Byline: Robert Starkweather

A dining experience less ordinary

There are no hamburgers on the menu at The Duck. No cordon bleu, no carbonara, nor anything else predictable. In a town of 3,000-plus restaurants, The Duck confidently occupies a place in the top 1%. And the menu is anything but ordinary.

The Duck opened in April last year to mostly stellar reviews. The food was outstanding, if a bit pricey by local standards. And three months in, says head chef Dah Lee, the staff were celebrating a successful launch.

By August, however, the rains had driven much of Lee’s new clientele away. What began as an auspicious summer turned uncomfortably quiet. Lee shuffled the menu, adjusted prices, introduced a wallet-friendly weekend brunch (bacon and poached eggs, pancakes with lime syrup and fresh cream, eggs Benedict, each for under $5). The tables again started to fill.

As a christening to The Duck’s second year, Lee brought in award-winning Australian chef Glenn Thompson to help create a new menu (something the restaurant plans to do quarterly now, instead of annually). The result is a menu steeped in classic French cooking styles, infused with bistro comfort foods and drenched in Asian flavours.

It’s still not cheap (good things never are). Starters range from $4.50 to $6.50, salads and larger dishes from $6 to $21. Desserts are all $4. Yet for the money, there are few better restaurants in town.

Lee, a broad-shouldered Kiwi of Taiwanese decent, opened his first restaurant some 30 years ago in Wellington, New Zealand. In the ensuing years he has nurtured a penchant for contrasts and his dishes, in the French bistro tradition, are rich with textures and flavours.

Chili salt prawns ($6.50) are dusted in herbs and spices, grilled with heads and tails intact and plated with a half lime and a tasting saucer of sea salt, red chili and spices. Outside the prawns are hard and sticky. Inside the meat is soft and mildly salty with a hint of anise. The salt-and-chili powder provides a tangy, crunchy accompaniment.

Similarly, the coconut cured fish ($4.75) is a thick fillet of mackerel dressed with a tamarind-peanut sauce and topped with a mountain of crunchy, fried vermicelli. The light, airy noodle contrasts perfectly with the heavier, full-flavoured fish; the ever-so-slightly sour tamarind balances the lingering sweetness of the coconut.

For lunch, The Duck serves five-spice pork belly as a salad. On the dinner menu it’s offered as a starter (both at $5.50). As a salad the greens are firm, fresh and crunchy, a vegetarian yin to the succulent, fat-drenched yang of the pork belly.

Mains cost a bit more, starting with the steamed silken tofu with onion and chili jam ($7.50) and topping out with an Australian sirloin ($16.50) and lamb rack with eggplant ($21). The crisp-skin red snapper – a pan-seared fillet over an ample mix of corn and mushrooms – lands somewhere near the middle ($11).

In another town, The Duck is the kind of place that bustles from open to close. In Phnom Penh, however, with narrow expat crowds and wax-and-wane high seasons, such excellence can easily go under-appreciated, if not undiscovered.

Yet The Duck remains unpretentious in its sophistication. And as restaurant prices continue to climb elsewhere, and over-sauced pastas and gourmet burgers proliferate, Duck’s essential gourmet will no doubt ripple through the capital’s culinary landscape.

The Duck, #49 Sothearos Blvd; 089 823704.

 

Cheap, Cheap: 21 reasons love-struck writers should lay off the coconuts

A recent Global Post article fell in love with our fair capital for its cheap coconuts, cheap housing and cheap beer. And while low-cost she may be, it’s quality, not price, that makes Phnom Penh more than just a cheap thrill

…..

Phnom Penh, you have arrived.

No longer are you the shattered, post-war basket case where pot-holed streets go dark at sundown and machine-gun fire regularly pierces the night. You could be Melbourne, Tokyo, Zurich or Sydney.

So swoons the online news service Global Post, which last week published a story about our capital entitled ‘21 reasons you should drop everything and move to Phnom Penh’. As the author of the piece argues, “It just might be the greatest place in the world to live.”

That’s daft, of course. Phnom Penh is not a bad place to live – if you don’t mind the heat and the dust and the mad traffic or any other number of things that drive clingers to first-world orderliness mad. But not even after three bottles of Chivas would government spokesman Khieu Kanharith claim it’s “the greatest place in the world”.

Clearly it’s not. That doesn’t mean it’s not a pretty damn good place to live, however, because clearly it is, yet for almost none of the reasons that the Global Post story professes.

The most striking error of omission comes by way of the capital’s diverse culinary landscape. Phnom Penh is an eater’s paradise. The erstwhile Pearl of Asia supports a revolving list of more than 3,000 restaurants, according to the Yellow Pages. And that number no doubt misses the untold legions of greasy noodle stalls and street-side sandwich carts where cheap and delicious eats come plated for mere thousands.

Then there are the barang-owned and barang-friendly places: world-class French (Armand’s, Atmosphere, Topaz), authentic Mexican (Alma’s, Cantina, Taqueria Corona), healthy vegetarian (Artillery, Vego, The Vegetarian), hearty Russian (Irina’s), Middle Eastern (Petra, Beirut, Turkish Delight), Indian (Shari Punjabi, Flavours of India), Italian, Korean, Japanese, Chinese, sandwiches, donuts, pizzas – the list literally goes on forever.

Yet all GP gives us is ‘Number 15: Amok is delicious’, with a mistakenly identified bowl of vegetable curry. Yes, seriously, they got the photo wrong.

As a perfunctory nod to entertainment, Emily Lodish, the author of the story and a former editor at The Cambodia Daily, gives us The Rock, the capital’s south-side monument to overpriced scotch, karaoke and reverb, reverb, reverb. Absent are the old-school haunts that made Phnom Penh epic – Zeppelin Cafe, Howie’s Bar, The Heart of Darkness – and newcomers like Nova, Pontoon and Code Red. There’s no mention of the town’s vaunted crop of sky bars (Eclipse, Kolab Sar, Maison d’Ambre), no tips on killer happy hours (NagaRock, Bouchon, the Elephant Bar), no shout outs to the burgeoning live music scene (Slur, Sharky’s, Equinox, Oscar’s).

In short, their list sucked coconuts.

Should you really drop everything and move to Phnom Penh? For the half-crazy, the dead-enders and 8am boozers with no place left to run, definitely maybe. Phnom Penh remains a wonderful place to be hard up and dead broke. For the sane, however, if you are planning on trashing a rich and rewarding career of being overworked and underpaid for a layabout’s life sauntering from the pool to the bar to the massage table, at least do it with competent counsel and a fruity alcoholic beverage with an umbrella stuck in it.

For starters, you should know that there is exactly one reason that makes Cambodia compelling (you have to discover it for yourself). The rest are superfluous.  Secondly, almost everything Global Post said was wrong.

GLOBAL POST: 1. Motodops know everything

ADVISOR: You MUST be kidding me. Motodops usually know next to nothing – most noticeably useful things such as a language that you speak or how to read a map. Ask for a ride to Russian Market and you’re just as likely to end up at O’Russey. Plus motos are dangerous: an average of five people per day die in road accidents, most of them motorcycle riders. Tuk tuks are a much safer bet. While they cost a bit more, their slower pace affords a view of the city that’s impossible to appreciate when you’re hanging on for dear life. Even better are cyclos, the fast-disappearing three-wheeled pedicabs. There’s no better way to explore the city. The few remaining old-timers still on the pedal have witnessed much. Just being in their presence is humbling.

GP: 2. Hammocks are everywhere and, coincidentally, so is nap time

A: As shocking as this may sound, Phnom Penh is not the only city in the world to possess hammocks. Nor are Cambodians the only people to nap in them. For a daytime kip, there are far better alternatives to a hot, sweaty, sciatic-nerve-crunching hammock. Try any number of the city’s hotel swimming pools (Sofitel, Himawari, InterContinental on the high-end; Patio, Plantation, Splash Inn at the mid-range; or Golden Boat at the budget level). For sky-high luxury, check out the rooftop hot tub at The Quay Hotel or top-floor sun-deck pools at Patio or Frangipani Fine Arts. That’s where the people you see napping in those hammocks would be if they were you.

GP: 3. Two-hour lunches

A: Leave it to overzealous expatriates to skimp on the important stuff. A two-hour lunch is wickedly unambitious. How could you possibly travel, eat and sleep in such a short amount of time? Three hours is de rigueur – 11am to 2pm – and allows for an unhurried pace, because work (pfffft!) places a distant ninth after family, friends, food, drink, fun, television, sleeping and root canals.

GP: 4. Cheapest massage ever

A: A massage should be many things – relaxing, rejuvenating or therapeutic, for instance – but cheap is not one of them. In fact, hunting for a ‘cheap’ massage is unlikely to lead anywhere that does not require bleaching first. Never take recommendations from know-it-all motodops, either, or you will likely find yourself bleaching before and after. For high quality yet affordable massage services, try Bodia Spa, which was voted Best Spa two years running by Advisor readers, or U&Me, which placed second in 2013.

GP: 5. So many holidays

A: Here’s one we can actually get down with. Cambodia not only has a crazy number of holidays, but also an official national policy which dictates that any vacation landing on a weekend must be reimbursed on the next available business day. Anyone who can afford it will often take an unofficial day or two off before and sometimes after the official holiday to stretch the absurdity even further. And why the hell not? The time off comes mandated by a seriously worker-friendly labour law (go figure, right?). Just don’t ask for a raise.

GP: 6. Monsoons that remind you nature is more powerful than people

A: Palm trees and sunshine every day? Nah, we moved here because of the rain… said no one, ever.

GP: 7. Free meditation at Wat Lanka

A: Score one for Emily and Global Post. Meditating with overweight, politically connected monks is seriously cool.

GP: 8. The best iced coffee you’ll ever drink comes in a plastic bag for 50 cents 

A: We tried to tell our best friend in San Francisco this just last week: “Dude,” we said, “you should really quit your job, sell your house and move to Cambodia. They have really, really good ice coffee here for 50 cents.” He called the embassy first – and begged them to save me from drugs (the embassy could care less, of course). Next he called my parents and suggested an intervention. Then, being Californian, he ranted down the phone line for 20 minutes about sweetened condensed milk, high sugar content and diabetes before launching into a tirade about the scourge of plastic bags.

GP: 9. Fresh coconut vendors

A: Moving to another country in order to save a couple bucks on coconuts strike us as a tad extreme…

GP: 10. Vann Molyvann’s architecture is still found all over town

A: While true in a technical sense, the current state of affairs offers little reason to rejoice. As Director for Urban Planning and Habitat during the 1950s and 1960s, Vann Molyvann worked on more than 100 projects in Phnom Penh, Kirirom, Sihanoukville and Kep. Much of what remains today is unrecognisable. The Grey Building, for example, which is now the Phnom Penh Centre, has been “rendered and renovated beyond recognition,” wrote Claire Knox in The Phnom Penh Post in January last year. Other Molyvann creations are badly neglected (The White Building), and several of his signature pieces – The Preah Sumarit National Theatre and State Palace, for two – have been razed. “I feel extremely sad … It’s a systeme totalitaire!” the iconic architect told the Post. “There is no hope left for my buildings. I believe most of them will go. I cannot elaborate any more: I am sick of it.”

GP: 11. There are spirit houses at every establishment

A: If you are a Cambodian Buddhist, spirit shrines are a part of your daily ritual. If there was ever any novelty value in them, it likely wore off at an early age. For the rest of the world, the shrines are likely to hold about as much significance as icons from other religions that you don’t practice. Which is to say: zero.

GP: 12. Cruising the Tonle Sap

A: Score another for Emily and Global Post. There are few better ways to watch the sun go down over Phnom Penh than sitting topside on a boat on the Tonle Sap. Somehow, it never gets old.

GP: 13. Beer is cheaper than water

A: Anyone paying more for water than beer should have his or her passport revoked. A litre of bottled water costs 25 cents. A litre of beer, even at the cheapest beer garden, costs twice that much. But that’s not the point, really. The point is: don’t drink cheap, shitty beer. Spend the extra buck or two and sip something that won’t give you diarrhoea. There’s good stuff around: Beck’s, Hoegaarden, Cooper’s Pale Ale, Sierra Nevada. Buying local? Cambodia was voted best beer by our readers last year, with Anchor a close second. Search around; that’s half the fun.

GP 14. Plants grow like crazy and they don’t need any help

A: Was 21 some kind of magic number? The result of a bet after too many beers? Why not make it 9 or 11 or 15 and cut the daft ones? It’s hard to imagine anything more spectacularly inconsequential to the decision-making process than the rate of leaf and stem growth. “Honey! Why don’t we move to Phnom Penh, in Cambodia. I hear you don’t have to water the plants there.” Seriously, WTF? Unless, of course, this was intended as a coded message to the 420 set…

GP 15: Amok is delicious

A: Granted, a good amok is divine. And never mind about the picture in the GP story, which is a vegetable curry or something. But Cambodian food is far more than fish amok. In fact, the subtlety of great Cambodian cuisine relies on the interplay of flavours between foods, betweens meats and sauces, soups and mains, spicy flavours and mild. Cambodians love to dine out, too, as evidenced by the capital’s 3,000-strong restaurant industry. Any serious accounting of capital dining could hardly overlook such a fact.

GP: 16. Every day is an adventure

A: If you are lucky, this one is true: every day is an adventure. That’s mostly because the Cambodian space-time continuum vibrates at a frequency slightly askew to the rest of the cosmos. Time bends. Facts are malleable. Noon can mean 2pm or 5pm. Today can mean next week. But such foreigner-conceived trifles rarely influence the Cambodian grid, which is mostly immune to the barang’s neurotic obsession for accuracy and precision. Cambodia will force you to let go of the unimportant things, or it will make you a raving, jabbering mess. Consider making the adjustment as something akin to spiritual growth.

GP: 17. DVDs for $1

A: For the cheapskate introvert, this is actually pretty awesome. For the rest of us, however, Phnom Penh offers real-life movie theatres that show overseas blockbusters and locally produced hits. In 3D. In conditioned air. With popcorn. If you are stocking up on $1 bootlegs, YOU SHOULD GET OUT MORE!

GP: 18. You can use US dollars

A: Unless you are an American, this reason is worse than useless. And even then, why would it matter, except to save the Yanks the mental trouble of considering exchange rates? Seriously, how rude!

GP: 19. Getting out of the city is just as awesome as staying in it

A: Actually, getting out of the city is 1,000 times more awesome than hanging around in the city. The magic of Cambodia lies in the countryside. The people are even more friendly (impossible as that may seem), the pace of life even slower. Visit a rural wat. Walk through a rice field. It’s far more invigorating than life in the city. Look up ‘bucolic’ in the dictionary and you’ll find a Cambodian village.

GP: 20. The nightlife will surprise you

A: Holy sweet Jesus, No. 20! (Again, who decided on 21 of these?) What could you possibly say about Phnom Penh’s 24-hour nightlife, the thriving clubs with international DJs, the burgeoning home-grown music scene, the boutique watering holes and world-class eateries that make the New York Times gush. How about this: “No matter what you prefer, a casual chat in a beer garden or a dance-your-pants-off evening with Khmer teenagers, there is something for you.” Yes! That will suck just nicely, thankyouverymuch, Global Post.

GP: 21. You can get big apartments for cheap

A: So you can. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing, either, especially if you have a large family, or want lots of roommates, or just like to show up the poor people on your block. Second-hand Mercedes and Lexuses (Lexi?) are cheap, too. Nothing wrong with flauntin’ the bling if you got it, right?

The Wanderlusters: Cowboy Crooners

The Wanderlusters are a band lost not only in time but in place.These days, Lone Star buckles and faded blue jeans are lyrics from an old Waylon and Willie cover, not fashion advice. And while the good ol’ girls who love good ol’ boys still pine for a Stetson and cowboy boots, country music fashion long ago left mid-century costume to the history books in Nashville.

But don’t tell The Wanderlusters, the five-man country & western act whose embroidered cowboy shirts and wide-brimmed hats are made all the more peculiar because of the pastures they roam. The four Americans and one Australian are regulars of the live music scene in mega-urban Ho Chi Minh City.

The Wanderlusters released their first album, Midnight Breeze, in 2011. Their second release, the 14-track LP Bamboo Hotline, arrived last year. Their costumes fit country music’s early mid-century years best, circa 1930s to 1950s, but The Wanderlusters’ sound stretches far beyond that, from honky-tonk to bluegrass to modern country rock.

The band comprises Davis Zunk on mandolin and lead vocals; Nick Rivette on the banjo, dobro and vocals; Phil James on guitar; Scott Brantley on bongos and the Australian Matt Willis on bass.

The songs on Bamboo Hotline feature all those instruments and more: piano, harmonica, fiddle, dan bau (Vietnamese mono-string chordophone), dan nhi (Vietnamese two-stringed violin), t’rung (Vietnamese bamboo xylophone) and even squeaky ducks, although the last few can be hard to pick out.

On the opening track, On The Road, Zunk describes The Wanderlusters as a “thunderbilly freak show gypsy caravan wanderluster hobo band”. Elsewhere in the song he calls it “soulbilly” and the hillbilly moniker is central to the band’s identity.

But beyond labels, which despite their attempts the band manages to defy, The Wanderlusters are foremost an entertainment act: a merry, tongue-in-cheek, flask-in-the-jacket music show designed to enliven the spirits and woo the ladies. They relish in the honky-tonk style made famous by Hank Williams but bring none of the lonesome-whippoorwill heartache that drove the Alabama legend to an early death (Williams died drunk in the back seat of a Cadillac at the age of 29).

On songs such as On The Road, Josephine and Moongirl, Rivette’s banjo plays prominent and puts the music firmly in the bluegrass tradition. With Who’s Your Daddy and Rivett’s Stomp, The Wanderlusters float a steamboat through rivers of Gulf Coast boogie. Zunk spent years in New Orleans and either of these two instrumentals could easily be heard drifting from bars on Bourbon Street.

The trials and tribulations of expat life play prominently in the band’s lyrics. And while you’ve likely heard these observations before, you’ve never heard them in a country & western song.

Musically, the titular track Bamboo Hotline is pure Southern-fried shuffle, but lyrically the song explores an uncharacteristic theme: the quickness with which information about foreigners travels among the locals, especially local wives, despite any evidence of electronic communication equipment.

Words move fast and words move far
On the bamboo hotline
Anything you say or do
On it a light will shine
No time of day or time of night
That you will go unseen
You’re dirty little secrets
Will never be made clean

With “dirty”, Zunk neighs like the Big Bopper on Chantilly Lace.

Among the album’s best cuts are Kong Say Kong Ve, Girl Like You, and Lies. Kong Say Kong Ve is an up-tempo shuffle dominated by driving percussion. The lyrics (about drinking) are sung in the local language and, combined with Vietnamese guitar stylings, the song carries an unmistakably Vietnamese feel.

Girl Like You, the album’s eighth track, is a guitar- and mandolin-driven pop number about bad love. Zunk, who at times sounds Dylan-esque, is at his baritone best here, and his expressive vocals are complemented well by the song’s acoustic rhythms and subtle interplay between mandolin and banjo.

Lies is a fast-paced piano boogie with roots deep in the Louisiana swampland. The lyrics need no explaining.

Grandma’s sick and the water buffalo died
You gambled all your money rolling dice
So now you’re broke again, and I’m your best friend
When grandma’s sick and the water buffalo’s died

Not all songs are as memorable, but no matter. Bamboo Hotline is diverse enough to satisfy most any music aficionado, even if country music isn’t your thing. As cowboy nostalgia it’s pure comfort music, all but guaranteed to send you off to YouTube searching for Bob Wills and Bill Monroe, Jimmy Rodgers or Hank Williams. As Southeast Asian memorabilia, it’s virtually peerless.

WHO: The Wanderlusters
WHAT: A thunderbilly freak show gypsy caravan wanderluster hobo band
WHERE: Oscar’s, #29 Street 51 (Jan 24) and Equinox, #3a Street 278 (Jan 25)
WHEN: 9:30pm January 24 (Oscar’s) and 9pm January 25 (Equinox)
WHY: Pure cowboy nostalgia

 

Free of expectations

Dengue Fever effectively gave two fingers to the commercial music industry last year when the band announced it was forming its own music label, Tuk Tuk Records. Corporate outfits nearly always wanted full-length albums, which required lots of material and tons of time. The move to independence would allow the LA-based sextet to make and sell music faster and in ‘smaller chunks’.

That was the promise.

The first offering came 12 months later. Girl From The North, a modest three-song EP, arrived on December 3 in conjunction with a one-off Christmas freebie, Little Drummer Boy. The EP represents the band’s first original offerings since its 2011 album, Cannibal Courtship.

The four new cuts seem likely to mark a turning point in the band’s evolution. Since Escape From the Dragon House, their second album in 2005, the group has mostly plied the waters between eclectic world/indie and Golden-era Khmer rock. But these new cuts, Little Drummer Boy included, transcend the band’s diverse musical influences to arrive at a sound that is discretely grander than any of its contributing parts.

No longer is Dengue Fever an American indie band playing Khmer rock. Or an LA band with an exotic Cambodian singer. With Girl From The North, Dengue Fever delivers a sound that, while certainly familiar, is far richer than anything you’ve heard from them in the past.

Witness Little Drummer Boy, the band’s soulful remake of Katherine Kennicott Davis’ 1941 Christmas classic: the song opens with a drum fill and plunges straight into a slow-struttin’ rhythm built on bluesy guitar licks and punctuated by low-end horn blasts. The music provides a tapestry of funk across which singer Chhom Nimol weaves a ribbon of sensuous Khmer vocals. While there are hints at such mastery in the Dengue Fever catalogue, nothing previously has ever come together so righteously.

The three cuts off Girl From The North take a similar tack. The EP’s first track, Taxi Dancer, is reminiscent of music from the band’s second and third albums, but this time around there is less the sense that Chhom Nimol is just singing a Khmer song on top of American rock ‘n’ roll beats. The two styles now mesh seamlessly to create something altogether new and unique.

Taxi Dancer begins with familiar sounds:  brooding woodwinds, melodic guitar arpeggios and Ethan Holtzman on the Farfisa organ. When Chhom Nimol comes in, it’s with vocals at a pitch lower than usual and sung more in the Western style. An Echoplex on the guitars adds to the overall trippy feel and by the time the refrain comes around, Chhom Nimol’s vocals have jumped back up an octave and the whole thing sounds like it belongs in a David Lynch film.

On Deepest Lake on the Planet, the band dives into an underwater world of noir-ish dream-pop with haunting, repetitive vocals, spooky rhythms and more tripped-out Holtzman-esque guitars. A showcase for Chhom Nimol’s vocal range, the verses allow the Cambodian singer to move effortlessly along the low end then soar high through the refrains.

The EP’s final cut, the eponymous Girl From The North, has its roots in a Battambang jam session with the musicians from Phare Ponleu Selpak. Dengue Fever played an early version of Girl at their FCC gig in May. The song represents the perfect culmination of influences: the electric guitar licks are Khmer in their essence; the rhythm a bluesy, heavy-in-the-low-end beat as weatherworn as the Mekong River. Dreamy guitar licks and a horn solo fill the break and anchor the song firmly in the rock ‘n’ roll tradition.

In all, Girl From The North is probably the kind of offering that most major labels wouldn’t even consider: too short, too exotic. Yet it’s arguably Dengue Fever’s finest work. Commercial labels might balk at the brevity, but that Girl From The North counts only three songs hardly matters. After all, it’s not quantity they were shooting for.

Girl From The North is available now on CD and as a digital download from denguefevermusic.com.

WHO: Dengue Fever
WHAT: Girl From The North EP
WHERE: denguefevermusic.com
WHEN: Now
WHY: Dengue Fever at their very best

The lost art of album covers

They call it the Golden Era, the halcyon days before the Khmer Rouge smashed the country. Norodom Sihanouk was king, arts and filmmaking flourished and the upper middles rocked to an acid-washed hybrid of traditional Khmer music and 1960s Western rock ‘n’ roll.

The pop stars of the era – Sinn Sisamouth, Ros Sereysothea, Phan Ron, Huy Meas – often played live at the National Radio station, their music beamed across the airwaves and blasted into the street with bullhorns like a modern-day wedding party.

Pol Pot silenced them all. And by the time he was finished, the music, the players and the history had all but vanished.

Hollywood cameraman John Pirozzi first discovered Cambodia’s lost rock ‘n’ roll while working on Matt Dillon’s film, City Of Ghosts. Over the last decade, the native New Yorker has interviewed more than 70 survivors: former musicians, friends, family, fans. He has amassed nearly 150 hours of video and collected more than 200 record covers, 50 of which comprise the exhibition Don’t Think I’ve Forgotten: Every Album Cover Tells a Story, on display at the White Rose Art Gallery until January 10.

Few full-length LPs were produced at the time. The covers, each scanned from the original and digitally retouched, were created for 7-inch vinyl. They came from around the planet, one or two here, a couple more there. The designs are as diverse as the music inside them. Stylistically the cover art exemplifies the quirky, ’60s-era designs that modern-day retro tries to imitate. Portraits are most often black and white, but the graphics around them are rich with primary colours. Names and titles are occasionally translated into French, the style of music printed below in questionable English – calypse, blue, jerk.

The exhibition is a prelude to the screening of Pirozzi’s heavily anticipated documentary film Don’t Think I’ve Forgotten: Cambodia’s Lost Rock ‘n’ Roll, premiering Saturday at Chaktomuk Theatre, a ’60s-era building designed by Vann Molyvann.

The screening will be followed by live music: musicians from the film will play live and Chhom Nimol, lead singer of Dengue Fever, is scheduled to perform four songs. The screening is invitation only, but the theatre holds 600 and there are lots of tickets around, Pirozzi says.

WHO: John Pirozzi
WHAT: Don’t Think I’ve Forgotten: Every Album Cover Tells a Story art exhibition
WHERE: Kolab Sar Hotel, #436 Street 310
WHEN: Until January 10
WHY: Album art from the Golden Era

 

The look of progress

Phnom Penh was the ultimate low-rise Asian capital before the money came flooding in. A de facto building code ensured that no structure could reach higher than Wat Phnom. Streets in most areas resembled lunar terrain, the bitumen scarred with truck-eating potholes that flooded femur-deep in the rainy season.

Before the Korean speculators and tsunami of repatriated dollars came gushing back, Phnom Penh was still very much an unassuming provincial outpost as sleepy as any town upriver. The hammers started pounding about 2004. And save for a lull following the 2008 property bubble explosion they have never stopped, as the endless symphonies of metal grinders and demolition teams attest.

Photographer Jeff Perigois settled into the city in January 2002. His exhibit at The FCC, entitled Evolution, is a then-and-now perspective of the changing cityscapes that have redefined the capital over the last 10 years. Evolution is neither a nostalgic look nor one particularly loaded with political undertones. “I am just a witness,” Perigois says of the work.

Of the 70 or so photographs, nearly half are displayed in pairs: a shot from the pre-boom days paired with a more recent perspective. None are more striking than the two looking south from the far end of the Chroy Changvar Bridge. In 2009, a long row of stilted, tin-roof shanties lined an overgrown riverbank. A ribbon of loose stone traced the water’s edge and, in the distance, skinny red-and-white radio towers pierced the sky.

By November this year the homes were all gone, replaced by the construction of a wide boulevard and sophisticated drainage project. A two-metre-high retaining wall kept it all from collapsing into the river below. Massive multi-storey developments crowded the skyline.

Central Market makes an appearance: before, an aging, water-stained relic with deteriorating paint and sagging umbrellas out front; after, a monotone deco icon with artsy steel and concrete awnings. “The Chinese offered to tear it down and build a huge modern shopping centre,” Perigois says. “The French government had a fit and sent the money to remake it right away.”

The unpaired half of Evolution is Perigois’ survey of Phnom Penh here and now. There is La Siene on Koh Pich, an architectural stand-in for the riverscape in Paris; the desert of a lake at Boeung Kak; demolished plywood shacks crumbled at the foot of skyscrapers. “I wanted to show that to build something new, something old must be destroyed.”

Destruction and rebirth seem constant themes in the capital. Each new development begets yet another, each greater and more grandeur than the previous. “What is the real evolution of Phnom Penh?” Perigois asks. “It’s not the small spots we see in town, because now the evolution of Cambodia is huge. The city has grown tremendously. It’s totally incredible what they are building for the next five or 10 years.”

With every new red brick laid, every new shopping mall christened, Phnom Penh as ‘sleepy little capital’ fades further and further from memory. “When we live in the city day by day, of course we see some changes, we see new buildings rise,” Perigois says, “but what was there before? A lot of people forget.”

WHO: Jeff Perigois
WHAT: Evolution, a photographic then-and-now look at Phnom Penh
WHERE: The FCC, Sisowath Quay
WHEN: December 21 to January 31
WHY: Photography, nostalgia and booze

 

Somewhere in between

The reasons they go are many. They go in search of better jobs. They go following husbands, boyfriends or brothers. Sometimes they go because there is simply no reason to stay.

The estimated number of Cambodians working in Thailand ranges from 250,000 to 500,000. Except for the headlines when things go wrong – a forester shot dead here, a fisherman kidnapped there – their stories are mostly anonymous: untold struggles no different to the millions of tough-luck stories the world over.

“The majority are undocumented, lacking legal status and the rights that come along with it,” reads the introduction of Borders And Margins, a new book by sociologist Maryann Bylander and photographer Emmanuel Maillard. “They work in difficult and low-paid jobs in the construction, fishing, agriculture and service sectors… In their words, migration means a life that is half joyful and half trying, half empowered and half marginalised, half improved and half wanting.”

The book and accompanying photo exhibition represent years of research. In tight prose and subtle photography, it captures a rare, intimate narrative of the in-between lives of Cambodians on the move. Bylander and Maillard will hold a book launch at Meta House on December 15. The exhibition opens that night and runs until the end of December.

As a group, Cambodian migrants represent a burgeoning force, both in numbers and associated economic power. While exact figures are impossible to calculate, officials estimate that the number of Cambodians crossing the border for work has grown from about 100,000 a decade ago to two or three times that today. Some estimates put the number as high as half a million. Overseas workers remit more than $300 million annually, but because migrants tend to operate in the underground economy, they are easily exploited by unscrupulous employers and ignored by governments on both sides of the border.

During their study, Bylander and Maillard connected with dozens of migrants: at home, on the border, in the big city. What they found, when they found conversations at all, were discussions based on inaccurate assumptions or coloured by discourse untethered from realities on the ground.

“The main issue is that migration is often seen as being either wholly good or wholly problematic: exploitative versus empowering; promoting development versus being a development threat,” says Bylander. “Just like most things, the truth is really in the grey area in between. Migration from Cambodia isn’t primarily about trafficking, nor is it about Cambodians happily ‘seeking out modernity’. It’s neither that bleak nor that rosy. Instead, it’s about people actively seeking to better their lives in the face of a limited set of options.”

People from rural areas are often escaping a lack of opportunity. There is little money in the provinces. In many places the environment has been ravaged. But heading over the border, even when the pay cheques are bigger, is seldom a panacea to economic hardships at home. “Work abroad makes their lives better,” Bylander says, “but doesn’t fundamentally change the conditions that motivated their migrations in the first place.”

It’s a complicated issue. And if there are effective solutions to the migration challenge they are not readily apparent. Nearly everyone Bylander and Maillard spoke with said they would stay if they could, but with few ways to generate income, heading across the border was “the best among a very limited set of options”.

WHO: Photographer Emmanuel Maillard and sociologist Maryann Bylander
WHAT: Borders And Margins photography and audio exhibit plus book launch
WHEN: 6pm December 15
WHERE: Meta House, #37 Sothearos Boulevard
WHY: Migration is a complicated issue

Flickers of the Future

The Missing Picture, Rithy Panh’s 2013 documentary, is among the director’s most disquieting films on life under the Khmer Rouge. It is certainly his most celebrated.

Panh’s film screened at this year’s Cannes Film Festival under the Un Certain Regard section, where it took first prize. In October the Busan International Film Festival, Asia’s largest, beknighted Panh with the Asian Filmmaker of the Year award. The movie was Cambodia’s sole entry to the 86th Academy Awards, submitted under Best Foreign Language Film.

It represents Panh’s personal recollection of the Khmer Rouge takeover and its inhumane aftermath. “It was a time for study and books,” reads narrator Randal Duoc as the camera pans across a setting of motionless clay figurines who stand in for the director’s lost family. “I remember how sweet life was. I loved to hear my father read us poetry at night.

“Then came the war,” he continues in French, his voice soaked with joylessness. “The bombs drew near in the 1970s. I remember the first who died. Our fear. My sorrow as a child.” So goes much of Cambodia’s history, composed in languages few locals understand and presented to audiences in faraway, inconsequential cities. In this case, however, the historical oversight will be mended when The Missing Picture screens in Khmer at the 2013 Cambodia International Film Festival.

The week-long event runs from December 7 – 12 and films will be screened at five locations, including Rithy Panh’s magnificent Bophana Centre and a giant outdoor screen at Koh Pich. The other theatres are Legend Cinema at City Mall, Platinum Cineplex at Sorya and La Cinema at the French Institute. Entry is free to more than 60 public screenings.

Cambodia, as might be expected, is well represented in the festival’s show list. In addition to Panh’s award-winning entry, the schedule includes the much talked about Kalyanee Mam film A River Changes Course; Australian James Gerrand’s historical documentary The Prince & The Prophecy (as well as Cambodia Kampuchea and The Last God King) and the debut of Sok Visal’s first feature-length film, Gems On The Run.

The programme also includes a tribute to the country’s newest celluloid starlet Thorn Thanet, who has captured the heart of Phnom Penh’s cinematic community with her penchant for scoffing at pulp roles and KTV drivel, regardless of the money on offer.

In addition to Cambodia-focused works, the festival will also screen a series of ‘Cult Indian Classics’, including Rajkumar Hirani’s feature film 3 Idiots, India’s second-highest grossing film (after the 2013 romantic comedy Chennai Express).

The Archive Lounge at Bophana Centre will serve as the festival’s social centre and organisers promise a caffeine-fuelled week of cinematic observations and moving images.

WHO: Celluloid lovers
WHAT: Cambodia International Film Festival
WHERE: Cinemas across Phnom Penh (see cambodia-iff.com for details)
WHEN: December 7 – 12
WHY: Foster dialogue between different cultures through the seventh art

Frames & Motifs

In his new exhibition Ratanakiri, photographer Pha Lina blends art, portraiture and political statement to illuminate the vanishing fortunes of hill tribes in the northwest.

In one of the most arresting images, an unsmiling Khmer Loeu man with a jungle stogie poses among the charred remains of a burned-out forest. He holds a sturdy homemade crossbow in one arm and cradles a child-sized monkey in the other. Metres of yellow measuring tape – the kind ubiquitous in garment factories – entangle the trio like spaghetti.

The faces and scenery change in Pha Lina’s other portraits but the tape remains, a suffocating spider web of foreign numbers and vague symbolism. If the exact nature of the metaphor is elusive, its tenor is not.

Ratanakiri is one of more than two dozen exhibitions that comprise the Photo Phnom Penh festival, which opens November 30 and runs through the end of the year.

Currated by world-renowned photographer and picture editor Christian Caujolle, the festival’s intent has always been to make photography accessible to everyday people (Caujolle began his career as a photo critic working for Jean-Paul Sarte at Liberation in the late 1970s; he later founded the award-winning Agence VU photo agency). As Caujolle has explained in the past, that means getting images out of the galleries and into the streets.

The festival will hold eight outdoor exhibits in six locations this year. The venues include the French Embassy, Sisowath Quay, Wat Phnom, the Delegation of the European Union, Central Market and Wat Botum.

“We have not chosen a central theme,” writes Caujolle in the festival’s guide. “But, as sometimes happens, a central idea emerges, one which corresponds to a necessity of the present moment. It designs itself: it may concern the exploration of the city, the heritage that has been conserved, the notion of ruin, the obvious conflicts or contradictions which are apparent in the exploitation of the city and its memories.”

If there is a concept that embodies 2013’s exhibition list, it is one of cultural change and reflection.

In Dialogue & Demolition, Chinese artist and iconoclast Zhang Dali carves his profile into the walls of buildings slated for demolition. The display serves as a small act of defiance against China’s moneyed interests and their culturally dismissive march toward development. “These destructions,” he says, “will make future generations lose their cultural memory and they cannot be exchanged for money.”

In North Korea, Swiss photographer Adrien Golinelli takes viewers on a guided tour of the pariah state. In colourful scenes of propaganda and contrived faces of normality, we view glimpses of the veil that hides a nation in peril. “I’ve used what they showed me to show what they tried to hide from me,” Golinelli explains.

As usual, the festival introduces us to a new class of local shutterbugs. Chuon Nyra explores concepts of time back when the country had no clocks, watches or hand phones. Vong Sopheak, a painter and photographer, takes an introspective look at the working life of the painter. Sun Vanndy tags along with the child jasmine sellers who work the city’s crossroads.

The veterans are there too: Mak Remissa, Sovan Philong, Pha Lina.

The festival kicks off with a flurry of activity during opening week. On opening weekend, a cavalcade of free tuk tuks will ferry festivalgoers across the city, touring the indoor exhibits on Saturday and the outdoor ones on Sunday. The Sunday tour finishes with a group screening at the old Catholic church. Tours leave from the French Institute at 2pm both days.

A screening on December 2 at the Royal University of Phnom Penh will include live music by the Phare Ponleu Selpak band. At the opening-week finale on December 4, screenings will include a compendium of pictures from five years of Studio Images, the French Institute’s photography training programme headed by Christian Caujolle.

HIGHLIGHTS

Micheline Dullin, Cambodge
Sisowath Quay
French photographer Micheline Dullin worked in Cambodia from 1958 until 1964. For a while she was Norodom Sihanouk’s official photographer and the job allowed her access to places few others could visit. Her images include aerial shots of Phnom Penh, Olympic Stadium under construction and captivating portraits of faces from the past.

Gabriel Veyre, Indochine & Angkor
Bophana Centre, #64 Street 200
On assignment in 1899 for Paul Doumer, the governor of Indochina, Gabriel Veyre spent a year travelling and photographing Indochina, including long stints at Angkor Wat, for an exhibition at the World’s Fair in Paris in 1900.

Adrien Golinelli, North Korea
Royal University of Phnom Penh, Russian Federation Boulevard
Swiss photographer Adrien Golinelli visited North Korea in 2012 with an official tourist group. The country he reveals is both contrived and authentic with hints of real life hidden in state-approved scenery.

Foreign Familiar
Royal University of Fine Arts, Street 178
Foreign Familiar comprises the work of nine photographers, all long-term expatriates based in Asia. Their perceptions of their environment, says the festival guide, are ‘neither naïve, as a newcomer might be, or blasé, as might be that of someone who was born in these countries’.

Toy Monireth, Colour of Silk
Plantation Hotel, Street 184
Toy Monireth’s Colour Of Silk series captures silk up close. It revels in its colours, textures and patterns. “Every colour and every fabric fibre is like a community, like a human being, with its different properties,” he says. “And one has to find a good way to bring all together.” Toy Monireth does so with exceptional beauty.

Lim Mengkong, Pre-Wedding
Java Café, #56 Sihanouk Boulevard
In Pre-Wedding, Cambodian photographer Lim Mengkong revisits a genre of photography notorious for its kitsch. Romantic yet fun and quirky, Lim uses unconventional props and locations to capture couples in less ordinary poses. In doing so, he provokes us to re-evaluate traditional views of what love should look like.

Mak Remissa, Flamed Forest
Wat Botum, Street 7
Among the country’s greatest artistic photographers, Mak Remissa continues to explore environmental themes. This time, he juxtaposes forest life with fire, a metaphor for man’s ongoing destruction of nature.

Maika Elan, The Pink Choice
Romeet Gallery, Street 178
In The Pink Choice, Vietnamese photographer Maika Elan explores homosexuality in Vietnam. She attempts to break through stereotypes by documenting couples from all social classes in typical yet intimate scenes.

WHO: The curious
WHAT: Photo Phnom Penh
WHEN: November 30 – December 31
WHERE: Across Phnom Penh
WHY: Shutterbugs doing what they do best

The burn of hot wax

At the pinnacle of the late 1980s UK club scene, when places like the Blitz and people like Steve Strange ruled a Gomorrah of 24-hour gender-bending pop excess, the truly rebellious were breaking into abandoned school buildings in Brixton, wiring the places up with admirably 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. He had come of age on New Order, The Smiths, Cabaret Voltaire and early UK electronica. London was the fount of all music. Vinyl was the substrate.

“The ’80s,” says Adair, who spins under the name Dr Wahwah, “is completely underrated. A whole lot of people associate it with bad haircuts and the music videos that all came out, but look: it was a time when a lot of musical genres that dominate now came to the fore.”

Untethered in the Big Smoke, Adair quickly fell in behind the turntables at London squat parties. Twelve-inch wax became his currency. His collection grew from a few dozen discs in the beginning to more than a thousand by the time he returned home in 1993.

Adair’s collection has been mostly closeted since, more a souvenir from his colourful youth than any actively curated library. But he got the jones again recently and started buying records, hence Vinyl Mania, a party at Meta House for Dr Wahwah and wax lovers to spend the night together.

The culmination of a two-year buying spree, Wahwah’s newest additions are “predominantly dance” he says, but there’s lots of eclectic obscurata there too: Japanese funk, limited-edition underground disco, minimalist African house.

From Japanese DJ COS/MES comes the textural dream-pop track Like A Virgin (Dr Dunks Shredding). Manchester underground spinster Ruf Dug offers Sorta Rican, a dubby nu-disco cut from the hand-numbered, lollipop pink 10” Porn Wax 6. Afrikan Basement submits Medicine Man Drinks From the Well of Spirits, a mid-tempo house beat flavoured with double-time congas and ghostly jungle sounds.

There are hundreds more, too: all of them heavy-in-the-hand vinyl-only releases complete with full-sized album artwork and liner notes.

And Dr Wahwah isn’t the only one.

Nico Mesterharm, aka DJ Nicomatic, the well-known documentary filmmaker and patron saint of celluloid at Meta House, brought his vinyl collection from Germany to Phnom Penh two years ago. Combined with Dr Wahwah’s set, the library pushes 3,000 titles.

Meta House opened in 2007 and over the last six years it has emerged as one of the capital’s most active movie rooms and exhibition halls (it was voted Best Arts Space by readers in The Advisor’s Best Of Phnom Penh 2013 poll). Captained by Mesterharm, a journalist and renowned authority on underground German culture, the venue recently began trying less-artsy-more-nightlife type of events. He talks about bringing in overseas DJs and pushing the independent music groove. “We’re already known as the best arts space,” Mesterharm says. “Now we want to be known as Phnom Penh’s number one underground music venue.”

It’s a niche that’s wide open.

“In Australia,” says the doctor, “I would play 95 to 99 percent vinyl. When I came here I started playing CDs because nowhere had turntables, or if they did have a turntable, they usually weren’t set up to play records; they were set up to play Serato.” Serato comprises a time-encoded vinyl disk and computer software used to simulate playing digital tracks through a turntable. The package is a staple among hip-hop turntablists who use records, turntables and faders like percussive instruments (just Google ‘DJ qbert crab scratch tutorial’, you heathen).

The burgeoning Phnom Penh hip hop scene (to use the term loosely), if not so large or mature, at least cultivates roots that reach into last century. Not so these new sounds of the European underground, a newcomer in the capital’s electronica desert. But unlike those abandoned buildings in the Brixton heyday, at least the doors are open, the power is on, and no one dresses like Boy George anymore.

WHO: Dr Wahwah and DJ Nicomatic
WHAT: Vinyl Mania
WHERE: Meta House, #37 Sothearos Boulevard
WHEN: 9pm November 22
WHY: Sounds from the European underground have never been so accessible