This release date marks 3 years since the passing of one of Cambodia's greatest and newest voices in its rock revival scene, Srey Kak Channthy.
R.I.P. Kak Channthy, Feb. 26, 1980 - Mar. 20, 2018. Queen of the Cambodian Rock Revival....
PLEASE SUPPORT THE ARTIST ON THEIR RESPECTIVE LABELS OR THROUGH YOUR LOCAL RECORD SHOP.
THIS ALBUM IS A FANMADE BOOTLEG COMPILATION OF NON-ALBUM SONGS AND SINGLES THAT COMPRISE ODDS AND ENDS OF THE CAMBODIAN SPACE PROJECT DISCOGRAPHY. PLEASE NOTE THAT ALL OF THIS MATERIAL HAS BEEN RELEASED FOR FREE ON OTHER PLATFORMS.
R.I.P. Kak Channthy, Feb. 26, 1980 - Mar. 20, 2018. Queen of the Cambodian Rock Revival....
If interested, the Rock Cambodia organization is advertised on the official CSP website (
cambodianspaceproject.org). It is a Cambodian non-government organization dedicated to supporting LGBT+ rights in Cambodia. RoCK works closely with LGBT communities and respective local authorities across the country to ensure long-term protection and support of equal rights and acceptance for LGBT people and their families.
rockcambodia.org
Notes on a few songs from the album taken from their respective sources:
"Woman Wants to Drink"
Jim Diamond (The White Stripes, The Dirt Bombs) recorded Woman Wants to Drink live at Ghetto Recorders in Detroit. We all stood around in a circle, played live without headphones while Channthy sang this track through an old pa. Probably how they used to do it in Cambodia back the the hey day of psychedelic Cambodian rock. This is a retro-modern take on things, a song Channthy originally recorded as a hip-hop track with Sydney group Astronomy Class. Music travels, echoes of the past, reverberations from Phnom Penh to Sydney to Detroit - raw, gritty Cambodian rock and roll, cooked fresh, spicy and hot!
Tracks 6-10 "acoustic set"
These songs were taken from a set that began as an acoustic side project for Srey Channthy and Julien Poulson while visiting Bali as guests of The Ubud Reader's & Writer's Festival 2011. Balinese based musician and sound engineer Jay Thorpe was impressed by Channthy's performance at URWF and invited the duo to spend a couple of extra days to record. First track to tape (Protools) was Sweetheart Bali - Channthy's emotive response to experiencing Bali for the first time. Then came the track Lullaby for Makara with Jay adding superb slide-guitar to this sublime piece of Mekong Delta Blues. Channthy and Julien made two more trips to Bali and continued to write and experiment, next came and epic acoustic version - 9 minutes - of Channthy's story-telling song Whisky Cambodia, then versions of Western songs like Sonny Bono's classic Summer Wine. Channthy, keen to learn to sing something in English then took Peggy Lee's Fever and turned it inside out, even wrote two new verses and stories in Khmer - she's not singing about Captain Smith and Pocohontas but about Hunuman the monkey and Srey Macha the mermaid, then another verse about a monsterous mother-in-law who eats babies. The there's a version of Paint It Black - the song that became the unofficial Vietnam War theme song - Channthy sings about her own birth, born on the battle fields and bombed out rice paddies in Cambodia, she describes the villagers gathered around as she's is delivered, screaming into this world, apparently she let out a large squark and was immediately given the name Blackbird - it's a derogatory name, her Pa cried, the nickname stuck, so this version of the Stones classic is called Blackbird. Finally on the third visit back to Bali, Channthy and Julien were joined by Jay to play some of the tunes live, the duo became a trio and played a brief set at Antida Arts the drove through the night to Ubud where they became a foursome with the addition of Nicky Bomba playing all sorts of stuff, even a water bottle and a ukelele, adding something extra special to the next batch of tracks. Mountain Song is one of Channthy's most beautiful songs, it arrived quickly but takes its inspiration from an earlier meeting with Indigenous Bunong Musicians in Cambodia's Mondulkiri province. Finally there's the song, The Boat, it's a song Channthy's written for the Key of Sea Project - a music project initiated by Hugh Croswaite in Australia in response to the human rights issues surrounding asylum seekers coming to Australia. In this haunting piece, Channthy imagines the people of Cambodia and Vietnam who fled the war in Cambodia and took to the see as refugees seeking to escape war and tragedy in their homelands. The music here was slated to form a new album and new direction for Channthy and The CSP when not busy making psychedelic Cambodian rock'n'roll.
