The Cambodian Space Project

The Cambodian Space Project

The Cambodian Space Project is a Phnom Penh-based group active from 2009, playing a form of Khmer-rooted garage rock, rock and surf rock that is also described as Cambodian psychedelic rock. The band centres on singer Kak Channthy, also known as Srey Thy, and Julien Poulson.

Formation and style

Julien Poulson, an Australian musician and co-founder of the group, has spent time in Cambodia making recordings and short films about traditional Khmer music and instruments. He forms the band with Kak Channthy, who brings together a large repertoire of memorised songs and often improvises her vocals. The project is tied to a revival of Khmer rock’n’roll and draws on Cambodian music from the 1960s and early 1970s, often referred to as the country’s golden age.

The band’s debut single is Knyom Mun Sok Jet Te (“I’m Unsatisfied”), originally by Pan Ron. It is noted as the first 45rpm single to appear since 1975, after the Khmer Rouge era disrupted Cambodian cultural life.

Kak Channthy

Kak Channthy is born in 1980 and dies in 2018. She spends her early childhood moving with her father, a tank driver, around frontlines of conflict after the fall of the Khmer Rouge, and she does not have the chance to attend school. She moves to Phnom Penh to work as a singer and builds a broad songbook drawn from Cambodian music. Her writing is known for witty, original Khmer lyrics in the style of chapei masters such as Kong Nay, who also teaches her and recruits her to record for Peter Gabriel’s Real World label in the 1990s.

Channthy is widely associated with the revival of Cambodian rock and with performances that preserve and reinterpret older material. She is also described as the lead singer and songwriter for the project.

Recordings, touring and collaborations

The Cambodian Space Project releases five albums and tours in 24 countries. Its debut single appears in 2010, and the band then tours widely in 2011, including Australia, Southern China, the United States, Cambodia, the United Kingdom and Bali. The group performs alongside Grinderman and Philip Glass, appears at SXSW, and plays the End of the Road Festival and the Ubud Writers Festival. It also begins recording a second album with Mick Harvey.

Channthy collaborates with a number of other artists. She works with Dennis Coffey of the Motown Funk Brothers on the third LP, Whisky Cambodia. She records duets with Paul Kelly on The Boat, a song about asylum seekers included on the Key of Sea compilation, and later on a version of Lee Hazlewood and Nancy Sinatra’s Summer Wine. She also works with Mick Harvey on the Serge Gainsbourg song Contact, and regularly performs France Gall’s Laisse Tomber Les Filles.

Other projects and legacy

Channthy takes part in Australian Khmer hip hop group Astronomy Class, recording the album Mekong Delta Sunrise. In 2016 she forms Channthy Cha-Cha, an all-Khmer group that reworks romantic Khmer ballads by artists such as Sinn Sisamouth and Pan Ron with a funk influence.

The Cambodian Space Project is the subject of the BBC Storyville documentary Rise of a Pop Diva, which is also released to cinemas as The Cambodian Space Project. After Channthy’s death, friends and colleagues establish the Kak Channthy Memorial Fund to support her family and her young son’s education.