Ayankoko - Kia Sao ກ້ຽວສາວ (Chinabot, 2019)

The Chinabot label is quickly becoming a favorite over here at Nine Chains to the Moon, as they continue to release exhilarating electronic music hailing from the Asian diaspora.  This particular cassette is the work of French-Laotian composer David Somphrachanh Vilayleck, a classically trained musician/composer with decades of work under his belt.  His output as Ayankoko straddles jazz, electronic composition, traditional music, and dub.

Kia Sao ກ້ຽວສາວ is steeped in the horrors that befell 20th Century Laos, which left an innumerable quantity of unexploded ordinance buried across the country.  These bombs and landmines are still being uncovered to this day, causing horrific injury and death decades after the Americans pulled out of Vietnam.  The music shifts between peaceful melodies and chaotic noise, a reflection of the ongoing trauma of the Laotian people.

The tape kicks off with the brief “Kia Sao,” in which slippery electronics are wound around field recordings from Ayankoko’s homeland.  “South East II” is then introduced, a hybrid of junglist breakbeats and what appears to be sped up traditional sounds.  This feeds into the lovely “Molam 9”, a traditional Laotian molam augmented with guitar and sampled strings.  The remainder of the side is equally captivating, culminating in the hyperactive “Trytones”, in which three instruments compete in a daring race, almost exploding with melodic abandon.

“Jette” is a noisy interlude that segues into “Downsides”, the longest track on offer.  This piece is a dubby affair, with a sliding sub-bass throb and broken transmissions that phase in and out in time with the rhythm.  The traditional meets the modern on “Pi Pasan Khap I”, as Ayankoko pairs alien electronics with Laotian field recordings.  The proceedings close with “Tebu Sauyun”, in which a peaceful yet melancholy set of melodies gradually become darker and increasingly foreboding.  The sombre tone on which the cassette closes is reflective of a diaspora coming to grips the destruction and despair experienced by its homeland.

One can experience this indescribably gorgeous cassette in digital form from the Chinabot Bandcamp.  Physical copies are sold out at source but may be available from choice distros worldwide.

Lafidki - Derichan (Chinabot / Bezirk, 2018)

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.

Only 50 copies of this highly enrapturing cassette are available, so point your browser to either the Chinabot or the Bezirk Bandcamps to score one for yourself.