Category: Night & Day

THURSDAY 25 | Stetsons and spurs are hardly common sights in the British midlands, yet the post-industrial landscape of Stoke-on-Trent – more commonly associated with football hooligans – has somehow spawned this thoughtful, softly spoken country singer clad in jeans, plaid shirt and, yes, a slightly battered cowboy hat. Joe Wrigley, the 33-year-old former bass player from “now moderately successful indie band” Fists, was once told by his aunt that he couldn’t sing. So much for all that. “To be fair, I couldn’t sing – in a normal, classical sense. Over time I managed to evoke some kind of voice which ended up being quite different. The songs I like and can sing happen to be country songs, because they lend themselves to a thin, nasally voice: Hank Williams, Jimmy Rogers, Johnny Cash. I wrote a song about Johnny Cash, that simplicity and rawness; that’s what I always wanted to sound like. I knew I could do simple, direct songs, stuff from the heart, but not flowery songs; definitely Hank Williams. I’m starting to learn more about where I am, so I’ve started to write about that a little bit… I wrote a song called Shiva recently, which is trying to get at some of the darkness of this place. My writing’s quite figurative; a little abstract. There is a lot of love songs, a couple of funny songs and a couple of songs that are so vague I don’t even know what they’re about yet, to be honest.”

WHO: Joe Wrigley
WHAT: Country originals and covers
WHERE: The Village, #1 Street 360
WHEN: 7:30pm July 25
WHY: British bloke in a cowboy hat!

WEDNESDAY 24 | Le Sommeil D’Or (‘Golden Slumbers’), by Davy Chou, resurrects the myths and legends of Cambodia’s lost cinema. Through survivors’ stories and the search for remnants of their era in modern Phnom Penh, the film reveals the vital importance movies had for an entire generation, as well as their complex legacy.

WHO: Film buffs
WHAT: Golden Slumbers screening, with filmmaker Q&A
WHERE: Meta House, #37 Sothearos Blvd.
WHEN: 7pm July 24
WHY: Discover Cambodia’s ‘lost cinema’

SATURDAY 20 | A guitarist for more than 45 years, Nagasaki-born Masahiro Watabe, an architect by day, by night puts a distinctly Japanese spin on everything from classic Italian crooners to rousing Scottish shanties.

WHO: Masahiro Watabe
WHAT: A very Eastern take on Western classics
WHERE: The Village, #1 Street 360
WHEN: 8:30pm July 20
WHY: The Orient meets the Occident

SATURDAY 20 | 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. One Aussie and four Filipinos make up this epic group: “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 July 20
WHY: A fist-pumping, high-jumping flashback to your formative years

SATURDAY 20 | 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), Sam Day Harmet (mandolin), 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: Latin Quarter, Street 178 & 19
WHEN: 8pm July 20
WHY: Infectious beats and tasty horn lines

FRIDAY 19 | Amanda Bloom – a willowy, porcelain-skinned wisp with a penchant for vintage clothing – is an elegant Australian singer and composer who began studying piano at the age of three, wrote her first sonata aged six and debuted at the Sydney Opera House at just 17. On her first album, The History Of Things To Come, a song by the name of Rosetta – so called in honour of the Rosetta Stone, which famously unlocked the secrets of Ancient Egypt – contains the line: ‘An idea does not gain truth as it gains followers.’ When the album was released in 2010, the lyrics were immediately seized upon by freethinkers the world over. They’ve since been immortalised on everything from websites and radio shows to t-shirts and at least one tattoo. These ten words lie at the core of what Bloom, deeply touched by baroque and world music, describes on the album liner notes as “An epic and astounding fusion of fantasy, circus, classical, and piano-driven alternative rock.” Strings, oboes, harpsichords, cellos and timpanis layer in orchestral splendour amid off-beat rhythms, stunning harmonies and still more stirring lyrics. “Imagine an 18th century tea party with Tori Amos, Cirque du Soleil, Yann Tiersen and Muse” is how she defines her own otherwise almost indefinable style. Tonight, she will conjure a hypnotic blend of narrative, classical folk songs from her soon-to-be-released second album.

WHO: Amanda Bloom
WHAT: A hypnotic blend of narrative, classical folk songs
WHERE: The Village, #1 Street 360
WHEN: 8:30pm July 19
WHY: “Imagine an 18th century tea party with Tori Amos, Cirque du Soleil, Yann Tiersen and Muse” – Amanda Bloom

FRIDAY 19 | A rare look at the second most isolated country in the world, novelist and filmmaker Robert Lieberman’s They Call It Myanmar lifts the veil on life in Burma, held in the iron grip of a brutal military regime for almost 50 years.  Scoring 100% on Rotten Tomatoes, the film was recently described by the Chicago Sun Times as one of the best documentaries of 2012. Writes the paper’s Roger Ebert: “They Call It Myanmar is a thing of beauty… a documentary with all the virtues of a great feature film; its cinematography, music and contemplative words make it… a hymn to a land that has grown out of the oldest cultures in Asia.”

WHO: The culturally and politically inquisitive
WHAT: They Call It Myanmar screening
WHERE: Meta House, #37 Sothearos Blvd.
WHEN: 7pm July 19
WHY: A tale of hope in the face of adversity

THURSDAY 18 | Stetsons and spurs are hardly common sights in the British midlands, yet the post-industrial landscape of Stoke-on-Trent – more commonly associated with football hooligans – has somehow spawned this thoughtful, softly spoken country singer clad in jeans, plaid shirt and, yes, a slightly battered cowboy hat. Joe Wrigley, the 33-year-old former bass player from “now moderately successful indie band” Fists, was once told by his aunt that he couldn’t sing. So much for all that. “To be fair, I couldn’t sing – in a normal, classical sense. Over time I managed to evoke some kind of voice which ended up being quite different. The songs I like and can sing happen to be country songs, because they lend themselves to a thin, nasally voice: Hank Williams, Jimmy Rogers, Johnny Cash. I wrote a song about Johnny Cash, that simplicity and rawness; that’s what I always wanted to sound like. I knew I could do simple, direct songs, stuff from the heart, but not flowery songs; definitely Hank Williams. I’m starting to learn more about where I am, so I’ve started to write about that a little bit… I wrote a song called Shiva recently, which is trying to get at some of the darkness of this place. My writing’s quite figurative; a little abstract. There is a lot of love songs, a couple of funny songs and a couple of songs that are so vague I don’t even know what they’re about yet, to be honest.”

WHO: Joe Wrigley
WHAT: Country originals and classic covers
WHERE: The Village, #1 Street 360
WHEN: 7:30pm July 18
WHY: British bloke in a cowboy hat!

WEDNESDAY 17 | In Australian filmmaker Jim Gerrand’s 1988 documentary The Prince & The Prophecy, the late Norodom Sihanouk – at the time a prince in exile – explains how Buddhist monks long ago prophesied the Khmer Rouge’s reign of terror. The prince is portrayed as a complex, contradictory figure: the descendant of god-kings; a playboy prince in the 1940s and ’50s; a devious, pragmatic politician who secured independence from the French and, amazingly, allied himself twice with the Khmer Rouge, the second time during Pol Pot’s horrific ‘Year Zero’. “I was overwhelmed by him,” Gerrand told The Age newspaper shortly after the film was released, “but I like people to make their own assessment. The range of responses has been extraordinary. A lot of people don’t get over his giggling – they would need to see the film a second time or meet a few Asians to get beyond that superficiality. He has a great sense of duty as a king and a great commitment to his nation.”

WHO: The historically inquisitive
WHAT: The Prince & The Prophecy screening
WHERE: Meta House, #37 Sothearos Blvd.
WHEN: 4pm July 17
WHY: Get a king’s-eye view of Cambodia

SATURDAY | 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), Sam Day Harmet (mandolin), 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: Equinox, Street 178
WHEN: 9pm July 13
WHY: Infectious beats and tasty horn lines