Category: Robert Starkweather

Obscure record collector David Murray spent five years trawling the dustbins of Southeast Asia in search of music’s rarest vinyl species: the 78rpm. His efforts have been compiled into a four CD box set titled Longing for the Past. Boomkat has the details:

‘Longing For The Past’ surveys 90 kaleidoscopic pieces from 78rpm records recorded between 1905-1966 across Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Burma, Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia.  As to be expected, they’re practically all swaddled in a rich patina of fuzz, the inevitable pock-marks of time when you consider many were not properly stored, but the fact they’re here and still sounding so bright and otherworldly should be considered a minor miracle. We’re effectively bearing witness to another world through the smeary windows of an archaic time machine, offering privileged, rare glimpse of the region’s indigenous music and culture before they were ravaged and irrevocably altered by all manner of factors, from war and genocide to the pervasive influence of imperialist cultural policy.

In addition to the 90 tracks, the set also contains a substantial book with pictures from the era and meticulous notes on each song and its instruments. Taken together, the combined work is an immense effort by any standard and an unrivaled contribution to the documented history of Southeast Asian music. That it exists at all is nothing short of amazing. And for less than 50 quid, it’s practically a steal.

Harnessing the newfangled power of geolocation, crowdsourcing and other interweb technologies we don’t completely understand, Urban Voices has created — I kid you not — a map of Phnom Penh potholes.

Looking at the final map, it is interesting to note that streets in Daun Penh as well as the newly developed Bassac area seem to be in very good condition with few, if any, potholes. In contrast, streets the areas around Toul Sleng as well as Psar Toul Tom Pung (Russian Market) are in worse condition. Overall, only 12% of the streets surveyed fall into the category ‘very good’. The majority – 34% – of fall into the category ‘fair’. Overall, 61% of the streets surveyed were either ‘fair’, ‘poor’, and ‘very poor’. However, only 6% of the streets surveyed were in very poor condition – this may however reflect the fact that most of the reports we received are from central Phnom Penh.

Undoubtedly, the first goal of UV’s map is to alert the capital’s high-rolling, Lexus-driving, iPhone5s-having residents to the perils of Phnom Penh roadways, lest they spill their Brown coffee. The second is almost certainly a desire to motivate the Ministry of Public Works to get off its collective backside and fix these poor, neglected streets. Because at $4 a mug, spilling your coffee is no joke.

The hunt is on to uncover just what, exactly, this creature is. The Cambodians call it a “kapas,” which sounds like a localisation of carapace. The dish is called “Balang Kas,” and the one pictured here is from Andart Rorm (Dancing Tongue) Restaurant. The animal looks a little bit like an Asian paddle crab, but those are not native to the gulf, where all the seafood served at the restaurant comes from.

UPDATE: Veteran Asia hand Ian Taylor has the answer: Horseshoe crab, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5O0lqKc7Ob4