Before I relocated to Vietnam two years ago, I added to my mobile equipment list a MiniDisc recorder and binaural microphones. At times, I go out and capture audio from outside my home. The torrential downpours slamming the pavement and corrugated metal roofs during rainy season. Children playing in the street. The dopplar whizzing of motorbikes forever zooming about the city. A year ago, artists from the UK and Hanoi, with the support of the British Council Vietnam and the Alliance Francais Vietnam presented a sound art performance based on the song-like street calls from vendors at the Hue Festival 2004.

Recording sound is cinema verite without the image. Of course, it's been a practice for enthusiasts for years, from anthropologists to experimental ethnomusicologists, and artists. Yet it never fails to be fresh. My early inspirations came from the website of "The Quiet American". The artist has generously shared his work as free downloads in MP3 format along with project descriptions and equipment and recording advice.

The New York Times today covers a new cd called "Radio Phnom Penh":

The album consists of material that Alan Bishop taped off the radio on a trip to Cambodia last year, chopped up and rearranged into pieces he has given titles like "Rebel Guitars in Strange Dialect" and "The Shiny Radio in a Blind Man's Wallet." Some of the songs Mr. Bishop excerpts are Cambodian pop from the 70's; others are the remixes favored by Phnom Penh's FM radio stations, with drum machines and synthesizers grafted onto older recordings.

Mr. Bishop, who is probably best known as a member of the experimental-music trio Sun City Girls, has traveled extensively in the Middle East and Asia over the past quarter-century, collecting local pop recordings and making sound collages from radio tapes. ("The radio is the most underappreciated electronic instrument ever created," he wrote in an e-mail interview.) The unusual aesthetic of Sublime Frequencies arose partly out of his frustration with what he called traditional ethnomusicology's "general attitude of superiority, exclusivity, expertise and analytical spin."

I did not have much of a chance to catch the radio programs the last time I was in Phnom Penh earlier this year. Though I can catch a few Khmer pop songs from the 70's in Saigon at Sugar Street Cafe. I'd love to hear this album. I'll definitely be bringing my minidisc recorder with me during my travels to Thailand and Myanmar this week.

More information
New York Times. Heard on the Streets
The Quiet American: Vietnam Field Recordings