A journey through the dimly lit recesses of the human soul, Krom’s new album, Neon Dark, somehow manages to find light in the darkness. The interleaving of delta blues guitar with the breathy ethereal sighs of two opera-trained Cambodian sisters (nota bene: this is not ‘fusion’) creates an otherworldly signature sound capable of stirring the most jaded of souls.
Poised for release at a performance featuring Cambodia’s most revered master musician, this 12-track follow-up to the group’s first release, Songs From The Noir, is possibly even darker of hue than its forebear. This is not to be underestimated: Krom’s debut album, says widowed founder, joint songwriter and guitarist Chris Minko, was one of “very personal love songs by a man deep in grief”. “I must have been born dark or maybe that’s where I’ve been living for a while now,” he notes of the forthcoming release.
This voyage through the neon dark of the human soul begins with the purposeful strumming of the chapei, a long-necked, two-string Cambodian guitar which somehow seems to fit the contours of Kong Nay’s body as he tucks his feet up and under him on a stool, cradling the instrument in his arms. At a recent rare appearance with Krom during the Vibe Festival at Doors, this sightless visionary reduced the clank and clatter of Big City Bar-Chat to barely a whisper.
Seconds after the chapei comes the throaty, visceral vocals of the master himself. It was Master Kong Nay who composed the opening track, entitled The Creation Of Krom and sung exclusively in Khmer. The master opens his throat and lets loose a guttural wail. Fuzzy strings vibrate warmly at the touch of wizened, expert fingers. The sound is raw, powerful; not polished. Something about his intonation, like the sacred tradition of Gregorian chant, suggests the passing on of great – possibly universal – wisdom.
The Haunted, which follows and was commissioned for the soundtrack to In Search Of Camp 32, conjures dramatically different emotions. Against the stark background of delta blues guitar, which ebbs and flows between bass line and melody, Sophea Chamroeun slowly empties her lungs in a series of long, wistful sighs. Not a single coherent word is spoken; only soft ‘ahhhhhhhhhhhhs’ rise and fall in minor keys. Vocals swan-dive into eerily low registers, a rare feat for female Cambodian singers; spines tingle as mournful exhalations float disembodied above the rhythmic plucking of strings.
Before the hairs on your neck have a chance to return to the horizontal, Rain begins with the gentle plinking of guitar strings imitating falling water droplets. Every now and then the guitar emits a loud squawk, like the calling of a vast-winged albatross. Sophea’s deep vocal masteries pour out of the speakers in ever-more-complex layers over an even more complex jazz riff before slowly receding again in the passing of a stirring sonic storm.
Passion, fourth in line on the album, introduces Sophea’s younger sister, Sopheak. A fellow graduate of Cambodian Living Arts, Sopheak’s voice possesses an almost angelic purity. Where Sophea swoops, Sopheak soars into melancholic upper registers; the two sisters are the very embodiment of Yin and Yang. Not a word is sung in anything but Khmer, but the emotion Sopheak conveys transcends any language barrier.
Much has already been written about Seven Years Old, which debuted earlier this year on Mark Coles’ BBC Radio programme, The Shed, and was inspired by a news report Minko read in the Cambodian press. Like the grinding of continental shift next to the sisters’ otherworldly sighs, Minko slowly, deliberately spits forth the album’s most disturbing lyrics like the voice of Judgement Day itself: “She’s seven years old, her body sold. She’s chained to a bed; a shackle for a virgin head. It’s so bad; so very, very sad. In a world where humanity has gone stark raving mad.” He enunciates every syllable with excruciating slowness, damning the worst of mankind: ‘Sexpat; paedophile, deluded old fool. The rape of a child, it really isn’t cool…” Even more chilling, if that’s possible, are the eerie, endlessly looped English-language moans of Sophea and Sopheak: “Hush, little baby; don’t you cry. Hush, little baby; Don’t you cry…”
Before you reach for the nearest sharp implement with which to cut short this voyage into a very specific Hell, Night Moods provides a little light relief. Jimmy B on saxophone paints a dreamy backdrop against Minko’s guitar picking, while Sophea’s seductive vocals flutter like long eyelashes encircling innocent eyes. The Wire, by contrast, deploys Jimmy B on slide guitar, teasing forth recognisable country and western twangs that occasionally pierce Sopheak’s slow, hypnotic vocals.
Fractured Fragrance, the eighth track, features vocals by both sisters and Chris, the latter having spotted the title phrase in a book and decided he liked how it sounded. “Broken perfume. Shattered glass. A certain loss of innocence and the future is now the past… It’s fractured fragrance, left of side. And all I ever asked of you Is why don’t you come along for the ride.” Sadness is exactly as the song title suggests: one of only two instrumentals on the album, its long exhaled notes waver like tears about to fall. But wait? What it this? Could it be… country?! Life And Music could perhaps best be interpreted as a hint of things to come: Krom, at least one of whom is a die-hard Johnny Cash fan, have vowed to experiment with the country genre in their next album. Watch This Space.
But back to Neon Dark and Down Sukumvit Road, the album’s longest track which clocks in at seven-and-a-half minutes. A light-footed vocal pas de deux between Minko and Sophea, the song nonetheless details the horrors of Bangkok’s most notorious red light district – a district in which Minko intends to get as much air time as possible amid the resident sexpats and paedophiles, and rightly so.
Finally, bringing this epic journey of emotions full circle, comes a song entitled Dancing With Krom – the second track on the album scored especially by Master Kong Nay, this time singing in tandem with Sophea. A rousing toe-tapper, it’s precisely the antidote to the existential terrors that precede it, the joyous plink-plonk of the chapei’s duelling strings providing the platform for Sophea’s soaring harmonies.
And out of the darkness, came light.
WHO: Krom and Master Kong Nay
WHAT: Neon Dark album launch
WHERE: Doors, Street 84 &47
WHEN: 9pm September 21
WHY: Sometimes, the only light is darkness
