Artist Detailed Info: Cocc

COCC is a Saigon-based indie/psych-rock trio whose debut album “6 Giờ” (2011) deserves much much more recognition beyond the underground acclaim and their cult status. Here is what they have to say about themselves:

<< Phuc started a band with his friends to play cover tunes from Smashing Pumpkins, Tool, Beatles, and whatever they can do to satisfy his thirst for Rock ‘n’ Roll. Called themselves "Hero in Danger", how arrogant? Everyone (except for Phuc) left to better greener grass, Phuc got pissed and wrote a bunch of original songs. Cuong and Quoc somehow walked into a wrong meeting and got 'con' into the band playing bass and drum for Phuc. They got pissed and called the band ‘COCC’, how appropriate? Anyway, with no money, they decided to record their songs with a laptop and used the toilet as a recording studio. >>

At times mellow, more often than not bursting with unadulterated rage, but always, always sincere and unmistakably and proudly Vietnamese – from the field recordings of the streets of Saigon on Giao Thông (an angry ode to Vietnamese traffic featuring screams that come straight from hell) to Phuc’s singing in a pure heavy Southern accent (neglected by most if not all professional Vietnamese singers who happen to come from those parts – why?) to the subject matters of their songs which deal almost exclusively with the low-lives often overlooked in a modern money-worshipping society (kid beggars, cyclo-drivers, abandoned children etc), one feels as if this music was born out of a Saigon underground last depicted in Trần Anh Hùng’s Cyclo: dark and gritty and yet ultimately humane.

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