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"Shadow Music of Thailand"
Now reissued on CD after a very limited vinyl-only release in 2008, this fun and absurd compilation of not-quite-surf may very well be the last (and first?) word on the enigmatic Shadow Music scene that very briefly flourished in 1960s Thailand. This feat of DIY ethnomusicology contains some of the most improbable, strange, and obscure pop music that will reach Western ears this year.
Shadow Music (also known as Wong Shadow or Thai String Music) has rather unique origins: both its name and (ostensibly) its content were directly borrowed from The Shadows. This confounded me initially, as I had never thought of The Shadows as being particularly influential (compared to, say, The Ventures). However, I have since learned that they were incredibly popular everywhere but the US and that frontman Cliff Richard was essentially the British Elvis Presley (although relatively hip Americans will probably only remember The Shadows for the surf classic “Apache”). Of course, this would not be a very interesting compilation if that influence had been slavish and undiluted and it definitely wasn’t. Instead, traditional Thai melodies were filtered through that instrumental rock influence to create “Thai Modernized Music,” which also absorbed pretty much every other popular foreign musical style that found its way into the country.
Equally strange is that the bulk of the recordings included on this compilation originate from just one man: singer/svengali Payong Mukda, who is responsible for assembling and managing three of the five artists covered (the ridiculous and egotistically named P.M. Pocket Music, The Son of P.M., and P.M. 7). Of the three, The Son of P.M. was the most prolific and probably the best, as their “Cho Cho Chan” and “Lum Jow Praya” stand out as two of the album’s highlights. P.M. 7 and Jupiter’s Latin-tinged “Sawan Bangkok” is equally cool and memorable though.
The album’s opener (The Son of P.M.’s “Luk Tung Klong Yao”) is an extremely representative snapshot of the oddness to come and basically tells listeners all they need to know about to expect from the album. The opening bars feature a simple rockabilly guitar motif that quickly and unexpectedly gives way to something that sounds like a high school marching band. That, however, is itself quickly derailed by a cool psych-rock influenced organ melody that occasionally disappears only to be picked up again by a chorus of women or children. The transitions are not clumsy, but they are disorienting and incorporate several seemingly disparate elements. Throughout it all, heavy Thai percussion and a propulsive, sultry bass line expertly hold the genre-gobbling free-for-all together. The musicianship, enthusiasm, and ambitious arrangements are consistently impressive all over the album, making this deranged stylistic grab bag succeed despite the seeming impossibility and wrongness inherent in the whole genre.
Sublime Frequencies’ resident crate-digger Mark Gergis clearly had his work cut out for himself with this one, as his minimal liner notes show that most information about the artists and their peers has vanished into the swirling mists of history. For example, virtually nothing is known about Jupiter, who appear on roughly a quarter of the album’s songs, and very few of the genre’s artists ever even made it into a recording studio. Consequently, I’m fairly certain that there are a lot of other great Shadow Music tracks out there in the world somewhere, but I am equally sure that no one else will ever find them.
Samples:
- The Son of P.M.- Lum Jow Praya
- The Son of P.M.- Cho Cho Chan
- P.M.7/Jupiter- Sawan Bangkok
