Category: Night & Day

FRIDAY 4 | Thai DMC champ 2010 and occasional opening act for Grandmaster Flash and Fab 5 Freddy, DJ Jedie also counts among his accolades being the founder of Bangkok’s ThaBeatLounge. He “loves to beat all faces of street music, mixing it with soulful classics, chart-topping cuts and funky beats while re-editing and remixing it all to make it truly about his vision of sound”. There’s a clever chap.

WHO: DJ Jedie (Thailand)
WHAT: Street music meets soulful classics
WHERE: Code Red, opposite Naga World, near Koh Pich Bridge
WHEN: 10pm April 4
WHY: Comes with the Grandmaster Flash seal of approval

 

FRIDAY 4 | With musical roots from Brazil to France to the Philippines, Vibratone’s all-original reggae genuinely rocks. For the full ragamuffin effect, joining Vibratone tonight are DJ/MCs D’Tonn, Theo, Polaak and Kaztet D.

WHO: Vibratone with DJ/MCs D’Tonn, Theo, Polaak and Kaztet D
WHAT: All-original reggae & ragamuffin
WHERE: Slur, #28 Street 172
WHEN: 9:30pm April 4
WHY: See ‘WHAT’

 

SUNDAY  30  |Darkness and light. Male and female. Fire and water. Dark and light. Life and death. Many natural forces that might at first seem contrary are in fact complementary, a concept embodied in the yin yang of Chinese philosophy. Together, such forces interact to create a sum far greater than their parts. Such is the case with Krom (Khmer for ‘the group’), quite possibly the most reclusive band in Cambodia. Public performances are rare; interviews even more so. In Krom, whose Neon Dark was declared album of the year by the BBC’s Mark Coles last year, East meets West. Mournful delta blues guitar mingles with celestial Cambodian vocals. Tales of human atrocities are tinged with the slightest suggestion of hope. And angelic opera singers Sophea and Sopheak Chamroeun are backed by gravel-voiced guitarist Christopher Minko.

WHO: Krom
WHAT: A rare public performance
WHERE: CTN, Russey Keo (4km outside Phnom Penh on National Road 5)
WHEN: 5:30pm March 30
WHY: They’re elusive, reclusive and exclusive

SATURDAY 29 & 30  |Yes, she’s looking at you. Charming and mysterious, she’s one of the inhabitants of Christian Develter’s Asian urban jungle, a creature of beauty and contradiction. She has a warm sensuality, but also a touch of android severity; her face wears the signs of an ancient culture, but she looks modern. Traditional and revolutionary, wild and spiritual: how can so many opposites mix so beautifully? The isolated mountains of Burma’s Chin State are home to tribes separated from the modern world for centuries. Chin women are renowned for their 1,000-year-old tradition of facial tattoos. According to legend, a Burmese king once took a beautiful Chin girl as his wife. The unhappy bride eventually escaped, disguising her face with deep incisions. Belgian artist Christian Develter met the Chin: “The faces in the paintings represent contemporary Asian women,” the artist says. “They have traditional Chin tattoos which refer to animistic patterns based on nature. Some are called spiderweb tattoos, while others remind of tigers or lizards. I wanted to bring this old tradition into a modern world.” Peter Smits, Christian’s business partner, says: “What struck us is the fact that only females endure the pain. ‘Men are weak,’ they told us. ‘After all, who’s giving birth?’ The tattoos empower them just as the right make-up empowers city women… their sisters in the Asian urban jungles.” The artist’s creations are among a slew of works going under the hammer to support Amrita Performing Arts. Other pieces include Matthew Cuenca’s Sylvia: a woman painted on a piece of luggage, suggesting the permanency of our emotional baggage. Thomas Pierre, meanwhile, portrays a decaying Versailles, imbued with melancholy, in which tourists wander like lost souls. “I alter perspectives to make the work timeless,” he says.

WHO: Christian Develter and other artists and designers
WHAT: Christie’s charity art auction
WHERE: Raffles Hotel Le Royal, Daun Penh Blvd.
WHEN: 5:30pm March 29 & 30
WHY: “There is certainly no absolute standard of beauty. That precisely is what makes its pursuit so interesting.” – John Kenneth Galbraith

SATURDAY 29  |‘Dirty’ and ‘raw’ are adjectives that sit well with the sound of Dub Addiction. From the moment the speakers burst into life, sights and sounds familiar to Phnom Penh long-termers ooze through the mixer to create a distinctly Cambodian soundscape: Jamaican reggae meets Khmer sarawan, with incendiary results.

WHO: Dub Addiction
WHAT: Reggae reinvented
WHERE: Equinox, #3a Street 278
WHEN: 9pm March 29
WHY: Somewhere, in that great dancehall in the sky, King Tubby should be smoking a fat one and smiling

FRIDAY 28  |He’s Japanese DMC champ and has spun for James Brown, Dr Dre and Snoop Dogg. What more could you possible wish for?

WHO: DJ Ta-shi
WHAT: Japanese DMC champ
WHERE: Pontoon, Street 172
WHEN: 11pm March 28
WHY: See ‘WHAT’

FRIDAY 28  |At the heels of the late-1980s UK club scene, the truly rebellious were breaking into abandoned school buildings in Brixton, wiring the places with jerry-rigged sound systems and shaking the windows with music that didn’t suck. Paul Adair was a 20-something college radio DJ from small-town New Zealand. London was the fount of all music. Vinyl was the substrate. “The ’80s,” says Adair, who spins under the name Dr Wahwah, “is completely underrated… it was a time when a lot of musical genres that dominate now came to the fore”. Untethered in the Big Smoke, Adair fell in behind the turntables at London squat parties. Twelve-inch wax became his currency. Adair recently started buying records again, hence Vinyl Mania: a party for Dr Wahwah and fellow wax lovers to spend the night together.

WHO: Dr Wahwah and DJ Nicomatic
WHAT: Vinyl Mania
WHERE: Meta House, #37 Sothearos Boulevard
WHEN: 9pm March 28
WHY: Sounds from the European underground have never been so accessible

FRIDAY 28  |Formed in 1964 and regrouping exactly 20 years later, Jamaican ska band The Skatalites, of Guns Of Navarone fame – along with Studio One in-house bands the Soul Vendors, Sound Dimension, Soul Defenders and Brentford Road All Stars – laid the foundations for modern reggae. Mixing their danceable rhythms with popular jazz tonight are some of Phnom Penh’s most talented musicians, promising an evening of “infectious beats and tasty horn lines”.

WHO: Jahzad
WHAT: Jamaican ska meets jazz
WHERE: Equinox, #3a Street 278
WHEN: 9pm March 28
WHY: Infectious beats and tasty horn lines

FRIDAY 28   |The Cambodian Cuisine Festival invites you to explore national food treasures firsthand, be they amok and num songvak from Battambang, mi kola from Pailin or fried frogs from Takeo. “Behind this festival, there is big research involved,” explains Rano Reach Sy Fisher, from Pour Un Sourire d’Enfant. “We combed all of the provinces and sometimes we stayed in a village for a few weeks to get to know local people, particularly women, since in Cambodia the passing of recipes is transmitted from mother to daughter.” What started as a small event eight years ago has since become an institution, attracting more than 8,000 visitors. “People travel the world and discover new dishes. Here it’s the same, but on a small scale. For Cambodians, it’s a way to rediscover their own identity; for foreigners, a way to know more about the country.”

WHO: Anyone with an appetite
WHAT: Cambodian Cuisine Festival
WHERE: Olympic Stadium
WHEN: 5pm March 28 & 29
WHY: “If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world” – JRR Tolkien

SATURDAY 22 | Few would place Philips, the Dutch appliance maker, among the world’s greatest contributors to global hip-hop culture, but there it most certainly stands. In 1969, Philips released the ‘radio recorder’, a dull grey and matte black plastic audio box with an extendable chrome antennae for the radio and chunky mechanical buttons to record, play, stop, fast-forward and rewind. The boombox was born. “I remember getting my first ghetto blaster as a kid, and using the dual cassette decks to try to make my own mix tapes,” says the Bangkok-based rapper known as Hydro Phonics, a card-carrying medical marijuana-smoker from the US, in a soft southern drawl. The portable boombox moved the party from the living room to the street corner, where rappers and b-boys traded dance moves and beats. It provided the artillery for a generation of freestyle street battles. “Nothing can ever replace that box sitting in the middle of the party and everyone dancing.” These days, Hydro Phonics performs a two-man show under the rubric Ghetto Blasters with regional DJ powerhouse Tech 12. Originally from the UK, Tech 12 claims residencies at Bangkok’s Bed Supper Club and Q-Bar and has worked alongside The Black Eyed Peas, Public Enemy, Grandmaster Flash and Cash Money.

WHO: Hydro Phonics & Tech 12
WHAT: Ghetto Blasters
WHEN: 11pm March 22
WHERE: Pontoon Club, St. 172
WHY: They’re ssssssmokin’