Irreverent, informed and downright eclectic books and reportage from Southeast Asia and beyond
Punk’s been pretty dead in Europe for decades and in the US, this particular counterculture never really took off. But in today’s South and Southeast Asia, young kids turn to anti-culture in an effort to distance themselves from ultra conservative pears who leave no room for personal expression. Punks in Burma playing secret concerts in [...]
When I first traveled around Asia in the early 1990s, I collaborated with the British Library on a long term recording project of indigenous music from the region.
Hundreds of hours of recordings from Pakistan to the Philippines resulted from these travels and they are now deposited with the British [...]
Tom Vater reports on Pussy & The Learjets - Bangkok’s loudest Rock’n’Roll band - in the February issue of Traversing the Orient Magazine, published in Thailand and the Philippines.
For more info on the band, visit The Learjets’ Website.
Images by Aroon Thaewchatturat.
The excellent instrumental surf guitar punk band The Klong Riders recently performed a nostalgia set at The Overstay, formerly a brothel, currently a squat, scuzzy guest house and sometime concert venue in Bangkok, Thailand. Plenty of beer spilled on the cracked linoleum floor, plus sonic terror and an audience as enthusiastic as a castle of [...]
It’s official!
Legendary songsmith and Canadian national treasure Leonard Cohen is playing a one-off show in Phnom Penh, on November 27th 2010, likely to add a positive footnote to Cambodia’s turbulent history and present the re-emerging Cambodian capital as a stage for international events for the first time in decades - probably since King Norodom [...]
Austrian artist Willy Wysoudil and Tom Vater met on a roof top in Pokhara, Nepal a decade or so ago. At the time, Tom as recording indigenous music for the British Library and Wysoudil was photographing and filming tradtional life for his installation art projects back in Austria. Willy and Tom liked each other’s work [...]
The plains of West Bengal stretch into a milky horizon. In May, much of the rice has just planted and the midday sun’s glare is reflected in the shallow paddies. Here and there, small clusters of mud and straw huts form tiny hamlets in an ocean of green. The Kanrup Express takes more than 30 [...]
The Moken - Sea Gypsies of the Andaman Sea is available from Topic Records (UK). The songs of the Moken, the last sea nomads of the Andaman Sea, where recorded by Tom Vater in Ko Surin National Park in 1999, located off the west coast of Thailand. Photos by Aroon Thaewchatturat. Liner notes by Tom Vater.