Category: Night & Day

Advisor Best Of ’14

The cream of the capital. Four devastating bands. Eleven mind-blowing DJs. Copious street acts. Live music, painting and other creative madness. An entire street at our disposal. It can only be the Advisor’s Best Of Phnom Penh 2014 EPIC (there’s that word again) street party. BE THERE. Everyone else will, including Psychotic Reactions, Adobo Conspiracy, Vibratone, The Underdogs, Sophie Rose, Vatthina Tola, Vanntin Hoeurn and… and… and… Well, you’ll just have to come, won’t you?

WHO: YOU (& us)
WHAT: Advisor Best Of Phnom Penh 2014 EPIC street party (yes, EPIC!)
WHERE: Equinox & Duplex, Street 278 & 51
WHEN: 3pm Nov 22 – 3am Nov 23
WHY: Really? REALLY?!

Numerologist

Schooled in traditional Cambodian painting at the Royal University of Fine Arts, and later the Saint-Étienne École des Beaux-arts in Paris, Em Riem opens a new exhibition tonight. Glorious Numbers is a series of starkly confrontational portraits that conjure the horrors of S-21, the most notorious Khmer Rouge interrogation centre, in homage to its many victims. Says the artist: “I think of Man Ray: I, too, paint what I cannot photograph. And by painting these beings which were before their death photographed, I do not carry out a duty of remembrance. Much more humbly, I am then in a period for me almost always unspeakable and from time to time it comes to irrigate my creativity. I was a child then. But I did not forget. I began to paint in the memory of the victims of the Khmer Rouge about twenty years ago. There were the abstract paintings and there were portraits. In the peace of mind of my workshop, these faces do not haunt me; I just collect their suffering with love. I tell them: ‘You see good that you are not forgotten!’ I also tell them: ‘Each of you appears in the plenitude of its dignity because these numbers make in fact the glory of your humanity.’”

WHO: Em Riem
WHAT: Glorious Numbers art exhibition opening
WHERE: Tepui @ Chinese House, Sisowath Quay & Street 87
WHEN: 6:30pm November 21
WHY: Familiar horrors in a different light

Feel the noize

Heads bobbing in flawless four-four time, the quadruple drum pattern that serves as the heartbeat of rock and its many manic derivatives, a quartet of European 20-somethings stand draped over drums and guitars. From a wall of speakers comes a familiar rush: the sort of sonic crescendo designed to reduce Olympic stadiums to near-rubble. Two-thirds French, one part Italian, all-original hard rock outfit Sangvar Day –Mat (bass, French), Julien (drums, also French), Julian (guitar, Parisian) and Robin (vocals & guitar, from Verona in Italy) – have at last released their first EP, a six-track take-no-prisoners attack on the ears that includes the nothing-short-of-stomping Blood & Salt. And it is nothing short of EPIC. Joining the band for tonight’s launch is a slew of the capital’s finest music talent, including Lafidki. Do not miss.

WHO: Sangvar Day & friends
WHAT: EP launch party
WHERE: Equinox, #3a Street 278
WHEN: 9pm November 21
WHY: They’ll rock your socks off

EPIC!

It’s a word oft-overused, but in this case it’s justified. New nightclub. Name: Epic. ‘Nuff said.

WHO: DJ Mistrezz C
WHAT: Epic nightclub opening
WHERE:#122b Sothearos Blvd (near Russian Embassy)
WHEN:12pm November 21
WHY: It’s a nightclub. It’s new. And it’s EPIC!

In the dark

From the grim industrial wastelands of northern England to the grimy epicentre of Southeast Asia’s underbelly, John Gartland – making a rare appearance here alongside Krom tonight – has spent the past decade or so morphing from British playwright to the ‘noir poet’ of Bangkok. Noirish group Krom provide a suitably stirring sonic backdrop, with a selection of oh-so-haunting songs from their forthcoming third album, Mekong Delta Blues.

WHO: John Gartland & Krom
WHAT: The noir poet of Bangkok meets the sound of Southeast Asian noir
WHERE: Meta House, #37 Sothearos Blvd.
WHEN: 8pm November 20
WHY: “The noir hero is a knight in blood-caked armour. He’s dirty and he does his best to deny the fact that he’s a hero the whole time.” – Frank Miller

Recycle, restyle

Living in the 21st century, it’s easy to become accustomed to the amount we consume and dispose. Almost everything we buy comes in plastic bags or wrapped in some other packaging. Few things are meant to last a long time, yet where does all this trash go? How do our actions affect the environment? Re-claimed, a new exhibition by students of Northbridge International School, aims to shed light on this global issue while highlighting art’s potential to both raise awareness and turn waste into something beautiful. This series of multimedia pieces includes original works created entirely from recycled materials.

WHO: Northbridge International School
WHAT: Re-claimed multimedia art exhibition
WHERE: The Insider Gallery, Intercontinental Hotel, #296 Mao Tse Tung Blvd.
WHEN: November 20 – December 15
WHY: Boost your eco-warrior credentials

Our future

Twenty five years ago today, the Convention On The Rights Of The Child was ratified, establishing fundamental rights for all young people: to survive; develop; be protected from violence, abuse and neglect, and take part in family, cultural and social life. Here in Phnom Penh, Unicef is marking the milestone with the help of Belgian photographer Isabelle Lesser, who hosted several Asia Motion workshops encouraging Cambodian kids to express their ideas through art. This exhibition is the arresting result.

WHO: Unicef & Isabelle Lesser
WHAT: Photo exhibition
WHERE: Wat Botum Park, Street 7
WHEN: November 20 – December 20
WHY: ““Millions of children are victims of violence and exploitation. They are physically and emotionally vulnerable and they can be scarred for life by mental or emotional abuse. That is why children should always have the first claim on our attention and resources. They must be at the heart of our thinking on challenges we are addressing on a daily basis. We know what to do, and we know how to do it. The means are at hand, it is up to us to seize the opportunity and build a world that is fit for children.” – Ban Ki-moon,
secretary-general of the United Nations
remarks on the convention in New York, 2009

Ready to rumble

FRIDAY 12 | The multi-billion-dollar global sports phenomenon of mixed martial arts arrives tonight with Asia’s grandest MMA event: ONE FC. Titled Rise of the Kingdom, the card includes five Khmer vs Khmer contests, including a female bout, and five international matches. In the main event, Brazilian Adriano Moraes will take on Filipino Geje Eustaquio for the inaugural ONE FC flyweight world championship. In the co-headliner, American Strike Force veteran Caros Fodor faces Dutchman Vincent Latoel. The card also marks the local debut of Cambodian-Australian submission specialist Suasday Chau, who squares off against Frenchman Arnaud ‘The Game’ Lepont in a non-title bout at 155 pounds. The local MMA game is little more than a year old, but the Kingdom boasts a warriors’ history that stretches to the days of Angkor. The eight local fighters on the card represent the Kingdom’s most promising up-and-coming talent, and Rise of the Kingdom seems all but certain to mark a new chapter in Cambodia’s long history of combat.

WHO: Mixed martial arts cage fighters
WHAT: ONE FC: Rise of the Kingdom
WHERE: Koh Pich Theatre, Koh Pich Island
WHEN: 7pm September 12
WHY: Sporting events don’t get much bigger than this

Keyed in

TUESDAY 22 | He’s tinkled the ivories for former US President Bill Clinton; performed in the home of Quincy Jones and shared the stage with King Crimson drummer Ian Wallace. Tonight, Scandinavian master pianist Mathias Aspelin – a University of Oxford philosopher with a taste for metaphysics and aesthetics – performs a collection of modern jazz pieces, ‘merging an American soundscape with the Eastern and the Nordic; urban, rhythmic momentum meeting the tranquil and the lyrical’.

WHO: Mathias Aspelin (piano)
WHAT: Modern jazz
WHERE: Doors, St. 84 & 47
WHEN: 8:30pm July 22
WHY: “Life is like a piano. What you get out of it depends on how you play it.” – Tom Lehrer

Hitler on ice

TUESDAY 22 | Adolf Hitler ingested it daily in a cocktail of more than 80 drugs, turning him from an egomaniac into a sadistic mass murderer. Timothy Leary, Allen Ginsberg and the Beatles warned against it during the late ’60s as flower power gave way to rampant consumerism. And in 2003 the US Air Force was forced to defend its use after two pilots under its influence dropped a bomb near Kandahar in Afghanistan that killed four Canadian soldiers. Methamphetamine – known variously on the streets as speed, meth, crystal meth, ice, shards, shabu, glass, jib, crank, batu, tweak, rock and tina – is today considered by many to rank among the world’s most dangerous drugs. And where heroin was once the most profitable narcotic produced in the remote labs of the Golden Triangle, where the borders of Burma, Thailand and Laos collide, a complex sequence of political events has spurred the rise of what is now a multibillion-dollar meth industry here in Southeast Asia (worth $8.5bn last year, according to the UN’s Office on Drugs and Crime). Two very different documentaries, Hitler’s Drug and Asia’s Speed Trap, investigate.

WHO: Meth heads and tweakers
WHAT: Hitler’s Drug and Asia’s Speed Trap screenings
WHERE: Meta House, #37 Sothearos Blvd.
WHEN: 7pm July 22
WHY: The real Breaking Bad