Category: Music

Dancing on air

When more than a dozen khaki-clad dancers air stepped, jitterbugged and boogie woogied their way through a 30-second commercial for global thread-peddlers Gap in 1998, they unintentionally turned a new generation of rug cutters not onto affordable casual-fit pants but a certain something called ‘swing’.

Jazz – a form considered sacred by the world’s most po-faced musicians (even Russian classical composer Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky, of habitually high brow, saw fit to approve) – had by the early 1930s birthed its most errant offspring. The traditional two-beat sound of New Orleans had given way to smoother, four-beat syncopated melodies and a dance craze instantly demonised as [GASP!] ‘light entertainment’. By 1935, despite much huffing and puffing on the part of moralistic types, the Swing Era had officially cometh… and would grip the US for a further decade.

Swing, which abandoned the string-heavy orchestration of the ’20s in favour of edgier horn and wind arrangements, was born of the African-American community (as indeed was its forebear), but swiftly transcended racial boundaries. Called on to define this Harlem sound by Bing Crosby on national radio, Louis Armstrong replied thus: “Ah, swing. Well, we used to call it syncopation then they called it ragtime then blues then jazz. Now it’s swing. White folks, y’all sho’ is a mess.”

It was a view Armstrong shared with author Norman Mailer. In his 1957 pamphlet The White Negro, Mailer charts the emerging philosophy of racial role reversal, describing folk “with a middle-class background (who) attempt to put down their whiteness and adopt what they believe is the carefree, spontaneous, cool lifestyle of Negro hipsters: their manner of speaking and language, their use of milder narcotics, their appreciation of jazz and the blues, and their supposed concern with the good orgasm.”

And who could blame hep cats and hipsters for yearning to go the way of such hedonism? Even before Cab Calloway’s 1939 Hepster Dictionary defined them as one ‘who knows all the answers, understands jive’, swingers were speeding up the waltz, cannibalising classic ballet manoeuvres and jabbing a much-needed shot of adrenalin straight into the heart of the Great American Songbook.

Legend has it that sometime in 1927, a year after the Savoy Ballroom in New York first opened its doors, what is today the world’s most famous swing dance was christened quite by accident. A newspaper reporter watching couples swing dance in the Savoy, which occupied an entire block, asked local enthusiast George ‘Shorty’ Snowden what the dance was called. On the bench next to the two men was a newspaper article about American aviator Charles Lindbergh’s record-breaking flight to Paris, bearing the headline: ‘Lindy hops the Atlantic’. George turned to the reporter, said simply ‘Lindy hop’ and then set about creating the world’s first lindy hop dance troupe.

A fusion of jazz, tap, breakaway and Charleston, the lindy hop shot to prominence in the mid-’30s when a swift-footed chap by the name of Frankie Manning joined the ranks of Whitey’s Lindy Hoppers, a dance troupe resident at the Savoy. Deploying hitherto unseen ‘air steps’, in which at least one foot departs solid ground in zany acrobatics, Manning raised the dance bar a considerable margin. Perhaps nowhere is this more brilliantly evidenced than in the 1941 film Hellzapoppin’, where Manning and his fellow dancers catapult each other into the air in a series of torso-tossing moves. These Hip to Hip, Side Flip, Over The Back, Back Flip, Over The Head and The Snatch were, at least at the time, the wildest dance manoeuvres ever conceived.

In actual fact, so wild was the lindy hop that Nazi Germany furiously outlawed it, not that this could of course halt the explosion in German swing bands. Eventually the German authorities relented and created their own Nazi swing band, Charlie And His Orchestra. The band recorded entire albums of swing songs with lyrics ridiculing the Allied nations, which the Nazis promptly then parachuted behind ‘enemy’ lines.

It would take a further 40 years and the advent of break-dancing before anything came close to swing in terms of sheer power, strength and energy. In the meantime, arrangers such as Nelson Riddle and pop vocalists Frank Sinatra, Bobby Darin, Dean Martin and Nat King Cole made sure it was etched onto the global consciousness. By the late 1990s, when Louis Prima’s 1956 song Jump, Jive An’ Wail became forever wedded to the image of Gapsters in khaki-coloured cargo pants, a revival was long overdue.

Today, swing having been immortalised for the 21st century masses first by JXL in Little Less Conversation then by Robbie Williams’ Swing When You’re Winning and later by Marilyn Manson in Mobscene, it’s even on the rise in the steaming urban jungles of Asia. “It’s massive in Korea and China, especially Beijing,” says Richard, a psychologist and long-dancing member of Phnom Penh’s premier swing dance club formerly known as PPPSwings but now poised to relaunch with a weekend-long extravaganza September 27 – 29, followed by weekly classes, as Swing Penh. “Most major cities have swing events. With salsa, it’s a cultural thing, it’s part of an ethos, but with swing it’s just about the dance and you get to choose from a huge set. I got called as a reluctant stand-in and felt a bit awkward, but then it became like a problem to solve: how do you do this? We don’t do too much of the ‘throwing around’ stuff. We’re middle aged, you know…” [Laughs]

The crotchets and quavers (quarter and eighth notes) associated with African-American music trip lightly out of the speaker, translated into nifty toe-heelery by the assembled swingers as a series of ‘triple steps’ and ‘steps’. Part Elvis, part rockabilly, Berlin neo-swing group The Baseballs, backed by an upright bass, punch out a swing-style cover of Rhianna’s Umbrella, replete in upswept quiffs, upturned collars and rolled-up denims.

“This is the one everyone wants to swing dance to,” says Kat, a fellow Swing Penher, as her dance partner Richard spins her away from him and then snaps her body back to his in a move called ‘the quick stop’. “You can swing dance to all sorts of music, including a lot of modern stuff.” Says Richard: “We use Morcheeba, all sorts. I like that you’re not held to one genre. In one night, you can have the whole range of music from the 20th century, which is really good fun.”

Janice Wilson, Swing Penh’s resident instructor, has performed, choreographed and taught dance in 11 countries, touring with Michael Buble and Wynton Marsalis and opening for Bill Cosby at Disney World. “Swing allows for full immersion. You’re not just listening to the music, you’re living it; breathing it,” she says in what might just be the shortest interview in the history of The Advisor.

But before you launch yourself full pelt into the whip, the push, the Carolina shag or the pony swing, you’d be well advised to watch Groovy Movie, from 1944, a gloriously tongue-in-cheek guide to the lindy hop. Also, try to avoid a ‘swungover’: the mental and physical results of binge jitterbugging, as defined by author Bobby White.

And remember, say the word ‘swinger’ in certain circles and you can expect to be met with a snigger: the phrase can also refer to spouse-swapping. “Someone posted this advert on Expat Advisory Services a while back looking for swingers in town,” says Kat. “This nice little old lady wrote back saying how happy she would be to welcome them to Phnom Penh. It was so sweet! I don’t think she had any idea…”

WHO: Hep cats and hipsters
WHAT: Swing Penh Launch Weekend
WHERE: Phnom Penh
WHEN: From 9pm September 27
WHY: “Swing allows for full immersion. You’re not just listening to the music, you’re living it; breathing it” – Janice Wilson

…..

Swing Penh
Launch Weekend

Swing with DJ Invisible Agent
9pm September 27 at the Village, #1 Street 360

Swing Brunch
10:30am September 28 at Comme A La Maison, Street 57

Swing Workshops
2:30pm – 6:30pm September 28 at Doors, Street 84 & 47 (beginners) and The Exchange, Street 84 & 47 (intermediate)

Swing With Kin
9pm September 28 at Doors, Street 84 & 47

Poolside Lindy Grub
10:30am September 29 at The Quay Rooftop Bar, Sisowath Quay

The sound of survival

Forgotten songs Booklet2So this is it! This is literally ‘the sound of survival’. Even after decades of war and cultural destruction, during which traditional Cambodian music was banned and almost forgotten, ancient masterpieces are being resurrected on the newly released album Cambodian Forgotten Songs Vol. 2.

The story behind this revival starts with a purchase of an old book at a flea market in Paris. Chansons Cambodgiennes, written in 1921 by French academic Albert Tricon, contains the Western scores and phonetic lyrics of 54 Cambodian songs that were on the cusp of vanishing into the mists of time. After a journey to the other side of the world, the book eventually ended up at the Bophana Audiovisual Resource Centre in Phnom Penh.

The centre immediately set about singing and playing new life into this otherwise-at-risk-of-being-forgotten musical heritage, much of which had survived only as oral tradition. Supported by professional artists and music academics, the first CD of eight songs was released in 2009 and is now being followed up with a newly released second volume, also containing eight tracks. Although nobody can know for sure how the music was originally played, the recordings, say the good folk at Bophana, remain as close to traditional forms as possible.
The result is fascinating: a melodic combination of traditional Khmer instruments, vibrato vocals and poetic lyrics. Three different Khmer music styles are covered, all easily recognisable by the instruments and rhythms used. Mohori, commonly performed at banquets and folk dances, sounds almost Chinese influenced because of the huge part the roneat eik (‘bamboo piano’) plays. But the addition of flutes, drums and finger cymbals gives these love songs an exotic, optimistic tone. This is also represented by some feel-good lyrics: ‘My darling, I will take care of you’ from the song Mon; ‘Sleep deeply, my beloved/ Sleep on my lap’ from Sangsar (‘Sweetheart’).

The sound is very different from arak, which dates back to the days of animism. The lyrics of ‘spirit possession’ songs Khlong, Komréng and Dâmbang dèk are strongly determined by this ancient belief system in which mountains, trees and animals are worshipped as sentient beings. Knowing this, you could be forgiven for interpreting the ostensibly innocent lyrics about nature as sexually loaded come-ons. Take, for example, Dâmbang dèk: ‘Young grass, flat land / At the peak of the mountain / Eagles are crying…’ This ‘ancient rock ‘n’ roll’ is characterised by ever faster drum rolls to seduce the souls of the departed. The change of rhythm and repetitions of melodies are almost hypnotic, sucking you into the music in what feels like a fleeting possession. The final two tracks are popular Khmer traditional songs, oozing with fun. Indeed, Svai muy mek (‘Green frog’) will most likely make you hop up and down on the spot.

To make the album’s appeal as wide as possible, it comes with a booklet containing English-language translations of the lyrics, as well as full musical scores for each song. Even the technical difficulties involved are described in detail. Without this extra feature, the album should still be considered something of a national treasure. And luckily, even after two albums featuring 16 forgotten songs (both available from the Bophana Centre now on a donation basis), there are still 38 such songs left to unearth.

WHO: Cambodian musicians unearthing traditional songs of the past
WHAT: Cambodian Forgotten Songs Vol. 2
WHERE: Bophana Centre, #64 Street 200
WHEN: Now
WHY: Rediscover the beauty of Cambodia’s rich musical heritage

The sound of survival

So this is it! This is literally ‘the sound of survival’. Even after decades of war and cultural destruction, during which traditional Cambodian music was banned and almost forgotten, ancient masterpieces are being resurrected on the newly released album Cambodian Forgotten Songs Vol. 2.

The story behind this revival starts with a purchase of an old book at a flea market in Paris. Chansons Cambodgiennes, written in 1921 by French academic Albert Tricon, contains the Western scores and phonetic lyrics of 54 Cambodian songs that were on the cusp of vanishing into the mists of time. After a journey to the other side of the world, the book eventually ended up at the Bophana Audiovisual Resource Centre in Phnom Penh.

The centre immediately set about singing and playing new life into this otherwise-at-risk-of-being-forgotten musical heritage, much of which had survived only as oral tradition. Supported by professional artists and music academics, the first CD of eight songs was released in 2009 and is now being followed up with a newly released second volume, also containing eight tracks. Although nobody can know for sure how the music was originally played, the recordings, say the good folk at Bophana, remain as close to traditional forms as possible.

The result is fascinating: a melodic combination of traditional Khmer instruments, vibrato vocals and poetic lyrics. Three different Khmer music styles are covered, all easily recognisable by the instruments and rhythms used. Mohori, commonly performed at banquets and folk dances, sounds almost Chinese influenced because of the huge part the roneat eik (‘bamboo piano’) plays. But the addition of flutes, drums and finger cymbals gives these love songs an exotic, optimistic tone. This is also represented by some feel-good lyrics: ‘My darling, I will take care of you’ from the song Mon; ‘Sleep deeply, my beloved/ Sleep on my lap’ from Sangsar (‘Sweetheart’).

The sound is very different from arak, which dates back to the days of animism. The lyrics of ‘spirit possession’ songs Khlong, Komréng and Dâmbang dèk are strongly determined by this ancient belief system in which mountains, trees and animals are worshipped as sentient beings. Knowing this, you could be forgiven for interpreting the ostensibly innocent lyrics about nature as sexually loaded come-ons. Take, for example, Dâmbang dèk: ‘Young grass, flat land / At the peak of the mountain / Eagles are crying…’ This ‘ancient rock ‘n’ roll’ is characterised by ever faster drum rolls to seduce the souls of the departed. The change of rhythm and repetitions of melodies are almost hypnotic, sucking you into the music in what feels like a fleeting possession. The final two tracks are popular Khmer traditional songs, oozing with fun. Indeed, Svai muy mek (‘Green frog’) will most likely make you hop up and down on the spot.

To make the album’s appeal as wide as possible, it comes with a booklet containing English-language translations of the lyrics, as well as full musical scores for each song. Even the technical difficulties involved are described in detail. Without this extra feature, the album should still be considered something of a national treasure. And luckily, even after two albums featuring 16 forgotten songs (both available from the Bophana Centre now on a donation basis), there are still 38 such songs left to unearth.

WHO: Cambodian musicians unearthing traditional songs of the past
WHAT: Cambodian Forgotten Songs Vol. 2
WHERE: Bophana Centre, #64 Street 200
WHEN: Now
WHY: Rediscover the beauty of Cambodia’s rich musical heritage

 

Dancing on air

When more than a dozen khaki-clad dancers air stepped, jitterbugged and boogie woogied their way through a 30-second commercial for global thread-peddlers Gap in 1998, they unintentionally turned a new generation of rug cutters not onto affordable casual-fit pants but a certain something called ‘swing’.

Jazz – a form considered sacred by the world’s most po-faced musicians (even Russian classical composer Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky, of habitually high brow, saw fit to approve) – had by the early 1930s birthed its most errant offspring. The traditional two-beat sound of New Orleans had given way to smoother, four-beat syncopated melodies and a dance craze instantly demonised as [GASP!] ‘light entertainment’. By 1935, despite much huffing and puffing on the part of moralistic types, the Swing Era had officially cometh… and would grip the US for a further decade.

Swing, which abandoned the string-heavy orchestration of the ’20s in favour of edgier horn and wind arrangements, was born of the African-American community (as indeed was its forebear), but swiftly transcended racial boundaries. Called on to define this Harlem sound by Bing Crosby on national radio, Louis Armstrong replied thus: “Ah, swing. Well, we used to call it syncopation then they called it ragtime then blues then jazz. Now it’s swing. White folks, y’all sho’ is a mess.”

It was a view Armstrong shared with author Norman Mailer. In his 1957 pamphlet The White Negro, Mailer charts the emerging philosophy of racial role reversal, describing folk “with a middle-class background (who) attempt to put down their whiteness and adopt what they believe is the carefree, spontaneous, cool lifestyle of Negro hipsters: their manner of speaking and language, their use of milder narcotics, their appreciation of jazz and the blues, and their supposed concern with the good orgasm.”

And who could blame hep cats and hipsters for yearning to go the way of such hedonism? Even before Cab Calloway’s 1939 Hepster Dictionary defined them as one ‘who knows all the answers, understands jive’, swingers were speeding up the waltz, cannibalising classic ballet manoeuvres and jabbing a much-needed shot of adrenalin straight into the heart of the Great American Songbook.

Legend has it that sometime in 1927, a year after the Savoy Ballroom in New York first opened its doors, what is today the world’s most famous swing dance was christened quite by accident. A newspaper reporter watching couples swing dance in the Savoy, which occupied an entire block, asked local enthusiast George ‘Shorty’ Snowden what the dance was called. On the bench next to the two men was a newspaper article about American aviator Charles Lindbergh’s record-breaking flight to Paris, bearing the headline: ‘Lindy hops the Atlantic’. George turned to the reporter, said simply ‘Lindy hop’ and then set about creating the world’s first lindy hop dance troupe.

A fusion of jazz, tap, breakaway and Charleston, the lindy hop shot to prominence in the mid-’30s when a swift-footed chap by the name of Frankie Manning joined the ranks of Whitey’s Lindy Hoppers, a dance troupe resident at the Savoy. Deploying hitherto unseen ‘air steps’, in which at least one foot departs solid ground in zany acrobatics, Manning raised the dance bar a considerable margin. Perhaps nowhere is this more brilliantly evidenced than in the 1941 film Hellzapoppin’, where Manning and his fellow dancers catapult each other into the air in a series of torso-tossing moves. These Hip to Hip, Side Flip, Over The Back, Back Flip, Over The Head and The Snatch were, at least at the time, the wildest dance manoeuvres ever conceived.

In actual fact, so wild was the lindy hop that Nazi Germany furiously outlawed it, not that this could of course halt the explosion in German swing bands. Eventually the German authorities relented and created their own Nazi swing band, Charlie And His Orchestra. The band recorded entire albums of swing songs with lyrics ridiculing the Allied nations, which the Nazis promptly then parachuted behind ‘enemy’ lines.

It would take a further 40 years and the advent of break-dancing before anything came close to swing in terms of sheer power, strength and energy. In the meantime, arrangers such as Nelson Riddle and pop vocalists Frank Sinatra, Bobby Darin, Dean Martin and Nat King Cole made sure it was etched onto the global consciousness. By the late 1990s, when Louis Prima’s 1956 song Jump, Jive An’ Wail became forever wedded to the image of Gapsters in khaki-coloured cargo pants, a revival was long overdue.

Today, swing having been immortalised for the 21st century masses first by JXL in Little Less Conversation then by Robbie Williams’ Swing When You’re Winning and later by Marilyn Manson in Mobscene, it’s even on the rise in the steaming urban jungles of Asia. “It’s massive in Korea and China, especially Beijing,” says Richard, a psychologist and long-dancing member of Phnom Penh’s premier swing dance club formerly known as PPPSwings but now poised to relaunch with a weekend-long extravaganza September 27 – 29, followed by weekly classes, as Swing Penh. “Most major cities have swing events. With salsa, it’s a cultural thing, it’s part of an ethos, but with swing it’s just about the dance and you get to choose from a huge set. I got called as a reluctant stand-in and felt a bit awkward, but then it became like a problem to solve: how do you do this? We don’t do too much of the ‘throwing around’ stuff. We’re middle aged, you know…” [Laughs]

The crotchets and quavers (quarter and eighth notes) associated with African-American music trip lightly out of the speaker, translated into nifty toe-heelery by the assembled swingers as a series of ‘triple steps’ and ‘steps’. Part Elvis, part rockabilly, Berlin neo-swing group The Baseballs, backed by an upright bass, punch out a swing-style cover of Rhianna’s Umbrella, replete in upswept quiffs, upturned collars and rolled-up denims.

“This is the one everyone wants to swing dance to,” says Kat, a fellow Swing Penher, as her dance partner Richard spins her away from him and then snaps her body back to his in a move called ‘the quick stop’. “You can swing dance to all sorts of music, including a lot of modern stuff.” Says Richard: “We use Morcheeba, all sorts. I like that you’re not held to one genre. In one night, you can have the whole range of music from the 20th century, which is really good fun.”

Janice Wilson, Swing Penh’s resident instructor, has performed, choreographed and taught dance in 11 countries, touring with Michael Buble and Wynton Marsalis and opening for Bill Cosby at Disney World. “Swing allows for full immersion. You’re not just listening to the music, you’re living it; breathing it,” she says in what might just be the shortest interview in the history of The Advisor.

But before you launch yourself full pelt into the whip, the push, the Carolina shag or the pony swing, you’d be well advised to watch Groovy Movie, from 1944, a gloriously tongue-in-cheek guide to the lindy hop. Also, try to avoid a ‘swungover’: the mental and physical results of binge jitterbugging, as defined by author Bobby White.

And remember, say the word ‘swinger’ in certain circles and you can expect to be met with a snigger: the phrase can also refer to spouse-swapping. “Someone posted this advert on Expat Advisory Services a while back looking for swingers in town,” says Kat. “This nice little old lady wrote back saying how happy she would be to welcome them to Phnom Penh. It was so sweet! I don’t think she had any idea…”

WHO: Hep cats and hipsters
WHAT: Swing Penh Launch Weekend
WHERE: Phnom Penh
WHEN: From 9pm September 27
WHY: “Swing allows for full immersion. You’re not just listening to the music, you’re living it; breathing it” – Janice Wilson

 

The only light is darkness

A journey through the dimly lit recesses of the human soul, Krom’s new album, Neon Dark, somehow manages to find light in the darkness. The interleaving of delta blues guitar with the breathy ethereal sighs of two opera-trained Cambodian sisters (nota bene: this is not ‘fusion’) creates an otherworldly signature sound capable of stirring the most jaded of souls.

Poised for release at a performance featuring Cambodia’s most revered master musician, this 12-track follow-up to the group’s first release, Songs From The Noir, is possibly even darker of hue than its forebear. This is not to be underestimated: Krom’s debut album, says widowed founder, joint songwriter and guitarist Chris Minko, was one of “very personal love songs by a man deep in grief”. “I must have been born dark or maybe that’s where I’ve been living for a while now,” he notes of the forthcoming release.

This voyage through the neon dark of the human soul begins with the purposeful strumming of the chapei, a long-necked, two-string Cambodian guitar which somehow seems to fit the contours of Kong Nay’s body as he tucks his feet up and under him on a stool, cradling the instrument in his arms. At a recent rare appearance with Krom during the Vibe Festival at Doors, this sightless visionary reduced the clank and clatter of Big City Bar-Chat to barely a whisper.

Seconds after the chapei comes the throaty, visceral vocals of the master himself. It was Master Kong Nay who composed the opening track, entitled The Creation Of Krom and sung exclusively in Khmer. The master opens his throat and lets loose a guttural wail. Fuzzy strings vibrate warmly at the touch of wizened, expert fingers. The sound is raw, powerful; not polished. Something about his intonation, like the sacred tradition of Gregorian chant, suggests the passing on of great – possibly universal – wisdom.

The Haunted, which follows and was commissioned for the soundtrack to In Search Of Camp 32, conjures dramatically different emotions. Against the stark background of delta blues guitar, which ebbs and flows between bass line and melody, Sophea Chamroeun slowly empties her lungs in a series of long, wistful sighs. Not a single coherent word is spoken; only soft ‘ahhhhhhhhhhhhs’ rise and fall in minor keys. Vocals swan-dive into eerily low registers, a rare feat for female Cambodian singers; spines tingle as mournful exhalations float disembodied above the rhythmic plucking of strings.

Before the hairs on your neck have a chance to return to the horizontal, Rain begins with the gentle plinking of guitar strings imitating falling water droplets. Every now and then the guitar emits a loud squawk, like the calling of a vast-winged albatross. Sophea’s deep vocal masteries pour out of the speakers in ever-more-complex layers over an even more complex jazz riff before slowly receding again in the passing of a stirring sonic storm.

Passion, fourth in line on the album, introduces Sophea’s younger sister, Sopheak. A fellow graduate of Cambodian Living Arts, Sopheak’s voice possesses an almost angelic purity. Where Sophea swoops, Sopheak soars into melancholic upper registers; the two sisters are the very embodiment of Yin and Yang. Not a word is sung in anything but Khmer, but the emotion Sopheak conveys transcends any language barrier.

Much has already been written about Seven Years Old, which debuted earlier this year on Mark Coles’ BBC Radio programme, The Shed, and was inspired by a news report Minko read in the Cambodian press. Like the grinding of continental shift next to the sisters’ otherworldly sighs, Minko slowly, deliberately spits forth the album’s most disturbing lyrics like the voice of Judgement Day itself: “She’s seven years old, her body sold. She’s chained to a bed; a shackle for a virgin head. It’s so bad; so very, very sad. In a world where humanity has gone stark raving mad.” He enunciates every syllable with excruciating slowness, damning the worst of mankind: ‘Sexpat; paedophile, deluded old fool. The rape of a child, it really isn’t cool…” Even more chilling, if that’s possible, are the eerie, endlessly looped English-language moans of Sophea and Sopheak: “Hush, little baby; don’t you cry. Hush, little baby; Don’t you cry…”

Before you reach for the nearest sharp implement with which to cut short this voyage into a very specific Hell, Night Moods provides a little light relief. Jimmy B on saxophone paints a dreamy backdrop against Minko’s guitar picking, while Sophea’s seductive vocals flutter like long eyelashes encircling innocent eyes. The Wire, by contrast, deploys Jimmy B on slide guitar, teasing forth recognisable country and western twangs that occasionally pierce Sopheak’s slow, hypnotic vocals.

Fractured Fragrance, the eighth track, features vocals by both sisters and Chris, the latter having spotted the title phrase in a book and decided he liked how it sounded. “Broken perfume. Shattered glass. A certain loss of innocence and the future is now the past… It’s fractured fragrance, left of side. And all I ever asked of you Is why don’t you come along for the ride.” Sadness is exactly as the song title suggests: one of only two instrumentals on the album, its long exhaled notes waver like tears about to fall. But wait? What it this? Could it be… country?! Life And Music could perhaps best be interpreted as a hint of things to come: Krom, at least one of whom is a die-hard Johnny Cash fan, have vowed to experiment with the country genre in their next album. Watch This Space.

But back to Neon Dark and Down Sukumvit Road, the album’s longest track which clocks in at seven-and-a-half minutes. A light-footed vocal pas de deux between Minko and Sophea, the song nonetheless details the horrors of Bangkok’s most notorious red light district – a district in which Minko intends to get as much air time as possible amid the resident sexpats and paedophiles, and rightly so.

Finally, bringing this epic journey of emotions full circle, comes a song entitled Dancing With Krom – the second track on the album scored especially by Master Kong Nay, this time singing in tandem with Sophea. A rousing toe-tapper, it’s precisely the antidote to the existential terrors that precede it, the joyous plink-plonk of the chapei’s duelling strings providing the platform for Sophea’s soaring harmonies.
And out of the darkness, came light.

WHO: Krom and Master Kong Nay
WHAT: Neon Dark album launch
WHERE: Doors, Street 84 &47
WHEN: 9pm September 21
WHY: Sometimes, the only light is darkness

The only light is darkness

A journey through the dimly lit recesses of the human soul, Krom’s new album, Neon Dark, somehow manages to find light in the darkness. The interleaving of delta blues guitar with the breathy ethereal sighs of two opera-trained Cambodian sisters (nota bene: this is not ‘fusion’) creates an otherworldly signature sound capable of stirring the most jaded of souls.

Poised for release at a performance featuring Cambodia’s most revered master musician, this 12-track follow-up to the group’s first release, Songs From The Noir, is possibly even darker of hue than its forebear. This is not to be underestimated: Krom’s debut album, says widowed founder, joint songwriter and guitarist Chris Minko, was one of “very personal love songs by a man deep in grief”. “I must have been born dark or maybe that’s where I’ve been living for a while now,” he notes of the forthcoming release.

This voyage through the neon dark of the human soul begins with the purposeful strumming of the chapei, a long-necked, two-string Cambodian guitar which somehow seems to fit the contours of Kong Nay’s body as he tucks his feet up and under him on a stool, cradling the instrument in his arms. At a recent rare appearance with Krom during the Vibe Festival at Doors, this sightless visionary reduced the clank and clatter of Big City Bar-Chat to barely a whisper.

Seconds after the chapei comes the throaty, visceral vocals of the master himself. It was Master Kong Nay who composed the opening track, entitled The Creation Of Krom and sung exclusively in Khmer. The master opens his throat and lets loose a guttural wail. Fuzzy strings vibrate warmly at the touch of wizened, expert fingers. The sound is raw, powerful; not polished. Something about his intonation, like the sacred tradition of Gregorian chant, suggests the passing on of great – possibly universal – wisdom.

The Haunted, which follows and was commissioned for the soundtrack to In Search Of Camp 32, conjures dramatically different emotions. Against the stark background of delta blues guitar, which ebbs and flows between bass line and melody, Sophea Chamroeun slowly empties her lungs in a series of long, wistful sighs. Not a single coherent word is spoken; only soft ‘ahhhhhhhhhhhhs’ rise and fall in minor keys. Vocals swan-dive into eerily low registers, a rare feat for female Cambodian singers; spines tingle as mournful exhalations float disembodied above the rhythmic plucking of strings.

Before the hairs on your neck have a chance to return to the horizontal, Rain begins with the gentle plinking of guitar strings imitating falling water droplets. Every now and then the guitar emits a loud squawk, like the calling of a vast-winged albatross. Sophea’s deep vocal masteries pour out of the speakers in ever-more-complex layers over an even more complex jazz riff before slowly receding again in the passing of a stirring sonic storm.

Passion, fourth in line on the album, introduces Sophea’s younger sister, Sopheak. A fellow graduate of Cambodian Living Arts, Sopheak’s voice possesses an almost angelic purity. Where Sophea swoops, Sopheak soars into melancholic upper registers; the two sisters are the very embodiment of Yin and Yang. Not a word is sung in anything but Khmer, but the emotion Sopheak conveys transcends any language barrier.

Much has already been written about Seven Years Old, which debuted earlier this year on Mark Coles’ BBC Radio programme, The Shed, and was inspired by a news report Minko read in the Cambodian press. Like the grinding of continental shift next to the sisters’ otherworldly sighs, Minko slowly, deliberately spits forth the album’s most disturbing lyrics like the voice of Judgement Day itself: “She’s seven years old, her body sold. She’s chained to a bed; a shackle for a virgin head. It’s so bad; so very, very sad. In a world where humanity has gone stark raving mad.” He enunciates every syllable with excruciating slowness, damning the worst of mankind: ‘Sexpat; paedophile, deluded old fool. The rape of a child, it really isn’t cool…” Even more chilling, if that’s possible, are the eerie, endlessly looped English-language moans of Sophea and Sopheak: “Hush, little baby; don’t you cry. Hush, little baby; Don’t you cry…”

Before you reach for the nearest sharp implement with which to cut short this voyage into a very specific Hell, Night Moods provides a little light relief. Jimmy B on saxophone paints a dreamy backdrop against Minko’s guitar picking, while Sophea’s seductive vocals flutter like long eyelashes encircling innocent eyes. The Wire, by contrast, deploys Jimmy B on slide guitar, teasing forth recognisable country and western twangs that occasionally pierce Sopheak’s slow, hypnotic vocals.

Fractured Fragrance, the eighth track, features vocals by both sisters and Chris, the latter having spotted the title phrase in a book and decided he liked how it sounded. “Broken perfume. Shattered glass. A certain loss of innocence and the future is now the past… It’s fractured fragrance, left of side. And all I ever asked of you Is why don’t you come along for the ride.” Sadness is exactly as the song title suggests: one of only two instrumentals on the album, its long exhaled notes waver like tears about to fall. But wait? What it this? Could it be… country?! Life And Music could perhaps best be interpreted as a hint of things to come: Krom, at least one of whom is a die-hard Johnny Cash fan, have vowed to experiment with the country genre in their next album. Watch This Space.

But back to Neon Dark and Down Sukumvit Road, the album’s longest track which clocks in at seven-and-a-half minutes. A light-footed vocal pas de deux between Minko and Sophea, the song nonetheless details the horrors of Bangkok’s most notorious red light district – a district in which Minko intends to get as much air time as possible amid the resident sexpats and paedophiles, and rightly so.

Finally, bringing this epic journey of emotions full circle, comes a song entitled Dancing With Krom – the second track on the album scored especially by Master Kong Nay, this time singing in tandem with Sophea. A rousing toe-tapper, it’s precisely the antidote to the existential terrors that precede it, the joyous plink-plonk of the chapei’s duelling strings providing the platform for Sophea’s soaring harmonies.
And out of the darkness, came light.

WHO: Krom and Master Kong Nay
WHAT: Neon Dark album launch
WHERE: Doors, Street 84 &47
WHEN: 9pm September 21
WHY: Sometimes, the only light is darkness

 

Beauty of the night

Two silhouettes behind a white curtain. Music swirls. Heads poke out, caricatures waddle, forms tell stories. Two women wrapped in white dance in symbols. One sings in Khmer, one recites in French. The music fizzles and bubbles and burns.

Blending traditional and contemporary, theatre and dance, shadows and music, Belle De Nuit (Srey Kouch in Khmer) is a performance creation that arose from a collaboration and exchange between the Cambodian arts collective Kok Thlok and French contemporary theatre group Chantier Art.

The work is an examination of the world of prostitution from a range of thematic and artistic approaches. The first part is stylistically based on commedia dell’arte, or burlesque; the second more realistic and narrative; the final symbolic. The oldest profession is not judged, nor glorified; stories are told and stereotypes challenged.

Actor/dancer Aurélie Ianutolo explains that while the European theatrical tradition is text based, Khmer theatre is focused on dance, and the richness of the production is its ability to draw on the strengths of many disciplines. The text itself is based on selections from Le Cambodge En Voix Off, by Nantarayao Samputho, written in Smot, the Khmer sung poetry, translated into French prose.
The piece has been constantly evolving, says Aurélie. “We began in 2010 with an arts exchange workshop, without using language. Everything passes through the body, the music, the melodies.”

Cultural considerations played a part in the work’s development: Khmer women found it difficult to accept playing the role of a srey kouch. “The feeling was, if I act a bad girl, I become a bad girl,” explains Aurélie. Playing and singing the Khmer role on stage is the graceful and elegant Malis Long. Rounding out the performing troupe are musicians (and composers) Kanika Peang and Adrien Gayraud; technical support is provided by An Heng and Sovann Sok.

Belle De Nuit was first performed at the Institut français du Cambodge in Phnom Penh in January 2011, followed by a six-week tour of France in October/November 2011. You can catch the final three performances of this remarkable and moving work at Show Box this weekend.

WHO:Kok Thlok and Chantier Art
WHAT: Belle De Nuit performance
WHERE: Show Box, #11 St. 330 (between Streets 105 and 113)
WHEN: 7:30pm September 13, 14 & 15
WHY: Forms tell stories

Organic grooves & multi-textured smoothies

A bicycle bell tinkles high above muffled chatter and the distant swoosh of street noise. A single note rings out, slowly reverberating into silence. A second note, lower this time. The pitch drops again, followed by… the rush of wind? The splash of waves, perhaps? A lone voice with sing-song lilt echoes the same tonal arc: ‘Heat… Light… Weight… I am woken by the amber chants of bald men… and ecstatic squeals of children… and the mysterious banging and grinding that will miraculously turn into a new storey on a house across the street… or a new building on the next street down the block… once I have the energy to walk past it…’

So begins Triptych, the first album poised for release by WASH – an eclectic quartet of sound wizards who between them span spoken word, electronica and live instrumentation. Triptych is no ordinary album, but then WASH is no ordinary group. Flyers promoting WASH’s new live performance, The Next Horizon, frame it thus: ‘Electronic music meets poetry and they get along pretty well.’ Confused? They’re braced for that. ‘Or, if you prefer, beats, bass lines, melodies and blank verse are thrown into a blender to make a multi-textured smoothie.’

That’s that cleared up then. Or is it? “We find it very difficult to explain what it is that we do,” says Scott Bywater, spoken word artist, singer and the ‘S’ in ‘WASH’. The ‘A’ is Dublin-born sound engineer Alex Leonard: “We do! People say: ‘So, what is this?’ It’s, errrr, electronics and… spoken word and… soundscapes and guitar. But I’m just listing what everyone does in the band!” He laughs raucously.
Let us turn for a moment, then, to the custodian of said guitar, Hal FX (the ‘H’): “WASH is basically comprised of one poet and three music producers, so our attitude to putting the music together is probably quite different from most groups. It’s more about considering the overall sound, thinking about what we can introduce to the vibe and how the audience is going to find the experience. Maybe I drew the short straw with playing the actual instruments: I don’t really consider myself a guitarist or keyboard player. First and foremost I’m a music producer, so this gives me quite a different approach to playing those instruments live. For me it’s about adding tones and textures to the rhythms and sounds that Warren and Alex put together. The guitar and piano melodies form a counterpoint to Scott’s voice and join the electronic world with the more natural.”

Anyone who has ever sat through a ‘traditional’ poetry reading, sans live instruments and electronic soundscapes, might find their fists starting to twitch. The experience can, on occasion, be uncomfortable. At worst it’s like watching the shifting of tectonic plates – something Scott is all too aware of. “I’ve always had this difficulty with reading poetry aloud. I’ve not felt comfortable with it; it seems bare. Then I got involved with a reading at Java and there were two guys jamming while I read. Having that base was a revelation for reading; having something to work with that really brought out the singing in it all. At another launch, where there wasn’t going to be any music, my buddy came in and said: ‘Gee, if I had a couple of brushes, I could play a cardboard box.’ I said: ‘I’ve got some brushes.’ He said: ‘Well, I’ll go and find a cardboard box!’ That started a wonderful collaboration at Rubies every Sunday, where he’d come in and play the cardboard box. After that I really wanted to do something extended: more electronic, more of a soundscape.”

Enter Warren Daly (the ‘W’), intrigued by Scott’s first book of poems, A Certain Flow. In the process of recording different bits and pieces, he asked Scott to read aloud some of his work and upload it to SoundCloud. The four human elements of what became WASH came together over lunch, passing the book back and forth. “Everyone knew instinctively what we were going to do, even though we didn’t know how we were going to do it,” says Scott. “There was no sense of general bewilderment and everyone had something to bring to it. It was easy for me: ‘Well, I’ll read. You guys can sit around and do… stuff.’ To this day, that’s pretty much what it is.”

The poems fell naturally into three suites: the first about Cambodia, the second about travel, the third about what Scott calls “The art of living.” It was the ephemeral nature of the latter that prompted Alex, Warren and Hal to do something Alex describes as “a bit out there”. “The first musical composition that occurred with me was sitting down with Warren and going: ‘OK, let’s have a look at these poems. He’s saying these words. Let’s think about sounds that we can put behind them,’” says Alex. “Warren and I sat down and jammed one night with laptops connected to a speaker. We got lost in it. Suddenly it was 3am, which was great because it had organically started to happen. Warren would play some drum beats then I’d start layering a sort of drone sound on and we’d bring in some recordings from the street: background layers.

“One of the first pieces of electronic music I really got into was an album by The Orb, called Orbus Terrarum. It’s still one of my favourite electronic albums. As a complete piece, the whole album sounds like you’re in a bio dome with a jungle and animals everywhere and water trickling. It has this very organic feel, but there are so many layers in it and it’s just wonderful to listen to. I’ve always enjoyed making sounds and trying that immersive thing, where you step into it and you get transported away from where you are now.”

Yet with Triptych, at least initially, the journey is a local one suffused with the sounds of life on the streets of the Cambodian capital. “A lot of the stuff I’ve done here was to capture the sounds of Cambodia, putting a recorder out on the balcony or wherever just to get an ambience. Some of the recordings you capture are happy coincidences. For instance, there’s one sound in the first piece and it’s the sound of a child going: ‘Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh!’ [Fades to silence then laughs]. He’s just making a noise and it was perfect! It fades off into the distance and it’s beautiful, because it’s a sound you do hear every day. Random clanks and bangs: all of the things that mean that I don’t sleep very well! At the moment I’m waking up at 5am going: ‘Yep, there are the dogs and oh, there’s the baby crying, SCREAMING, for half an hour…’ One of the things you get here is, at dawn, the bird song, which is interesting. There’s this cacophony of noise all around and it’s a gorgeous sound. Some morning, when I’m lying in bed going ‘Bleuurrgggh!’, I must get up and do something constructive, like record it!”

In Kirirom National Park, on the hunt for more ambient sound bites, Alex and Warren rode dirt bikes deep into the forest and did precisely that: they left a recorder on the forest floor for half an hour, capturing the gentle swish of swaying trees. “I also try to make a few sounds: going through the undergrowth, that sort of thing,” says Alex. “That’s something I’ve always incorporated into my music. One of the things about electronic music is to generate a truly organic sound, which is very difficult. I’ve experimented with synthesisers, trying to get this truly random sound of something you might, for example, say sounds like rain, but it’s actually a synth and I’ve tried to create a rain sound, or I’ve taken a recording of rain and turned it into something else. Most of the sounds have effects on them. I don’t just play them straight. In the second section of Triptych, which is about travel, there’s a sound in there that’s a train, but I didn’t just want a train sound so I put it through a variety of different effects to create something that had a rhythm and had this sort of… I don’t think you’d listen to it and go ‘That’s a train.’ It’s a different effect. That rhythmic feeling is what I was looking for. In terms of where the WASH sound comes from, it’s very much an organic process: ideas play off each other. It’s a very slow, changing, morphing sort of thing.”

In the lofty rehearsal space in Tuol Tom Pong, which doubles as Warren and Alex’s home, a large coffee table is piled high with banks of electronic equipment. Laptops, midi controllers, keyboards and sound cards compete for space among the discarded coffee cups and empty beer cans. Warren and Alex sit hunched over their monitors, each screen an endlessly scrolling dashboard of flashing lights, knobs and sliders. Both men rock in time with the ambient soundscapes spooling out of the speakers, Scott draped over a chair opposite them, microphone cradled in hand.

“I write a text, give the boys a copy and make a recording of it straight into Garage Band and send them an MP3,” he notes. “They then scratch their heads a bit and say: ‘Hmmm. One hundred and ten beats per minute; A minor.’ It’s a very long process. They’ll say: ‘I think we need a bass line in here, or something else there.’ Each part is now a song on its own. There’s a certain melody or atmosphere around each poem then we move onto the next one and there’s a new atmosphere. It’s quite staggering. It’s like working with a constantly shifting plane, but everyone’s always feeding off what everybody else is doing. It never sounds the same twice.”

But back for a moment to being hunched over a laptop, a visual crime many electronic artists stand accused of committing against audiences. Warren: “With bands, you have your guitars, your drums, your vocals. People can see what you’re playing. With electronica, there’s the layering: it’s a mesh of the two. There’s a certain amount of production involved in the live set, but there is a band element to it as well. One thing that intrigued me was after one show, two people I know really well said: ‘What are you DOING on your laptop? What are you looking at?’ I’m sending Tweets: come to our gig! [Laughs] Someone else said: ‘You’re in a band. What do you play?’ About five instruments, but you’ll never really see me play them live. You can key in melodies, work on chord progressions. Alex, Hal and I work on them on the keyboard, but people who see us on stage think we’re just triggering a single track.”

Alex nods vigorously. “Presenting electronic music has always been a problem. People would come up to me and say: ‘Could you just look up every once in a while, to see what’s going on?’ I used to spend the entire show with my head down; this look of serious concentration. ‘You look like you’re constipated, you knob twiddler!’ But you don’t actually have any time, because it’s like you’re conducting a whole orchestra. We know there are certain sounds we want to bring in at certain points: in Wild Horses Of Namibia, we know we want tribal drums. Hal on guitar plays on top of what me and Warren are doing. We’ll have certain loops and certain instruments we can trigger and keys that we hit play melodies over specific bits. ‘OK, Wild Horses Of Namibia is coming in so I’m going to start bringing in a tambourine, change that rhythm around, start layering up a set of congas…’”

“It’s an electronic version of an orchestra,” says Warren. “We’re introducing more equipment that allows us to do different things so that you can see movement and if artists want to come in and paint or play the didgeridoo, they can.”

WHO: WASH
WHAT: The Next Horizon performance plus Triptych album release
WHERE: Meta House, #56 Sothearos Boulevard
WHEN: 7pm September 14
WHY: “I surf on what they’re serving up. There are times when I’m thinking: ‘How does this start?’ Then the sound rises and I know where I am. I get to walk through this jungle they’ve created. It’s wonderful.” – Scott Bywater

Beauty of the night

Two silhouettes behind a white curtain. Music swirls. Heads poke out, caricatures waddle, forms tell stories. Two women wrapped in white dance in symbols. One sings in Khmer, one recites in French. The music fizzles and bubbles and burns.

Blending traditional and contemporary, theatre and dance, shadows and music, Belle De Nuit (Srey Kouch in Khmer) is a performance creation that arose from a collaboration and exchange between the Cambodian arts collective Kok Thlok and French contemporary theatre group Chantier Art.

The work is an examination of the world of prostitution from a range of thematic and artistic approaches. The first part is stylistically based on commedia dell’arte, or burlesque; the second more realistic and narrative; the final symbolic. The oldest profession is not judged, nor glorified; stories are told and stereotypes challenged.

Actor/dancer Aurélie Ianutolo explains that while the European theatrical tradition is text based, Khmer theatre is focused on dance, and the richness of the production is its ability to draw on the strengths of many disciplines. The text itself is based on selections from Le Cambodge En Voix Off, by Nantarayao Samputho, written in Smot, the Khmer sung poetry, translated into French prose.

The piece has been constantly evolving, says Aurélie. “We began in 2010 with an arts exchange workshop, without using language. Everything passes through the body, the music, the melodies.”

Cultural considerations played a part in the work’s development: Khmer women found it difficult to accept playing the role of a srey kouch. “The feeling was, if I act a bad girl, I become a bad girl,” explains Aurélie. Playing and singing the Khmer role on stage is the graceful and elegant Malis Long. Rounding out the performing troupe are musicians (and composers) Kanika Peang and Adrien Gayraud; technical support is provided by An Heng and Sovann Sok.

Belle De Nuit was first performed at the Institut français du Cambodge in Phnom Penh in January 2011, followed by a six-week tour of France in October/November 2011. You can catch the final three performances of this remarkable and moving work at Show Box this weekend.

WHO:Kok Thlok and Chantier Art
WHAT: Belle De Nuit performance
WHERE: Show Box, #11 St. 330 (between Streets 105 and 113)
WHEN: 7:30pm September 13, 14 & 15
WHY: Forms tell stories

 

DJ Cuppa Tea: Beating the Mekong blues

Spacey guitar chords rise and fall like a gently cresting sonic wave. A man clad inexplicably in white open-face crash helmet picks tenderly at individual strings, vibrations mingling in mid-air with the slow rhythmic roll of the drums. Centre stage, long upward slashes of black eyeliner accentuating her exotic looks, a young woman in silver and blue snakes her arms from fingertip to shoulder in a physical prayer to invisible gods. Rising high above the Khmer lyrics, a single whispered phrase penetrates English ears: ‘Whiskey CambOOOOdiaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhh…’

Chanthy Kak, also known as Srey Thy and DJ Cuppa Tea, flaps her hands in delight. The long black tresses that tumbled over her shoulders during a performance at Equinox are today swept upwards and tucked neatly under a towel. The front woman of Cambodian Space Project slides off her seat in the salon and ducks back into neighbouring art store Sticky Fingers, a tiny shrine to the swinging ’60s deep in the bowels of Golden Sorya Mall. Kaleidoscopic album covers adorn the walls, a line-up of guitars standing proudly beneath a black and white drip painting of this engaging chanteuse, which, she gently points out, isn’t for sale.

And neither is she, although in the past that hasn’t prevented people from trying. Promised a job as a masseuse when she moved from rural Prey Veng to Phnom Penh at the age of 19, she instead found herself lashed to a brothel bed with electric cable. “I had stayed with this girl for three months and then one day she said to me: ‘Do you want to change jobs? You will make more money.’” Thy’s face darkens. “She said she knew my village and lived there when she was young, so I thought she was a good person. She said if I got a job in massage I could make good money. I thought she meant a nice place, like this [gestures to neighbouring salon], but no. She meant sex.”

It was a horror she hasn’t been shy in reliving, if only for the sake of other Cambodian women. “Some people, when they read my story on the internet, they ask me: ‘Why do you tell everyone about this? Are you stupid?’ Why? If you are too scared to tell anyone, nothing will ever change. I’m not shy. I want to tell everyone! I want to tell mothers and fathers too, so that they know what could happen if they send their daughters to Phnom Penh. I am not ashamed; I am not bad. This has made me strong. I was playing at Equinox and a Cambodian girl, who had a similar experience but is now married, said: ‘I love your story. Thank you so much for showing everyone. I want everyone to know. I work hard as a cleaner now so that I can go to school and learn. It’s so hard when you try to tell people what happened because they don’t want to hear.’ So long as you bring money to the people back home, they’re happy. They don’t want to hear how you got it.”

Now 33, the Space Project’s cosmic vocalist today has two albums to her name – 2011: A Space Odyssey and Not Easy Rock ‘n’ Roll – plus a third in the making; is lauded internationally as ‘the voice of free Cambodia’ and is the subject of a forthcoming BBC documentary by locally based director Marc Eberle. Australian singer-songwriter Paul Kelly says Thy’s voice is “one of those that give you the shivers”; Nick Cave, who she met at the Ubud Readers and Writers Festival in Bali last year (Mick Harvey produced the band’s second album), describes her cross-cultural performances with the Space Project as “very affecting”.

Quizzed about her brush with the Bad Seeds front man, she giggles. “He likes my music very much! Some people told me: ‘Be careful. Nick Cave has four wives already! Maybe you’re number five!’ When everyone sat down, Nick looked at me and said: ‘Hey!’ I thought maybe he wanted to talk to someone behind me, so I turned around. Then he said: ‘You!’ I didn’t understand that Nick Cave was a big star. He came over and took my hand; he was very strong and I was laughing. People kept saying: ‘Careful! He has four wives already! You’ll be number five!’ Maybe… [Laughs]”

Other brushes with stardom have followed since, not least Motown musician Dennis Coffey. This Michigan master of distortion, Echoplex tape-loop delay and wah-wah hosted Thy last month in Detroit to produce the Space Project’s third album, on which one of the tracks is Whiskey Cambodia. “You want some now? I have!” Thy orders her younger brother out of the shop to fetch the necessary mixers and slams a pair of glass beer mugs on the table, grinning wickedly. “Don’t drink a lot! Three days ago I went back to my village and was drinking Cambodian whiskey and I got drunk! I don’t know what happened. In the song I talk about barangs; the first time a foreigner went to my house. I was so scared: I didn’t have pizza, didn’t have hamburgers, didn’t have red wine. I was very worried. I couldn’t really speak English and didn’t know what to say. I had Cambodian whiskey so we all drank together. Happy, happy…”

While she talks, Thy flips through the images on her iPad: a small rural house with woven bamboo walls; a line of ducks trailing a disinterested water buffalo; gaggles of nieces, nephews and neighbours. In one shot, a frail-looking woman with silver hair sits with her head bowed in smiling contemplation over a Cambodian Space Project album cover: Thy’s mother. Unable to read or write, she took great delight in the covers documenting her daughter’s stratospheric rise before tuberculosis cut life short in 2010. “I can still feel her,” says Thy. “I think she’s happy. When I’m in Cambodia I don’t miss her so much, because I can feel her close every day.”

Diluted Cambodian whiskey pours down parched throats, the bite of the alcohol prompting the sucking of breath through clenched teeth. The new album, says Thy, is inspired in part by traditional arts, as evidenced in the socially conscious track Mountain Dancing. “When I was young I lived in Kampong Cham province and some people who had money, good cars and good clothes would go to the mountain to dance. The poor people who live near the mountain don’t look like this but they want to go dancing too, altogether. Some people would say: ‘Oh, you’re no good. You don’t have a good smell; you don’t have good clothes. You don’t have good skin: you’re dark. Don’t stand too close to me because I look nice.’ But we are all one Cambodia; one people. We can be happy dancing altogether; don’t think about your skin or your clothes or whether you have money. Some people don’t have money but they are happy enough to dance. They have a good heart.”

Ten tracks were recorded in five days in Detroit, fitting considering the reverence with which Thy regards all things Motown. One of her favourite songs is Hit The Road Jack by “the guy with the glasses” [Ray Charles]; another is Summertime, George Gershwin’s 1935 aria from Porgy and Bess, and her nine-year-old son, Makara, has apparently developed quite the thing for Aretha Franklin. “I’m so happy!” she says of her time in Kid Rock’s motor city studio. “We had a big studio and old-style microphones, with an old-style piano. I want to make more music there.”

But who is her audience? “I think it’s mostly barangs. For Cambodians, it’s very hard when I show people what I’m doing now. People only like traditional music, like Sinn Sisamouth, or new music like K-Pop. They sing about broken hearts and fast cars and dying. I cannot listen to that. Sorry! It’s not bad, but it’s not for me.”

Much has been made of Thy’s voyage from brothel to world stage, but what of any return to her sun-baked home province? “Now I don’t want to go to Prey Veng because some people make me feel down. They just think that I have money. Sometimes I tell stories about going to Europe, about going to Australia, the US. There, money! Everyone just thinks: ‘What happened? Don’t talk. Shut up, because I can’t see anything.’ Everyone wants to see me have a good house, diamonds and cars. Some friends say: ‘Now you have money, please change your skin! You can cut your eyes to look like Michael Jackson.’

“I care about money too, but when I work I understand why I’m doing it. I learn a lot from going outside Cambodia: why people work; why people travel. To begin with I was thinking: ‘Wow! If I go to Europe, maybe I will have money too,’ but when I went there was none. The sun burnt my skin like this [gestures and wails] and it was very cold. ‘What do I do now? I’m so very cold! Where’s the rice? There’s no rice!’ But I hope to change people. I’ve changed a lot. Since I started going away on tour, I understand more and more. The more I see, the more I want to see. Before, I was shy, but now? I’m Chanthy Cuppa Tea!”

WHO: Srey Thy & Cambodian Space Project
WHAT: Tripped-out ’60s psychedelia
WHERE: The FCC, Sisowath Quay
WHEN: 9pm September 7
WHY: She’ll take you into orbit