Phong Tran The Computer Room

THE COMPUTER ROOM

PHONG TRAN

On November 19, 2021, New Amsterdam will release The Computer Room, the second album from Phong Tran, a Brooklyn-based composer, electronic musician, and early synthesizer enthusiast. Alongside Darian Donovan Thomas (Moses Sumney, Arooj Aftab), Tran also forms half of the synth and violin duo MEDIAQUEER. On The Computer Room, Tran, inspired by the din and noise and grind of experimental electronics, longs for the computer room of his youth—where hours were joyfully lost behind the glow of his screen.

“I began thinking about how much of my life has been shaped by virtual spaces,” says Tran. “I began seeing those bygone virtual spaces—games and forums—in a physical way. They’re like ghost towns from a pre-MySpace internet; these sites still exist, but no one visits them anymore. I miss them. As a closeted gay Asian kid raised in white suburban Georgia, the computer room was where I could escape, where I could be anything I wanted to be, and, eventually, where I could accept who I was in reality.”

A coming-of-age album, The Computer Room is also inspired by simulation theory. (As a longtime gamer, as someone who controlled virtual worlds for hours on end, Tran would obsess over the notion that we’re living in a computer simulation). To transport listeners to the internet world of his youth, Tran sampled old YouTube simulation theory interviews, improvised with myriad synthesizers, and painstakingly produced nine nostalgic vaporwave tracks.

“The Computer Room is loaded with longing. It’s my emotional exploration of the internet and electronics. Nothing on the album is truly acoustic. But even without any recorded sounds, I wanted to invoke heavy human emotion through it all. The same way I felt a human connection through my computer screen.”

Despite its cold, digital form, Tran’s childhood computer became a true friend. And as his machine warmed, so did something inside Phong Tran—a feeling of finally being connected, of finally finding a community, even if that community existed virtually, countless miles from his computer room.

“I wouldn’t experience that feeling again until I moved to New York and found my chosen family of artists. The Computer Room is also a thank you to the internet community of my youth, the friends who pushed me to get better at something, even if it was playing computer games. Because if I didn’t push myself then, I wouldn’t be pushing myself now with my creative work.”

Album Credits

Composed and Produced by Phong Tran

Art Design and Video by Phong Tran

Mastering by Andrew Noseworthy

Live Version and Music Videos co-commissioned by Metropolis Ensemble (Andrew Cyr, Artistic Director) and Scott Wollschleger

Physical albums produced by slashsound in Detroit, MI (Adam Cuthbert & Daniel Rhode, Executive Producers)