The Chinabot label/collective was founded in 2017 with the
release of the Phantom Force
compilation, which collected 21 tracks from artists who hail from across the
East Asian music scene. Aimed at rewriting
the story surrounding Asian music, the label’s mission statement is to “show a
slice of what we like, the cultures we come from and our own ideas”. Chinabot progenitor Saphy Vong, himself a
Cambodian-born artist who has lived in various locations across Asia and Europe
but currently resides in London, contributed his own output to the compilation
as Lafidki. His music is situated at
both a stylistic and temporal crossroads, in which classic Cambodian pop music,
traditional music from his homeland’s highland and mountain peoples, and
glitchy electronic rhythms coalesce into a colorful cosmic ambrosia.
Chinabot has co-released the Derichan cassette with the Bezirk imprint, also a relatively young
label helmed by UK artists Daryl Worthington (Beachers) and Tristan Bath
(Spool’s Out podcast). The cassette is
dedicated to the over twenty ethnic groups that call the Cambodian countryside
home. Derichan translates as “bestial”, and these groups are often
derided in their own homeland, often called “ethnic minorities, hill tribes,
and other, more dehumanizing terms associated with wildness, primitivity,
savagery.” Vong has woven field
recordings made with the help of ethnomusicologist Julien Hairon into his
noise-infused electronic sound fields, folding the histories of multiple
cultures into a singular clarion call, revealing tragedies that are occurring in
present day.
Deforestation, human-influenced drought, and the murder of environmental
activists are just some of the themes that Vong touches upon with his transcendental
rhythms. Field recordings bookend the noise-infused
rhythms of “The Ceremony of the Drowned,” a paean to a cultural rite threatened
by dam construction. The sinister
electronic arpeggios of “Poan Pasda” give way to oblique tones that could be
the cries of the banana tree ghost, now homeless (Cambodia currently has one of
the highest deforestation rates in the world).
“The Death of Chut Wutty” finds Vong exploring the atrocities of the
modern era, ruminating on the murder of the eponymous environmental activist,
who was allegedly shot by the Cambodian military.
