Interview: Chanpan is entering their IRL era
At one point during my conversation with Chanpan, Grace Dumdaw started mewing. I didn’t realize it, but I had said something with a very unfortunate double entendre and I was off in my own world continuing that train of thought for another minute or so. It wasn’t until later when Lance and Matthew Tran brought it up that I had even realized that my monologue understandably did cause some “that’s what she said” eyebrow raises (trust me, it did). “I’m irredeemable,” Grace admitted to me. At another point in the interview, Lance tried to soft-cancel Matthew for telling me that he was re-reading the book Orientalism by Edward Said. “You know that’s a slur now, right,” Lance jokingly prodded, referring to the title of the book.
In a way, those two moments were representative of the type of relationship that the three bandmates have with each other. Chanpan is probably the best answer to the question: What would it sound like if a few expert shitposters came together and started a band? Despite the fact that they’ve got jokes, Chanpan, the trio of New York-based musicians Grace Dumdaw, Lance Tran, and Matthew Tran (the two are twins), have built up a solid following online due to their innovative genreless mix of things like breakbeat, bossa nova, and drum and bass. Though Chanpan only has a handful of songs out there in the world, they’ve already played a sold-out headlining show in Brooklyn, have been featured in outlets as varied as the New York Times and Ones to Watch, and have gone very viral online for things completely unrelated to their music.
After watching some of their videos on their bustling TikTok and Instagram accounts, it makes a lot of sense why the three might capture your attention outside of their musical output – Chanpan as a group has a natural sense of humor that was shaped by and thrives on the internet. But in between skits and occasional brainrot videos, the trio are also very politically outspoken on their platform, choosing to promote political activism in their messages even as they’re clowning around.
From their start busking in the streets of Chinatown, they’re ready to move into a new era of live performance which will hopefully even lead to world domination. They’ve just completed a tour with the talented live performer Haru Nemuri and even put together a few community-driven events while they were on the road. Moreover, Chanpan is fired up about their new music, telling me that the topics that it will cover include “shitting on the government” to “I’m so sad and love is hard.” Just last week, they’ve just released their newest song, “Election Year,” which makes good on that aforementioned promise.
I talked to the three of them over Zoom while I was in New York in August to see what they had to say about their recent success, their anticipation for their first US tour at the time, and how video games have influenced their musical style.
This interview has been edited for clarity.
I was curious about your background as a band. How did y’all find each other? What were the origins of this project?
Grace: Matthew and Lance are twins and they have been together their whole lives and grew up making music together, being around each other and jamming. I met Lance in Philadelphia in 2018. We were both in Philadelphia for internships. We met then and we were just homies. After that summer, we went to school, years passed, and then we all moved to New York around the same time, so that’s when we linked up again as friends. I always wanted to busk in the streets of New York, just because it’s an activity to do with friends and have a good time. They were the only people that ever took me up on my offer. So in October 2022, we busked for the first time, just in the streets of Chinatown where the twins live.
It was just that. We were just playing music outside and people were really nice to us, like they came up to us, talked to us, were really into our sound and kept asking if we were a band and if we were on Spotify and we were like, “No, but I guess we should!” So we started writing music together and we put out our first single… September 2023. And then yeah, we just kept making music.
That first song got some traction on Spotify enough to put us on people’s radars making music possible for us. We’re almost a year in and just grinding all the time. It never ends.
Lance: I feel like all three of us were probably going to be doing music stuff at some point and we already were, but we had no expectations and did not expect that this perfect configuration would happen. And then also created splash after splash after splash in the right time and place to lead us to you in this moment. It was meant to be!
What was your experience like busking in New York? I know that it’s hard to get people’s attention, especially here.
Matthew: We’ve all been communicators and performers in our own lives and own backgrounds. For example, Grace does acting and me and Lance have done political and organizing work for a long time, and even as musicians prior. We’re used to playing to different audiences. You’re totally right. It is a very fickle kind of audience to play to. You have to think about what they like and all that stuff, but it was also super gratifying because we would play our original stuff and people would sometimes stick around to dance to that stuff the most. We were able to have a fun and lighthearted time. All the respect to people who are out here busking and it’s like a major source of income for them. For us, it was just a way to be creative on a weekend.
Lance: Yeah, I think it’s kind of excruciating on some level because most people walk past you and ignore you, and that’s just normal. You’re also next to spots that constantly smell like piss and other horrible things, and then also people are coming up to you and saying weird stuff like… I was drumming and then someone walked up and said, “Hey, excuse me. Is the singer available to date?” And I was like, “Oh, no.”
I think the latest iteration was this flyer thing, but our obviously OG busking… it was so sweet because old Asian grandparents, like grannies and grandpas, were singing with us and taking pictures of us. [One of them] became a friend and asked us to play their wedding. That friendship led to us being in Vogue and also the New York Times, so I think that’s really cool… just being spotted on the street and that leading to a lot of doors opening. I think the way that people romanticize music journeys is stories like that, but that’s not really what happens most of the time these days.
Grace: I have a lot of mixed opinions about busking. I kind of second what Lance said. It’s good to be in the street, and as a performer be like, “How do I grab people’s attention respectfully and make them want to come spend time with me?” And it was nice to do something IRL because you know, post-COVID. We all spent our early 20s literally inside so getting back into the energy of people in real life in the streets was good.
But yeah, people were weird to us. Once we started doing it consistently and there was like a pattern to where we were going, it was just a little too much. It’s not easy.
I know you all recently played a sold-out show in Brooklyn. How did that go and were there any takeaways or great memories from that show?
Grace: It was awesome to see that people are interested in listening to a live band perform, and specifically us! It felt good to see the diversity of the audience. There was diversity in age, too. Seeing real fans of the music come see us in person and having that concept gel in our heads and be like, “Oh, our music is reaching people that we don’t know and it’s going beyond us, and people want to come see us.” Like, it just felt good.
This is our first performance where we had invested in in-ear monitors. We had electronic tracks set up. Lance had a drum pad, so we can make both organic drum sounds and the electronic drum sounds all at once. It was just a culmination of a lot of work and hard work and support from so many people. Just to see and feel all the support that we have around us just felt good. That’s how it went for me.
Lance: Yeah, plus one everything. I think as an artist, you want people to know who you are, to see your face, to hear your music right? It was so beautiful seeing and talking to people and realizing, “Oh, there are people coming from so many different touch points.” It wasn’t just one thing. There were people from busking days that came and brought their friends, people who said, “Oh, you came on my Spotify like last week!” And then people who were like, “I’ve been following you for a while! I flew in from Toronto to see you.” We were like, “What the fuck!?”
Musically, [it was] cool. Before we only had acoustic drums, guitar, and vocals. It felt brutal and Grace couldn’t hear themselves. I couldn’t play a lot of the programmed sample stuff that is so core to our original music, but now we can. I think, as we go on tour, the hope is that we become really refined. And we want to get it to a place where our vision comes to reality and people are actually having their minds blown because it goes crazy.
Could you tell me more about how the flyer came to be, and what that flyer is a reference to?
Matthew: People were calling us marketing geniuses. Maybe we are, but unintentionally, because we were just being really stupid and being ourselves and messing around a lot of time. And it kind of just catches on. I guess people know the context of [Dan Perino]. We just thought it was really funny, and then we all took pictures. It’s like man, we should make our own version.
I didn’t like how I looked in my picture — shout-out low self esteem — and then it turned from there into a throuple joke. We just slapped it around and people thought it was really fun. And it kind of became its own thing from there.
Grace: I think we’re just shitposty people and we can’t take anything seriously and we’re constantly joking around to an extent that’s not good to put on social media and have to represent us. But we have moments like this where we’re like, “Oh, let’s just do it.” And we fixate on it. Then the bit goes too far and starts internet discourse… which we do want! We would love internet discourse about our music. But yeah, we just wanted to giggle.
I hate saying this, it’s terrible… any attention is good attention because as long as you can loop it back to the music, it’s great. That’s been our social media method. It’s just hard. Social media is so hard.
Matthew: I mean, we’re here to make music. It’s hard for us to engage with the content stuff unless we’re also having fun with it, so that’s just the only motivator for us a lot of times. It was so funny seeing that just become a thing because we just did not expect anyone to see it at all. And then, oh, damn, 8 million people have seen this suddenly after like two days. So first off, shout out Lance and Grace’s face cards!
That carried that. Half the comments were about just like, “Oh my God, this is okay because they’re hot!” Our mom ate that up. She loved seeing that. And then it was so funny because we were at a picnic a few days later and this stranger from Chicago, like a mutual friend or something, came in. And [they were] like, “Oh yeah, I saw your flyer. In my world, it has been circulating among academic Twitter, and it started polyamory discourse.” And it’s like, “Wow, this is… this is the power of being stupid on the internet.”
It’s hard to describe the music of Chanpan because it feels like a mishmash of a lot of different genres. What kind of music do you like listening to, and who inspires you?
Grace: Each of us have very different tastes in music and very different musical inspirations. Mine are just like powerhouse woman singers. I love Yebba. I love Nai Palm. I love WILLOW right now, like WILLOW is super young but I look up to them. I’m just a big fan of everyone and their artistry.
Lance: Yeah, I think for me it changes all the time, but now I should just say what’s on my mind these days. I think right now influencing me is the entire Head Hunters album by Herbie Hancock. It’s seminal. It’s amazing. I think listening again now to any N.E.R.D. Seeing Sounds… really amazing stuff sonically. They also used a lot of MIDI bass, Matthew pointed out. And we’ve been using MIDI bass but not because of that. I just like, “Whoa, they were doing that too!” It’s crazy how they found a time machine to go forward in time, listen to our music and copy us, you know? That’s really impressive. I have a whole list of Asian bands and artists. Like, I always have [at least] one KPOP song in there. Right now it’s KISS OF LIFE. I don’t know who they are, but the song “Sugarcoat”… I saved that one.
Matthew: All sorts of stuff, really. There’s nothing that I turn my ears off to, and that I don’t try to pull inspiration from, including live music from people playing jazz in the park or something.
Our next single called “Election Year” [is] with a producer named PomPom. We’re just listening to the Neptunes a lot for influence and the way they program their drums. We sometimes pull things from video game soundtracks that we listened to as kids. That actually has amazing songwriting and music and melody inside of that stuff. We like a lot of early 2000s or 90s alternative music like Radiohead, and punk music that existed back then. I guess for Chanpan it’s a really eclectic mixture of three people’s weird tastes thrown into one pot and it turns into something else. That’s very much our songwriting process, too. One of us will start with one track or a couple ideas in GarageBand and then send it around and then after a few iterations it’s just completely different. It might have bossa nova guitar chords and then drum and bass sampled percussion on it and then a pitched up vocal or something like that. All sorts of stuff.
I’ve watched your music videos and each one of them is a trip. In “air ride,” you’re in an AA meeting session. In “ooweeooweeoo,” you’re candy alien aristocrats. In “Jungle,” you’re in a cyberpunk Blade Runner world. Who comes up with these video ideas and is there a narrative to it all?
Grace: The music videos are from my brain and from Lance and Matthew’s brains too. We collaborate on everything. Whenever I write songs and hear music, it’s very much a visual thing for me rather than an auditory thing. The videos and ideas come quickly. I get pretty tied to them, and I’m like, “Guys, it needs to be this.” This is just a giant excuse for me to make little images in my brain happen in real life. We decided very early on that we wanted to do everything. We want to act, we want to be filmmakers and have ideas. It’s really just fun, and having a band is a good excuse to organize people and make films happen. Really early on we wanted to have an EP called Season 1 and every music video is a different episode of our TV show. That’s what “Jungle” had at the end… a little end credits scene. That idea has kind of fallen apart a little with our plans changing, and that’s making more music. We want to keep it fun and fresh and creative. It’s good to also have an underlying message that you’re slowly brainwashing people with.
Lance: We would like to be ourselves. Not so much reflection of any single movement, any single cultural whatever is in the zeitgeist or whatever.
Grace: Yeah. The music video was supposed to be just like fish people, but the twins brought in the Renaissance clothing idea. We’re just throwing shit up and whatever sticks happens.
I know you’re all about to head out on a tour with Haru Nemuri soon. What are you looking forward to and are you fans of her music?
Lance: We are huge fans of Haru and definitely everyone should be listening to her, sonically and performance-wise, which apparently is crazy and we’re excited to see. I think also her message and who she is as an artist is extremely inspiring to us and I think reflective of us as individuals as a unit. It actually makes perfect sense. She is a very outspoken leftist. If you look at her Instagram stories, she’s only posting about Palestine. She has actually been doing this shit for so long. I feel like a lot of artists might opt to take the easier route and be quite apolitical out of fear of upsetting someone or something.
It’s extremely refreshing to see. Matthew and I used to both work in politics – [Matthew still does]. That was our entire career — we got started organizing when we were very young. Grace has been an activist for the Kachin community, and I think even in Philly we went to a protest together. I think we’re super excited on that level to be touring with her, and it’s cool.
What’s up next for Chanpan? What do you think the future holds?
Grace: I think Chanpan still needs to take over every single continent. We’re working on this one. Give us a little time! We want to be everywhere, we want to reach people all over the world, and we want to do this for the rest of our lives. Just make music and keep performing and keep being creative. It’s just such a blessing to even do it in the first place, especially because we had full professional careers doing anything else. Start collaborating with artists that we look up to and we admire and just keep churning out music.
Matthew: I genuinely feel like we are still just getting started and also like are just like in it for the long haul. I don’t know, world domination, whatever that means. I cannot wait to be washed out and like playing the reunion tour one day. But before that, I think we’re still in such an exciting phase where we’ve been catching up with and adjusting to growth that we’ve managed to find ourselves in and like finding such a sweet and receptive audience — whatever that means, in person and also online.
When I hear that question, that’s what excites me the most too. That still probably will never change. The most gratifying part for me was the fact that someone [at our previous show] found our song on their Spotify Discover and just because they liked how it sounded they decided to spend 20 dollars and their Friday afternoon like that. That is such an amazing thing that I still can’t wrap my head around. I think just continuing to do good by those people who are giving us their time and listening to us… I think that really excites me.
Lance: Yes. Thank you to each and every person who gives us a little time of their day to listen or to watch us. It’s so appreciated. We will never take that for granted, and I think for me what’s next is I want as many people as possible to hear us, to see us, to know what we sound like, know what we look like, know what we stand for, because I’m confident that you’ll like at least one part of that if not the rest.
We have a lot of shit to say! We’ve been saying it in different ways our whole lives and this chapter is just another outlet to express ourselves sonically. Hopefully we’ll make more friends along the way.
What are you playing, listening to, and watching?
Matthew: Right now I’m playing the Switch port of the SNES version of A Link To The Past, and so far it’s still holding up. And what I would like to say is, “Why does Link have pink hair?”
Grace: The non-binary agenda wins again!
Matthew: Exactly, a non binary icon from 1998.
Lance: He [also] gave up on [the Elden Ring DLC] because it was too hard. I am watching Batman: Caped Crusader, which is the spiritual successor to the original animated series which is still, you know, iconic. I was playing the Super Mario RPG remake on Switch. I am reading Jujutsu Kaisen manga! I’m also reading Communion by bell hooks, which is also very good. Definitely recommend it.
Grace: Oh, my shit is cracked out. I go to sleep to and often wake up to the Theo Von podcast. Theo Von comedy specials, Theo Von content… [everything] about his life! That’s been my fixation. Recently, I’ve been playing Sims 4 with my roommates, but instead of playing Sims 4 we have downloaded all the [custom content]. Unlimited money… they can have sex, we own a strip club, but I just design characters that look exactly like my friends. Like, I’m there just sitting and staring at pictures of me and my friends and dressing them. I just watched Didi in the movies — really love that. That’s the first Asian coming of age movie where I was like, “Oh, I have come of age and I’m an adult now and this child’s story… like he’s just like me!” I just finished the first season of Supacell on Netflix which is a British superhero time travel TV show. It’s another superhero show, but this is like all black British people and it’s so good. It’s created by a man named Rapman who’s a rapper and a filmmaker, so that’s the content that I consume. But I consume a lot of Theo Von content, like a concerning amount. He’s from the same hometown as me from Louisiana.
Matthew: And the last thing I’ll say, I’m reading two books right now, Sum by David Eagleman — it’s like a short story collection my friend gave me — and I’m extremely slowly trying to reread Orientalism by Edward Said. I need to have energy when I read that one.
Since y’all asked everyone who their ideal third would be, I’d like to return the favor. Who’s your ideal third?
Matthew: Lance says Diddy Kong.
Lance: I didn’t say that! [pauses] Oh, Joseph Joestar.
Grace: I would say 90s Angelina Jolie and then… this is for like throuple marriage. Let me clarify. And then sober Anthony Bourdain. I would like to be married to them both and I would like to own a home with a large garden and some horses with them.
Matthew: Xi Jinping.
Lance: Yeah, [or] Pinochet.
This interview was conducted via Zoom by Li-Wei Chu on August 16, 2024.
Header photo by Irene N.
Check out our review of “air attack” / “❥attack” here.
Artist pages: Instagram | Spotify | YouTube
Li-Wei Chu is the chief editor of From the Intercom. When he’s not editing drafts and searching for new artists to cover for the website, he loves watching cult films, cooking, and listening to his ever-growing collection of vinyl records. You can follow him on LetterBoxd and make fun of his taste in movies here!