Vwave 3 - Rare Vietnamese New Wave from the 1980s-90s

Compilation of six obscure Vietnamese New Wave tracks from the 1980s-1990s. Remastered and remixed, arranged and boosted for today's modern sound systems.

Each song in Dan’s Vwave compilation series is a treasure hunted across the world, from Little Saigon to New York to Hanoi and more. These cuts are difficult to find. Some came from dubbed, bootleg cassettes recorded over so many times that some bits are unrecognizable, sometimes barely resembling the original. Others were pulled from scratched, burned CDRs, skipping and stuttering their way to survive through the decades, or low-quality internet rips uploaded back in the early dial-up days of 1992. 

These songs are rare relics, some are nearly impossible to find online or Shazam. Some even come from the early tapes Dan had inherited from his cousins in the mid-’90s. 

After decades of sifting through hundreds of these tracks, Dan handpicks the ones that stand out. They need to have a groove, they need to have an infectious bassline, striking Vietnamese vocals or drums that snap. They need to sound a little dark, a little melancholic, a little moody, rebellious. This is the sound he grew up with, the soundtrack of his older cousins’ lives. Not the polished New Wave your parents played on the living room TV, but the raw, street level version blasting from a boom box outside the skating rink or in the backseat of a Toyota Cressida, while skipping class or cruising around at night.

Once selected, each track goes through an intense process of reconstruction. Dan dissects the track piece by piece. He isolates frequencies, separates vocals, replaces damaged sections, and rebuilds the songs inch by inch, sound by sound. Sometimes he adds new layers of subtle drums or background instruments to give the originals more punch, but always with respect for the vintage sound. One song takes weeks, months to finalize. The goal is authenticity; keeping the dusty warmth, the unmistakable tape hiss, the imperfections that made those songs feel alive. That’s the sound he has engraved in his head as a kid; the raw, the real. 

The result is a sound remastered for today’s world; boosted and engineered to hit hard on modern club and festival systems. The originals, with their thin, tape deck dynamics, could not fare well in that arena. 

Now on Volume 3, these resurrected tracks have traveled far beyond their origins. They’ve been played on radio stations, blasted in clubs and festivals, and even featured in a Super Bowl commercial for 7-Eleve, reaching over 1.5 million viewers. Vwave has come a long way, and these compilations and mixes have been the vehicle driving that journey.