapper, draw, deceased, is going to get canceled soon

Nguyen Nguyen: DJ, pain, certified lover boy

Zach Sch: who ?

Tell us what we can expect from your set on ESS!

Bangers only & Hong Phuoc getting canceled.