Creator

The Cambodian Space Project

The Cambodian Space Project is a Cambodian psychedelic rock band formed in Phnom Penh in 2009.

The Cambodian Space Project is a psychedelic rock band formed in Phnom Penh in 2009 by the singer Kak Channthy and the Australian musician Julien Poulson.[1][2] The band reworks Cambodian pop and rock songs of the 1960s and early 1970s alongside its own songs, and it has released five albums and toured 24 countries.[2][3]

History

Poulson, from Tasmania, was in Cambodia making recordings and short films about traditional Khmer music and instruments. In 2009 he met Kak Channthy, also known as Srey Thy, who was then singing in a karaoke bar in Phnom Penh, and asked her to form a band.[1][3][4] He introduced her to the Cambodian rock records he had collected.[5] The first gig was at the Alley Cat bar in Phnom Penh, with Poulson on acoustic guitar, and the early band included Scott Bywater and the drummer Bong Sak.[1][6] Gildas Maronneaud was also a founding member.[7]

At first the band played the 1960s Cambodian songs heard from local wedding bands, including songs by Sinn Sisamouth, Ros Sereysothea and Pan Ron.[6][4] Poulson has said the name came from the spacey, ethereal sound he wanted around a Cambodian singer. The band has also said the name came partly from the ethereal quality of the voices of Ros Sereysothea and Pan Ron.[7][8] Kak Channthy soon began writing songs for the band from her own experiences and observations.[1][4]

Cambodia's music industry was destroyed under the Khmer Rouge, and many of its artists were lost. The band's repertoire draws on songs that were suppressed in those years and whose recordings were destroyed.[7][1] The band played in bars, rock festivals and theaters across Asia, Europe and Australia, and also in remote Cambodian villages, orphanages and schools. On village tours it sometimes screened old films on projectors in the rice fields.[1][7] In 2011 alone it toured Australia, southern China, the United States, Cambodia, the United Kingdom and Bali.[3] Abroad it has also played for Cambodian audiences, including political refugees.[5]

On September 12, 2017, the band played the Kennedy Center's Millennium Stage in Washington, D.C., opening a short U.S. tour that included New York City and Long Beach, California.[4][9] Kak Channthy died in a road accident in Phnom Penh on March 20, 2018.[8][10] Poulson has kept the project based in Cambodia. In 2022 it toured for the first time in five years, without a permanent lead singer.[7] The band toured Australia in 2024.[11]

Music

The band's first release came in 2010. The debut single, "Knyom Mun Sok Jet Te," reworked a song first sung by Pan Ron, and UK Festival Guides calls it the first 45rpm single to appear in Cambodia since 1975.[3] The Bangkok Post gives the first release as the maxi single I'm Unsatisfied and calls it the first vinyl release in Cambodia since 1975.[12] Its own songs include "Not Easy Rock'n'Roll," "Have Visa No Have Rice," about being in Paris and eating bread instead of rice, and "Whisky Cambodia."[1][12]

Studio albums:

The band produces most of its music itself, and in 2014 it ran a crowdfunding campaign to press the full-length LP Radio Cambodia on vinyl.[8] Electric Blue Boogaloo draws on Mexican garage, French yé-yé, Shocking Blue, Serge Gainsbourg, the 13th Floor Elevators and 1960s Italian freakbeat.[6] The band began its second album with Mick Harvey, and Kak Channthy also recorded Gainsbourg's "Contact" with him. She recorded "The Boat" with Paul Kelly for the Key of Sea compilation, and later "Summer Wine" with him.[3] The band has worked with the chapei master Kong Nay, and some of its members have studied chapei with him.[5] One of its last projects with Kak Channthy was a set of new covers of songs by Iggy Pop.[12]

Kak Channthy also sang with the Australian Khmer hip hop group Astronomy Class. In 2016 she formed the all-Khmer group Channthy Cha-Cha, which reworked romantic Khmer ballads by artists such as Sinn Sisamouth and Pan Ron with a funk sound.[3]

Stage and film

In 2014 the band joined the Belgian theater director Michael Laub and Phare Ponleu Selpak to present Galaxy Khmer at the Hebbel am Ufer theater in Berlin.[1] The show brought together the band's musicians, dancers, film, circus performers and elements of apsara dance, with Khen Vanthy as principal dancer and choreographer.[8]

In 2014 and 2015 the band worked with Intimate Spectacle and the director Carlos Gomes on Hanuman Spaceman, a Cambodian-Australian rock opera with traditional Khmer musicians and dancers in Kampot and Sydney.[1] It tells of a monkey who finds Soviet-era space technology in the Cambodian jungle. The Australia Council supported it, and the Kampot Traditional Music School for Orphans and Disabled was a local partner.[8] In 2016 the band was staging the music theater show Cosmic Cambodia, about Kak Channthy's life on and off stage, as it developed into Hanuman Spaceman.[6]

The band is the subject of the feature documentary The Cambodian Space Project: Not Easy Rock 'n' Roll, which premiered at the Sydney Film Festival in 2015 and later screened on BBC4's Storyville.[1] The film has also appeared as Rise of a Pop Diva and was released in cinemas as The Cambodian Space Project.[3] The Bangkok Post places its television screening on the United Kingdom's Channel 4.[12]

Recognition

The band headlined the Charlie Gillett Stage at WOMAD London, and the set was broadcast live on BBC3. BBC Music later picked the live recording as one of its top unmissable moments on BBC radio.[1] The band has played alongside Grinderman and Philip Glass and has appeared at SXSW, the End of the Road Festival and the Ubud Writers Festival.[3] Australian appearances include Bluesfest, MONA FOMA, WOMADelaide, the Castlemaine State Festival and The Light in Winter.[1] It was booked for the Glastonbury Festival in June 2015.[3][7] VOA News places the band alongside the Los Angeles group Dengue Fever in preserving and renewing Cambodian music.[4]

Works


See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11 Cambodian Space Project, Biography
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Wikipedia, Kak Channthy
  3. ↑ 3.00 3.01 3.02 3.03 3.04 3.05 3.06 3.07 3.08 3.09 UK Festival Guides, The Cambodian Space Project
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 VOA News, 'Cambodian Space Project' Brings Psychedelic Rock Back (September 13, 2017)
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 Emaho Magazine, The Cambodian Space Project: Jungle Boogie (September 1, 2022)
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 Neocha, The Cambodian Space Project
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 7.5 ACMI, Keeping Cambodian rock and roll alive (November 25, 2022)
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 Grantourismo Travels, Cambodian Space Project: a Chat with Kak Channthy (November 8, 2014)
  9. ↑ VOA Khmer, The Cambodian Space Project to Bring '60s-Inspired Psychedelic Rock to Washington (September 11, 2017)
  10. ↑ BBC News, Kak Channthy: The Cambodian Space Project and a rock revival (March 21, 2018)
  11. ↑ Cambodian Space Project, official website
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 12.2 12.3 12.4 Bangkok Post, Remembering Kak Channthy (October 22, 2019)
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This page was last edited on 26 September 2026, at 23:43.