“Musick to Play in the Dark” is a mini-suite of shifting elements, from Vietnamese singing to antic percussion. It is by Luong Hue Trinh, a Vietnamese national who studied in Japan and has traveled widely. Opening with high-tension strings before the singing kicks in, it slowly becomes a majestic, maximalist work, heavy on hypnotically rhythmic percussion. The beat, heard as if from inside an old alarm clock, has a back and forth sway that creates intricate patterning, especially as it is set against distant pounding and sonic effects.
There’s also (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9e-mnl5lL1o) of her performing an excerpt of the piece at the Onion Cellar in Hanoi, making it clear she’s working largely on a laptop from prerecorded field recordings and sampled music:
Track originally posted at [soundcloud.com/huetrinhluong](https://soundcloud.com/huetrinhluong/black-moon-musick-to-play-in-the-dark). Trinh is one of the nearly four dozen women represented on the [*Synthesis Vol. 1*](https://urbanartsberlin.bandcamp.com/album/synthesis-vol-1) compilation of international women doing work in sound, released in 2014 by the Urban Arts Berlin. She posts occasionally on her [Facebook page](https://www.facebook.com/luonghuetrinh?_rdr=p). Follow the Onion Cellar at [theonioncellar.tumblr.com](http://theonioncellar.tumblr.com/) and [facebook.com/theonioncellar](https://www.facebook.com/theonioncellar).