Imagine a legendary missing bootleg of Blondie, or perhaps The Cars, being brought into the studio on a whim by David Bowie in his Scary Monsters period, with Donna Summer’s main man Giorgio Moroder producing, that is then passed to Daft Punk to remix. From time to time the Human League put in their two cents’ worth, and Nick Cave whispered some pointers. It’s like grunge never happened. Your imagination might get you close to Poni Hoax, a Parisian band fronted by a Franco-Cambodian singer, visiting Phnom Penh this week.
Eschewing a bass player in the presence of dual keyboards, they pump out a dark energetic sound hooky enough to remind you of the best early ’80s pop, augmented by the charismatic English language vocals of Nicolas Ker; a line-up reminiscent of The Doors, coincidentally one of the few acts that the whole band listens to.
“All the guys listen to different music styles, [the Doors are] the only band on which we all agree,” explains guitarist Nicolas Villebrin. “Laurent Bardainne, the composer, comes from Coltrane and Albert Ayler and also loves a lot of very commercial French music; the guitar player listens to minimal techno; the drummer loves hip hop and baroque. I come from the Velvet Underground, Bowie and the Stooges, so we sound like a twisted kind of Talking Heads… right there at the cross-over.”
Keyboard players Bardainne and Arnaud Roulin, guitarist Villebrin and drummer Vincent Taeger all met while studying at the Conservatoire Nationale de Musique in Paris. Differing sources recount the standard myths of meeting singer and lyricist Nicolas either in a bar or via a classified ad. The band and their sound sit naturally in the internet age, where underground and mainstream are no longer useful terms.
The lyrical content is suggested by taglines such as ‘This band was found in a trailer park, wandering aimlessly in a zombie-like trance, wearing its mother’s dress’; by song titles like Antibodies, Budapest, Hypercommunication, Down on Serpent Street and Images of Sigrid. The new album, their third, is titled A State Of War.
Nicolas was born in Phnom Penh in 1970 to a Cambodian woman and a Frenchman, and they were evacuated from the French Embassy compound after the fall of the city in 1975. The trauma continues: asked if he has heard anything of the Cambodian rock ‘n’ roll revival, he says: “Laurent Bardainne is really interested in these records. As for myself, I can’t get myself to listen to the Khmer language, which I forgot in one night in 1975.” Laurent discovered the music while exploring Nicolas’ background and has become enchanted by Cambodian culture.
It’s just a show business trip, a one-night visit to the country, without photo opportunities at Angkor Thom or on the Mekong, and Nicolas shadow boxes with the drama of his first return in 38 years. But then there’s a twinkle: “I think that it won’t be our last gig in Cambodia.” Tickets are on sale now (adults $8, students and under-18s $4) at the media library of the Institut français, #218 Street 184.
WHO:Poni Hoax
WHAT: Dark hooky French pop in English
WHERE: NRG89fm, #131B Street 271 (next to Total)
WHEN: 7pm October 10
WHY: This band was found in a trailer-park, wandering aimlessly in a zombie-like trance, wearing its mother’s dress