WORLD EDITION!
By Vivian Ponte-Fritz
This week of November Music Month is all about WORLD.
So I will be reviewing the album :
CAMBODIAN ROCKS released on Parallel World Records in 1996
and letting you know how not being worldly on your thanksgiving can really make a difference That is, eating locally and mindfully will save the greater world in the long run.
This groovy album features various artists including Yol Aularong, Ros Sereysothea, Pan Ron, Sinn Sisamouth and many more notable psychedelic Cambodian geniuses from the 1960’s and 70’s. This album emulates dinner time back at my house, so I thought it would be a perfect one to review for the week of thanksgiving, seeing as it just might be playing during my turkey meal! But I also think that this music is generally ignored when djs are looking through the stacks down in this little basement we call home. So I thought, “why not draw attention to this rockin’ slice of gamelan, spooky, surf rock from another part of the world?” This is the week to do it, so I did it! Yeah!
The noise that I think sometimes makes people steer clear of Cambodian psych rock from the 60’s and 70’s is the lovely crooning of very nasally-inflected female vocals. And while this album, especially track 3, has got it’s fair share of this sound, it is also full of lots of other crazy vocals that might catch you off guard. In fact, some of the shocking vocals sound as if the singer himself was caught off guard. The shrieks and yelps let out by some of these guys can get quite crazy. However, if you are not looking for a relapse of your Halloween haunted house soundtrack, this album contains a good amount of shredding guitar, and crooning slower vocals, such as in the fifth track, “My Petite Girl” or “Srolanh Srey Touch” by Sinn Sisamouth.
I can highly recommend this album to anyone looking for a good dose of talent-filled instrumentals in the surf, psych rock genre before it was turned inside out by today’s hipsters in Silver Lake or some obscure Canadian town. These guys are feeling the Cambodian heat and getting rough and tough with it. These songs can be played loud on the highway or during your next neighborhood cock fight or a bit quieter for a pleasant and unusual thanksgiving dinner where one might serve fried turkey toes as an aperitif! So whatever your needs are, I’m pretty sure they can be met by this world music album. Get down and dirty, listen to this album with The Black Lips’ album Let It Bloom (the song Dirty Hands would go well with dinner), and feed your hunger.
So to accompany your musical main dish I thought I would provide a nice cambodian dish as well as some more traditional Thanksgiving  eats.
first:
shrimp fritters and sweet potato rolls with ginger!
and now: What will be eaten at the White House this Thanksgiving?
click on the photo above to read all about the Obama’s kale salad shenanigans.
But more importantly, keep your holiday cooking local and sustainable to help the environment and feed your body what is best!
HOW TO HAVE A 100-MILE THANKSGIVING
enjoy!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vw1Tc8X9erg