Category: Night & Day

FRIDAY 11 | 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, among them Sebastien Adnot (bass), Greg Lavender (drums), Euan Gray (saxophone) and Alexandre Scarpati (trombone). Known collectively as Jahzad, they promise an evening of “infectious beats and tasty horn lines”.

WHO: Jahzad
WHAT: Jamaican ska meets jazz
WHERE: Slur, Street 172
WHEN: 9:30pm October 11
WHY: Infectious beats and tasty horn lines

 

FRIDAY 11 | 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 – and it’s a film worthy of The International Day of the Girl. 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. The evening will also include Apsara dances, live music from Frisco Tony & The Beatniks, a photo exhibition and auction. Proceeds go to the NGO A New Day Cambodia.

WHO: The fairer sex
WHAT: Girl Rising screening plus live music, Apsara dances, a photo exhibition and auction
WHERE: Meta House, #37 Sothearos Blvd.
WHEN: 6pm October 11
WHY: Given equal treatment, girls will change the world

 

FRIDAY 4 | Burma born and UK raised, DJ Angelo – the self-declared father of what he calls ‘feel-good fusion’ – has shared the stage with everyone from Skrillex and Public Enemy to Pete Tong and DJ Yoda, along the way inflaming the passions of Red Bull, which declared: “Finally, a turntablist we can dance to!”

WHO: DJ Angelo
WHAT: The father of ‘feel good fusion’
WHERE: Pontoon, Street 172
WHEN: 11pm October 4
WHY: “World-class turntablist… Angelo takes the roof off with skilful scratching and a crafty set” – DJ Mag

THURSDAY-SUNDAY 3-6 | Escape the spectral celebration of Pchum Ben, Cambodia’s festival of the dead, by legging it to Kampot this weekend with some fellow crazies for three nights and four days of “kicking it”, as Plan C Projects puts it. Mystery transport. A bed at Naga House. Simon C Vent and Drop Dead Disco. River cruising. In short: eats, beats and treats. Prices start at $55. Tempted? Pester Josh on 096 3404897 or jpage.work@nullgmail.com.

WHO: Crazies
WHAT: Out Of The Penh And Into The Pot
WHERE: Kampot
WHEN: 1pm October 3 – 4pm October 6
WHY: You’re not dead… yet

THURSDAY 3 | From the modern electronic underlay to the acoustic groove on top, these three lovely lads have got range. And they specialise in turning the esoteric into the easy – but with an edge. The Benny Lackner Trio are Parisian Matthieu Chazarenc (drums); Jerome Regard from Lyon (bass) and Berliner-turned-New-Yorker Benny Lackner (piano and electronics). Theirs is a traditional jazz sound, but with a soulful – even unsettling – Euro ambience that gives it that je ne sais quoi zeitgeist. “This trio is the love of my life,” gushes the front man. “I would do anything for these guys. We play with a lot of passion.” Awww, feel that bromance. Describing their melodic brand as “accessible, not chaotic,” the outfit adapts and covers an eclectic mix of artists such as Schubert, David Bowie, Jimmy Hendrix and Bjørk as well as performing their own compositions. Their music may not be demanding, but their schedule is as rock ‘n’ roll as it gets. Lackner reels off a list of upcoming venues: Hong Kong, Bali, Melbourne, Sydney, Auckland and Brisbane as well as Phnom Penh on October 3. “We are playing two sets of new arrangements, including all-new material,” he says. “Eight concerts in eight cities in eight days in four countries… 12 airplanes. Sleep when you’re dead!” No worries: they’ll play Phnom Penh well before then. Super.

WHO: The Benny Lackner Trio
WHAT: Jazz; no avant garde stuff, just jazz.
WHERE: Meta House, #37 Sothearos Blvd.
WHEN: 8pm October 3
WHY: Chillax to the smooth groove. Nice!

WEDNESDAY 2 | It’s not what you’re thinking. ‘Fukte’ isn’t a black metal gorefest, and it’s pronounced the Italian way: fooc-tay, so you can stifle that smirk. But Euro-pop it is not. Expect instead a guttural, moaning, meandering arc of hiss and reverb. Over a base of angle cutters, evaporators, waiting-room hubbub and Venetian motorboats, artist Fabrizio De Bon lays live tracks using customised amps and oscillators. He aims to construct “audio stories – pieces with a head, a body and a tail.” Devised by another Italian, ’20s futurist Luigi Russolo, the ‘harsh noise’ genre “isn’t everyone’s cup of tea” concedes De Bon, who’s bringing his Fukte routine to Phnom Penh in October. “But it’s not a random collection of sounds,” he elaborates. “It’s a flow that people can follow from beginning to end… narratives they must create themselves.” Hailing from the tiny Alpine town of Beluno, De Bon discovered ‘harsh noise’ after an accidental CD purchase. He started experimenting and after five years of “growing personally with the sound” began performing live. Despite a background in computer science, his is a back-to-basics approach. A vegetarian, non-smoking environmentalist, De Bon eschews digital composition (“click, click, click and staring at a monitor”) for the knob-twiddling analogue grind. He’s not even packed a laptop. Under no illusions that everyone is going to like his style, De Bon is disarmingly self-deprecating about the reception he could get in Southeast Asia. “I don’t want to play to audiences of thousands,” he admits. “I don’t pretend people will like my work, but I’d like them to think about it.”

WHO: Fabrizio de Bon and a big deck of knobs
WHAT: An audio story of harsh noise
WHERE: Meta House, #37 Sothearos Blvd.
WHEN: 9pm October 2
WHY: You didn’t know music could sound like this

MONDAY 30 | Defined by urbandictionary.com as ‘one whose IQ exceeds his weight’, the nerd gains pleasure from amassing vast quantities of knowledge about subjects often too complicated for regular folk. Occasionally, the nerds those same folk will probably one day call ‘Boss’ deign to share that knowledge – perhaps nowhere more succinctly than at Nerd Nites. The format is simple: 20 slides, 20 seconds each. “It’s like the Discovery Channel… with beer!” say the US founders of a craze that has since burst America’s borders. Here in Phnom Penh, it has evolved into the rather more accurately spelt Nerd Nights. Previous topics have included everything from undercover sex signals to things you never knew about goats. Tonight: anyone’s guess. Mandatory dress code: thick-rimmed spectacles held together with sticky tape.

WHO: Nerds
WHAT: Stuff you never knew you needed to know
WHERE: The Village, #1 Street 360
WHEN: 7:30pm September 30
WHY: And God said: ‘The geek shall inherit the Earth’

The product of what was originally intended as a one-off union, GTS Jazz are today one of the most popular jazz trios in the country. Comprising Gabi Faja (piano), Toma Willen (percussion) and Sebastien Adnot (double bass), the band – one part Italian, two parts French – unite the otherwise disparate worlds of classical, gypsy, reggae and jazz. Says Adnot, who began his classical studies at the conservatory in Nice at the relatively late age of 27, alongside precocious eight-year-olds: “The little children always joked with me. They would go to see the teacher and say ‘Oh, the big one, he cannot play!’ But my love for the music was so strong. Before, I didn’t know what to do – at school, I was a chemist. Then one day I touched a double bass. It was as simple as this: I thought to myself, this is what I want to do. It was white. I’ll always remember it. I touched the big string, felt the vibration in my body and that was it.” After seven years, having mastered music theory, Adnot still felt something was missing. “The music I love is gypsy jazz. I started to play with gypsy people and realised they didn’t know shit about music. They can’t name the strings or chords, but music is the heart and the head – that’s all you know. So I lived in a gypsy camp for a year and a half to learn their natural way of making music. I was the gadjo, the ‘white man’. Then I lived for a while in Martinique, where my neighbours were all black and all listened to reggae. I lived in London also, and spent 10 years there learning from Jamaicans how to play reggae. I lived like a tramp and busked. Many times I didn’t have money to pay rent or buy a drink. But as long as I have something to eat and somewhere to sleep, all I need is music. Perhaps that’s why I found it so easy to live with the gypsies.”

WHO:  GTS Jazz
WHAT: Classical/gypsy/reggae/jazz
WHERE: Doors, #18 Street 84 & 47
WHEN: 8:30pm September 29
WHY: They’re suuuuuuuperb

SATURDAY 28 | Back in the 1990s, the international comic-book community began holding an annual 24-Hour Comic Day: the challenge is to produce a 24-page comic in 24 hours. No preparation (except materials, music and food), from initial concept to full art, with even proofreading completed within one day. You can nap, but the clock keeps ticking. Since 2008, the slowly developing Phnom Penh comics community has been participating in this global sharing, and along the way created what is called the Cambodian variation: the event is open for 24 hours, but participants produce one page in one hour; you can drop in, be brilliant and head off again. “The operative word here is ‘fun’,” explains organiser John Weeks, from the Siew Phew Yeung/Our Books group. “Each day has had a great informal atmosphere that brought the community together: amateurs, professionals, local and international artists.” Java Café and Gallery will host an exhibition on the evening of September 27 to showcase examples of work from previous years then the scribbling and scrawling fun begins on September 28 at 8am. The format is simple and designed to maximise participation. Local artists, including Sao Sreymao and Moeu Diyadaravuth, will be on hand as guides to welcome, assist and encourage. “It is a great chance to get together and share,” says Sreymao, who has been involved in the event for years. She knows it’s hard for people to put aside the time, especially when it’s for love not money, but emphasises that this actually is a way to meet new friends and to make a connection with people with the same interests. “Sometimes it’s funny that you know someone, see them every day and then find out oh, you also make comics!”

WHO: Established and budding comic book writers and the comic-book curious
WHAT: 24-Hour Comics Day
WHERE: Java Café and Gallery, #56 Sihanouk Blvd.
WHEN: From 8am September 28 (NOT Oct 28 as we mistakenly printed last week – apologies!)
WHY: Experience the Cambodian variation on comic books