Category: Night & Day

SUNDAY 20  | Cosplay: n. The habitual act of dressing up like comic book or cartoon characters favoured by enthusiasts, nerds and batshit weirdos with a loose grip on reality. “There was an alarming rise in tentacle-rape incidents at this year’s anime cosplay convention.” – urbandictionary.com. Declared Urban Word of the Day on October 31 2006 by resident logophiles at urbandictionary.com, the term ‘cosplay’ – an abbreviation of ‘costume play’, kosupure in Japanese – has something of the geek about it. This Japan-centric movie and comic book world, one of giant-eyed heroes and junk worship, was sired by the sci-fi/fantasy universe once synonymous with Star Trek conventions, but seems to be overtaking it at warp speed. More than half a million fanatics dressed as their favourite anime and manga characters swarm Tokyo’s biannual Comiket fairs, the largest cosplay gathering in the world. In Tokyo’s Akihabara district, cosplay restaurants cater to the imaginatively attired with maids dressed as everything from Pokemon to the Mario brothers, and Yuichiro ‘Jienotsu’ Nagashima, one of Japan’s top-ranked kickboxers, makes all his appearances for K-1 dressed as female anime characters. But this renewed dalliance in dressing-up is by no means limited to Japan. On October 20, sporting face paint, liquid latex, neon wigs, contact lenses, body modification and outrageous cyber fashion, the truly committed will make their way to the Cambodia-Japan Cooperation Centre to worship at the altar of the weirdly dressed. Why? Yumi Anna Ono, CEO/Creative Director at Chiara Angkor Music Production, is a devotee of Studio Ghibli, her favourite character being Sophie Hatter from Howl’s Moving Castle, British author Diana Wynne Jones’ 1986 fantasy novel. “We can exaggerate an existing trait in ourselves and it is indeed empowering to assume the role of a character of our choosing, such as Sophie who is independent, brave, agile, responsible, confident yet vulnerable and most importantly kawaii (‘cute’) all at the same time!” she says. “I believe that one of the elements of cosplay that appeals to so many people – and it has turned into a global phenomenon – is that you can really become the character you’re dressed as. And who doesn’t like to dress up and transform into fantasy land?”

WHO: Cosplayers
WHAT: Comic Party
WHERE: Kizuna Hall, Cambodia-Japan Cooperation Centre, Royal University of Phnom Penh, Russian Federation Blvd.
WHEN: 12pm – 6pm October 20
WHY: Who doesn’t like to dress up and transform into fantasy land?

 

SATURDAY 19  | New wave, post-punk, ’80s cheese: all grist to the mill for the inimitable Jaworski 7, fronted by the larger-than-life Jerby Salas Santo. “The band loves post punk, indie, new wave and everything in between,” he says. “We’re like a Pacific/Oceania band. We now have two originals on our set and we’re planning to add more.” Think The Cure, The Smiths and brace yourself for a fist-pumping, high-jumping flashback to your formative years.

WHO: Jaworski 7
WHAT: New wave, post-punk and ’80s cheese
WHERE: Equinox, Street 278
WHEN: 9pm October 19
WHY: A fist-pumping, high-jumping flashback to your formative years

 

FRIDAY 18 | British-born country singer/songwriter Joe Wrigley meets the Cambodian Space Project’s Scott Bywater (vocals) and 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
WHERE: The Village, #1 Street 360
WHEN: 8:30pm October 18
WHY: It’s just wild, wild!

 

FRIDAY 18 | Dub Addiction Meets Kampuchea Rockers Uptown is an epic fusion of reggae and dub with Khmer saravan. Recently released by Hong Kong label Metal Postcards, it’s the most ambitious project yet by Dub Addiction, back in Da Penh after an epic tour of Europe. Dirty and raw are adjectives that sit well with their new material, the hallmark of which is a more “organic, authentic dub sound” than the band’s eponymous first release. Says German music producer Professor Kinski, known to friends as Jan Mueller: “The whole album sounds more epic, more massive, more dub than the first one.” Their main ragamuffin toasters are MC Curly and DJ Khla, the latter someone Kinski compares to Cutty Ranks, Sizla and Anthony B. From the moment the CD clicks into the disc drive and begins to spin, sights and sounds familiar to Phnom Penh long-termers ooze through the mixer to create a distinctly Cambodian soundscape. A high point – if you’ll pardon the pun – is The Mighty Plan, on which “the voice of LSD guru Terence McKenna is lecturing about mankind’s first contact with aliens over an ultra-massive slow shuffle dub groove of Lee Perry – one of the best instrumentals on the album”. And it can only be right and proper to follow such a track with a song entitled Ganja Dub, although it’s clearly far too fast for anyone genuinely out of their mind on marijuana. “We intend to conquer the universe,” a disembodied voice declares as the final track drives its mega-phat electro dub juggernaut into your sternum. Wobble bass slams you against a sonic wall as distorted e-guitar solos slash at your face, fishing your brains right out through your nose. You Have Been Warned.

WHO: Dub Addiction
WHAT: Reggae reinvented
WHERE: Doors, Street 84 & 47
WHEN: 9:30pm October 18
WHY: Somewhere, in that great dancehall in the sky, King Tubby should be smoking a fat one and smiling

 

 

 

 

WEDNESDAY 16 | Ian White tackles the thorny issue of Cambodian-born felons being forced by the US back to their country of birth in his documentary Straight Refugeez, not an easy transition for the returnees, such as celebrated spoken word artist Kosal Khiev, who have little or no memories of their mother country.

WHO: Returnees
WHAT: Straight Refugeez screening
WHERE: Meta House, #37 Sothearos Blvd.
WHEN: 4pm October 16
WHY: Not every homecoming is a happy one

(PHOTO: Vinh Dao)

SUNDAY 13 | Silly season somehow just not silly enough? Grab three pals and a tuk tuk and position yourself on the starting blocks for this month’s Amazingly Silly Race. Tear around the city solving cryptic clues and completing bonkers tasks and you might even get slapped with a medal… or something. To register, contact executivedirector@nullbritchamcambodia.org.

WHO: Wacky racers
WHAT: Amazingly Silly Races
WHERE: Gasolina, #56 Street 57
WHEN: 12pm October 13
WHY: Secretly, you’ve always longed to be Penelope Pitstop/Dick Dastardly (delete as appropriate)

SUNDAY 13 | On a table under a vast canopy sits a small army of little people dressed in mock animal skins. Among them, notably taller ‘Java men’, sporting glued-on uni-brows that sprout from their foreheads like tarantula legs. One has a lethal-looking spiked wooden club dangling from one hand, a cigarette jabbing at his lips with the other. Bending over to hook a Coke out of the cooler reveals a flash of fake designer boxers. He grins at the camera, lips parting to reveal fake buck teeth. These unlikely dwellers of 21st century rural Cambodia are, along with one or two rather more recognised names such as The Crow star Bai Ling and Christopher Judge (Teal’c in TV’s Stargate SG-1), the hastily assembled cast of Clash Of The Empires. A B-movie shot in Kampot last year, it was due to be called The Age Of The Hobbits before Tolkien’s lawyers waded in. This gloriously camp straight-to-TV ‘mockbuster’ is set 12,000 years ago in Indonesia, where the remains of one of mankind’s possible predecessors – rudely snuffed out since by the cruel processes of evolution – was identified in 2003. Barely a metre tall and even smaller of brain, Homo floresiensis was immediately christened ‘the Hobbit’ by a Tolkien-crazed media. One scientist even suggested naming the species Homo hobbitus. “The idea behind this film,” says Anthony Fankhauser, producer of Hollywood B movies Snakes On A Train and Mega Shark Versus Giant Octopus among other tongue-firmly-in-cheek titles, “is just… hobbits. And there’s an immediate recognition of that word. This has nothing to do with the Tolkien universe at all. A pre-hominid little person in Indonesia, nicknamed Flo, that’s the real hobbit. The film is based on what those people would have been like. They’re trying to tie in a little science, but then we have flying kimodo dragons, so it’s not 100%, you know, factual, obviously.” The script is hardly Oscar-winning material: “It’s a pretty clear-cut story. The hobbits’ village is raided by Java men, who also existed in Indonesia at the same time. They steal a bunch of their people and they’re going to sacrifice them to the moon goddess. Lots of people get picked off along the way. Yes, we have some impalement, but the piranhas got changed to giant spiders.”

WHO: Hobbit botherers
WHAT: Clash Of The Empires screening
WHERE: Meta House, #37 Sothearos Blvd.
WHEN: 4pm October 13
WHY: Hobbits!

(Photo: Mariam Arthur)

SATURDAY 12 | As Jack Black in the guise of music teacher/frustrated rock star Dewey Finn put it so eloquently in School Of Rock, entering any battle of the bands will test “your head and your mind and your brain”. Bearing this in mind during Sharky’s third sonic warfest tonight are Sliten6ix, No Forever, Muscle Of Love, Splitter, Adobo Conspiracy, Holliday In Cambodia, Sonic Detergent, Ricky Rotten & The Scumbags and Sangvar Day. You have been warned.

WHO: The capital’s maddest, baddest bands
WHAT: Battle of the Bands III
WHERE: Sharky Bar, Street 130
WHEN: 8pm October 12
WHY: This time it’s WAR!

SATURDAY 12 | When Miles Davis released Kind Of Blue in 1959, it was to become the album that defined jazz: a universally recognised standard of excellence. In just two recording sessions at Columbia’s 30th Street Studio in New York, one of the greatest bands in history – Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, Julian ‘Cannonball’ Adderley, Paul Chambers, and Jimmy Cobb – achieved the pinnacle of modal jazz. Tonight, the GTS Jazz Sextet will recreate the entire album. Their renditions of So What, Freddie Freeloader, Blue in Green, All Blues, and Flamenco Sketches are all based on the original transcripts in a bid to replicate Miles’ recording session. Bring your jazz hands.

WHO: The GTS Jazz Sextet
WHAT: Miles Davis’ Kind Of Blue album recreated live
WHERE: Doors, Street 84 & 47
WHEN: 9:30pm October 12
WHY: Jazz simply doesn’t come any cooler than this