Category: Night & Day

FRIDAY 27 | Born in Barbados to English parents and having spent her formative years in Kenya before graduating from London’s much-admired Central St Martins University of the Arts, this elegant chanteuse cuts quite the dash on the runway. But it’s what’s underneath – namely, her vocal chords – that really quickens the pulse. “Music in Barbados is a big deal,” says Rhiannon Johnson. “In the Caribbean, it’s a huge part of their culture. Once a year, we’d have this big festival to celebrate the end of the crops and sugar cane; it’s called Crop Over. Listening to the radio and singing was always a huge part of my life, but it wasn’t until I got to school in Kenya that I got the chance to focus on it. It felt great: it was me coming out of myself. I’d only ever sung by myself in the shower.” From singing in the shower to fronting Cambodia’s rowdiest funk band, tonight she takes centre stage at Doors.

WHO: Rhiannon Johnson Quartet
WHAT: Jazz and soul
WHERE: Doors, #18 Street 84 & 47
WHEN: 8:45pm December 27
WHY: She’s one of the city’s most silken crooners

 

THURSDAY 26 | It may be some time before Phnom Penh is in a position to host an opera in its entirety, which would involve a cast of hundreds, but good news: Gabi Faja, he of The Piano Shop and, separately, GTS Jazz, is hosting an aural appetiser of sorts along with very modern mezzo-soprano Ai Iwasaki, a professional opera singer since 2004. Now living in Phnom Penh, Ai cautions that opera isn’t for the faint of heart. “As a teenager in Japan I had always liked to sing, but then I went to an opera performance and was staggered by the power and intensity of this amazing thing,” she says. “Opera isn’t just singing. It’s history, it’s psychology, it’s love. One of my favourite composers is [Claudio] Monteverdi, which means ‘Mount Green’. Monteverdi belongs to an Italian school from three to four hundred years ago, when opera was barely developed. The music is so simple because it was early days, so the singing becomes the most important. Also they had gods who were all having sex with each other and killing each other. It was really full of drama – even more so then because of the shock value at the time.” And what of this aural appetiser? Says Gabi: “Because we can’t do a fully fledged opera, we take some of the most famous and the most beautiful arias and we do a melange, a collage of arias from different operas. It can be anything from Mozart to Puccini and beyond, so you get the best of the best in a nutshell. Opera can be done in a modern, popular way. You can do it in the streets; you can do Stomp and Puccini, there’s no stopping you!” [Bursts into a jazz rendition of Un Bel Di from Madame Butterfly]

WHO: Ai Iwasaki (mezzo-soprano), Gabi Faja (piano) and Bong Somnang (clarinet)
WHAT: A night at the opera (almost)
WHERE: Doors, Street 84 & 47
WHEN: 8:45pm December 26
WHY: Opera is the most misunderstood of art forms

 

SATURDAY 21 | Unleash your inner child and defy gravity on climbing walls, stalk strangers in laser tag and then glide/slide your way across the ice skating rink. For two hours tonight, between 8pm and 10pm, Kids’ City is being reclaimed for grown-ups: $12 buys you three activities and a ‘merry drink’ (whatever that might be). This might just be as close as it’s possible to get to being Tom Hanks’s character in the hit movie Big.

WHO: Your inner child
WHAT: Adults-only activity night
WHERE: Kids’ City, #162a Sihanouk Blvd.
WHEN: 8pm – 10pm December 21
WHY: As close as it’s possible to get to being Tom Hanks in the hit movie Big

 

SATURDAY 21 | British-born country singer/songwriter Joe Wrigley meets the Cambodian Space Project’s Adrien (bass) in what was originally intended to be a Buddy Holly tribute band but has since evolved into a ‘vampire rockabilly’ trio. “We’re going for the Sun Records/Gene Vincent kind of sound,” says Joe. “It’s the awesome era of guitar sound in between jazz and rock music, so players like Cliff Gallup and Scotty Moore were playing big archtops and gretsches very loud with lots of echo and it sounds like they’re just making up rock ‘n’ roll on the spot. You have that energy combined with the wild exuberance of early Elvis and Gene Vincent and it’s just wild, wild!”

WHO: Joe Wrigley & The Jumping Jacks
WHAT: Rockabilly vampires
WHERE: Doors, Street 84 & 47
WHEN: 9:30pm December 21
WHY: It’s just wild, wild!

SATURDAY 21 | DJ Lady Bluesabelle has played fine jazz for the launch of Ministry of Sound Radio’s chill-out sessions in London, acted as host DJ for the Brooklyn International Film Festival, was crowned Nova Lounge Queen in the Philippines on Asia MTV and – legend has it – was the first ever female DJ in Goa. Expect Caribbean, funk, electro swing and Afro beat, all in the oh-so-Zen beachside gardens of Kep’s most illustrious getaway, complete with Caribbean BBQ (entry is free; BBQ is $15).

WHO: Lady Bluesabelle
WHAT: DJ party
WHERE: Knai Bang Chatt, Kep
WHEN: 6pm December 21
WHY: If she’s good enough for Ministry of Sound…

 

SATURDAY 21 | Chhan Dina and Warren Daly are daring to tread in some of history’s most well-heeled footsteps. The duo – one a classically trained Cambodian artist; the other a DJ from Ireland – are redefining for the 21st century the complex relationship between sound and vision. Dina and Daly merge electronic dance music with live instruments and artists and audience participation to create a multisensory experience – a trip without a trip. Led by Daly, who in 2000 co-founded online record label Invisible Agent, they’re building on the work of 1960s San Francisco arts collectives that used disco balls and light projections on smoke to produce trip-like sensations (The Brotherhood of Light, who toured with The Grateful Dead, were inspired by the Beat generation and Ken Kesey’s ‘expansion of consciousness’ Acid Tests). In Swagger, Daly fuses pop culture, high culture and low culture by hooking painters, musicians, graffiti artists, digital artists and DJs into one psychedelic show.

WHO: The sonically and visually open-minded
WHAT: Swagger party
WHERE: Meta House, #37 Sothearos Blvd
WHEN: 9pm December 21
WHY: A trip without a trip

 

FRIDAY 20 | DJ Sequence, along with comparably pseudonymmed collaborators (plus The Advisor’s Best DJ of 2013, Simon C Vent, pictured) has set up an online space for Cambodia’s classier DJs and producers to publicise their offerings. And tonight, PhnomPenhUnderground.com dons physical form for its launch at Meta House. Having gone live just weeks ago, the Phnom Penh Underground website is already garnering 5,000 hits a month, proving there are indeed a lot of people out there who are more into the quality of the vibe than the quantity of the beer. “The site is something of a public service,” says Sequence, whose other aim is – well-intentioned cliché warning – to “bring people together with the universal language of music”. Harking back wistfully to the glory days of the early ’90s, Sequence remembers how acid house and rave united clubbers from all social strata. Phnom Penh Underground’s longer-term aim is to recreate that here in the Charming City. Joining DJ Sequence at the decks tonight are danbeck (from Kimchi Collective) and Tonle Dub & Mercy (Tech-Penh).

WHO: Clubbers, ravers, technoheads and partaay people
WHAT: PhnomPenhUnderground.com launch party
WHERE: Meta House, #37 Sothearos Boulevard
WHEN: 10pm December 20
WHY: Make some shapes to an eclectic range of the phattest beats in Phnom Penh (bottle of mineral water obligatory)

 

FRIDAY 20 | Before they fell to the conquering forces of Roman Emperor Julius Caesar, vast swathes of central Europe – including what are now France, Switzerland and Austria – were ruled by Celtic speakers. They were by all accounts a raucous bunch: classical writers describe them as fighting ‘like wild beasts’ (and occasionally naked); they were accomplished head-hunters and, according to first century Greek historian Diodorus Siculus, Celtic men openly preferred male lovers. The term Celt itself is a perversion of the word keltoi, used by the ancient Greeks to refer to certain ‘barbarian’ tribes (eternal snobs, they considered languages other than their own to be little more than childish babble, hence the term ‘barbarous’). Little is known about the ancient ancestors of these Gaels, Gauls and Galatians. The only written histories are those compiled by the Greeks and Romans, both sworn enemies of the Celts. As Standingstone.com artfully puts it, “It’s a bit like trying to reconstruct Lakota culture from the diaries of General Custer.” Fast-forward through more than 2,000 years of turbulent history and Celtic-speaking peoples are today found only in the British Isles and western France. And now, rather less snobbishly than during the first millennium, the word Celtic is used to describe not only this branch of the Indo-European languages, but also an extraordinary musical legacy. Enter Kheltica, who offer an “entente chordial of musical traditions from France and the British Isles”. Their eclectic mix of songs and dances from Brittany blended with traditional Irish and Scottish folk music is rivalled only by that of the band’s make-up: a singer and a mandolin player from Scotland; a British piper; French drummer; Russian guitarist; South African bass player; Malaysian violinist and French flautist. It gets crazier: for these sessions, the bass guitarist will be playing guitar, the drummer will be playing bass and a pianist will be playing violin.

WHO: Kheltica
WHAT: “An entente chordial of musical traditions from France and the British Isles”
WHERE: Doors, Street 84 & 4
WHEN: 9:30pm December 20
WHY: A musical maelstrom and swift-footed circle dancing

 

THURSDAY 19 | British composer Brian Eno’s choice of the word ‘ambient’ to describe his music, from the Latin ambire (‘to surround’), was a deliberate one: his were soundscapes that could alter your state of mind; put you into a ‘higher state’ – the sort of existential altitude usually associated with psychedelics. Inspired by John Cage, who occasionally composed by throwing the I Ching, Eno had made possible Clockwork Orange; Pink Floyd; The Orb and Aphex Twin; down-tempo chill-out designed to ease a tripped-out mind. Emerging custodians of that sound here include DJ Nicomatic, James Speck (on the splendidly named Korg Kaosillator) and Tim King (guitar), who collectively – under the moniker Electronic Universe – are perhaps Phnom Penh’s first and only live ambient fusion outfit. Joined for their first all-improvised show by flautist Anton Isselhardt, gigs can involve everything from Tibetan bowls to a singing saw. Says King: “When we’re doing this, I feel like Nico is the mothership and we’re just little spaceships flying around him, interacting.”

WHO: DJ Nicomatic, James Speck (Korg Kaosillator), Tim King (guitar) and friends
WHAT: Live ambient fusion
WHERE: Meta House, #37 Sothearos Blvd.
WHEN: 9pm December 19
WHY: “Ambient Music is intended to induce calm and a space to think” – Brian Eno

 

SATURDAY 14 | Start with nine girls from nine countries: Amina (Afghanistan), Yasmin (Egypt), Senna (Peru), Suma (Nepal), Ruksana (India), Mariama (Sierra Leone), Wadly (Haiti) and Cambodia’s very own Sokha. Pair them with writers from their country so the stories are told in their own words. Then top it off the celebrity voice-overs – including Cate Blanchett, Selena Gomez and Alicia Keys. Girl Rising, a 101-minute documentary directed by Richard Robbins and part of the 10X10 series, showcases girls who rise above all odds. They start from a beginning of abject poverty. Their various experiences include forced marriage, indentured labour, scavenging and sexual abuse. Then there is a definable moment for each. The stars align, a puff of ju-ju smoke appears, a whispered inshallah is uttered and their lives forever change. The nine heroines of the film emerge as powerful young women, in charge of their own lives, and able to make a contribution.

WHO: The fairer sex and their fans
WHAT: Girl Rising screening
WHERE: Meta House, #37 Sothearos Blvd.
WHEN: 7pm December 14
WHY: Given equal treatment, girls WILL change the world