Boom box

SATURDAY 26 |Few would place Philips, the Dutch appliance maker, among the world’s greatest contributors to global hip-hop culture, but there it most certainly stands. In 1969, Philips released the ‘radio recorder’, a dull grey and matte black plastic audio box with an extendable chrome antennae for the radio and chunky mechanical buttons to record, play, stop, fast-forward and rewind. The boombox was born. “I remember getting my first ghetto blaster as a kid, and using the dual cassette decks to try to make my own mix tapes,” says the Bangkok-based rapper known as Hydro Phonics, a card-carrying medical marijuana-smoker from the US, in a soft southern drawl. The portable boombox moved the party from the living room to the street corner, where rappers and b-boys traded dance moves and beats. It provided the artillery for a generation of freestyle street battles. “Nothing can ever replace that box sitting in the middle of the party and everyone dancing.” These days, Hydro Phonics performs a two-man show under the rubric Ghetto Blasters with regional DJ powerhouse Tech 12. Originally from the UK, Tech 12 claims residencies at Bangkok’s Bed Supper Club and Q-Bar and has worked alongside The Black Eyed Peas, Public Enemy, Grandmaster Flash and Cash Money.


WHO:
Hydro Phonics & Tech 12
WHAT: Ghetto Blasters
WHEN: 11pm April 26
WHERE: Pontoon Club, St. 172
WHY: They’re ssssssmokin’

 

Hot wax

FRIDAY 25 |At the pinnacle of the late-1980s UK club scene, when people like Steve Strange ruled a Gomorrah of gender-bending pop excess, the truly rebellious were breaking into abandoned school buildings in Brixton, wiring the places with jerry-rigged sound systems and shaking the windows with music that didn’t suck. Paul Adair was a 20-something college radio DJ from small-town New Zealand. London was the fount of all music. Vinyl was the substrate. “The ’80s,” says Adair, who spins under the name Dr Wah Wah, “is completely underrated… it was a time when a lot of musical genres that dominate now came to the fore”. Untethered in the Big Smoke, Adair fell in behind the turntables at London squat parties. Twelve-inch wax became his currency. Adair recently started buying records again, hence Vinyl Mania: a party for Dr Wahwah and fellow wax lovers to spend the night together.

WHO: Dr Wahwah and DJ Nicomatic
WHAT: Vinyl Only Night
WHERE: Meta House, #37 Sothearos Boulevard
WHEN: 9pm April 25
WHY: Sounds from the European underground have never been so accessible

 

Up in smoke

FRIDAY 25 |The Fumes, fronted for the last time by Karin Schelzig tonight, are perhaps one of Phnom Penh’s longest-serving expat rock bands. This raucous quintet comprising Schelzig (lead vocals, guitar), Gem Habito (lead guitar), Darren Jahn (bass), Jon Banules (keyboards), and Brian Webster (drums) has been together since early 2009. Between them, they cover everything from Nirvana, The Foo Fighters and Courtney Love to The Clash, Soft Cell and The Killers. Expect an up-tempo, energetic sound with plenty of heavy guitar. And don’t even think about not dancing.

WHO: The Fumes
WHAT: Rock covers
WHERE: Slur bar, Street 172
WHEN: 9pm April 25
WHY: Last chance to see

 

Beat dis

THURSDAY 24 |Formed in 1964 and regrouping exactly 20 years later, Jamaican ska band The Skatalites, of Guns Of Navarone fame – along with Studio One in-house bands the Soul Vendors, Sound Dimension, Soul Defenders and Brentford Road All Stars – laid the foundations for modern reggae. Mixing their danceable rhythms with popular jazz tonight are some of Phnom Penh’s most talented musicians, promising an evening of ‘infectious beats and tasty horn lines’.

WHO: Jahzad
WHAT: Jamaican ska meets jazz
WHERE: Cabaret, Street 154
WHEN: 7:30pm April 24
WHY: Infectious beats and tasty horn lines

 

Get your freak on

I’ve just met Mit Jai Inn and am sitting in a bar next to the river trying to digest the rich and curious contents this equal parts peculiar and wise artist from Chang Mai is transmitting. Mit is someone who can be truly inspiring if you pay attention to what’s behind his artwork.

Words are stones, and describing his art – which is more about vibrations, movement and in-between sensations – can prove challenging. Curator Erin Gleeson knows this all too well: his artworks cannot be labelled ‘paintings’ or ‘sculptures’. You simply have to see them, in all their glorious dancing shapes.

But let’s try to get inside Mit’s world, a utopia crafted from bright colours, juxtaposition of endless layers of oil, positivity, spirituality, freakiness and freedom. “His studio is a positive place where there is no suffering, a place where the actual painting is meditation,” says Gleeson, overseeing his exhibition Postpositive: Freaky You Are Always at Sa Sa Bassac until May 11.

Meditation has been part of Mit’s daily routine since he was 15. It’s a practice that’s “all about how to be free… free from problems; from our brains; from information; free from tomorrow,” says the artist. “While painting, I get rid of the negativity of life to be in a state of positivity and balance.”

With my feet bare and eyes tightly closed, I try to follow the artist’s instructions: “Forget about time, just be here now.” The rational Western side of me initially resists, but then I begin to be aware of my whole body as one entity and that’s precisely the way to approach Mit’s work. “See not only with your eyes, but with your whole body,” he encourages.

Despite Mit’s thick, tactile brush strokes and the remarkable weight of his work, his creations have an inner lightness, the levitating essence of poesy and spirituality; the movement of a dance, sometimes strong and vivid like rock ‘n’ roll and other times soft like the silent flap of a butterfly’s wings. “My utopia is here in these layers of light, dancing and vibrating on my canvas.”

Mit is a playful and poetic intellectual, but must not be mistaken for an artist who lives in an artificial bubble made purely of colours and light. As cofounder of Chang Mai Social Installation, Thailand’s first public art programme based on the exchange of disciplines and debates, he’s a man with a deep socio-political conscience. “In Thailand, the propaganda and the suppression operated by the monarchy is very strong, even now. In the ‘90s, some people of my young generation used to meet at the so-called midnight university. We met at night to talk about important issues; it was a form of resistance.”

WHO: Mit Jai Inn
WHAT: Postpositive: Freaky You Are Always art exhibition
WHERE: Sa Sa Bassac Gallery, #18 (second floor) Sothearos Blvd.
WHEN: Until May 11
WHY: “The purest and most thoughtful minds are those which love colour the most” – John Ruskin

 

A drink to ruins

The Mansion – that musty, dusty, derelict French colonial behind the FCC – has for years teased the city with the promise of opening on a full-time basis. As a watering hole, it’s easily one of Southeast Asia’s most distinctive. Pockmarked with history and scarred with Jesus scribbles and other graffiti, the cavernous interiors are haunting, creepy and cool all at the same time. According to the FCC, which bought the building in 2009, the two-storey residence was built by a wealthy trader in the early 20th century. It was guarded by Vietnamese soldiers in the 1980s and then a local brigade of police during the 1990s. Since March, it’s open daily and serving cocktails. Ta-da.

The Mansion, Sothearos Blvd.