Saigon Rock And Soul

Dug out this classic compilation the other day after watching Apocalypse Now Redux. This LP was only released in 2010 and contains Vietnamese trax from 1968-1974. Sublime Frequencies is the excellent excavation label it was released on. This label is run by American Alan Bishop and some other dude. Bishop would be known to underground music lovers as a founding member of Sun City Girls. SCG played warped exotic avant rock and existed from the 80s right up until around 2010.  This treasure trove has got the lot! (like pretty much all the releases on said label). Who knew previous to this release that there was such a happening scene in Vietnam during this era? While watching Apocalypse Now the other day I was struck by the lack of any non-western music in the film. Imagine  if some of this shit was used. This archival package features Asian fuzz rock, sultry divas with slinky rhythms,  psychedelic jazzy soul with horns, forays into acid rock, female pop singers swathed in twang and wah wah and incredibly funky beats all lovingly compiled by Mark Gergis. Some of this music puts me in mind of French style beat pop of the era and other Asian styles of the time like Thailand's Luk Thung and Molam genres. Perhaps the Vietnamese style here is a bit more western influenced than those Thai genres, probably due to the presence of the American army and French colonials during this compilations timeframe.  Like the Thai music of the time though, this was a fleeting and ephemeral pop culture that has taken a long time to be collected and showcased to a Western audience. On this LP is some of the most vital, tantalising and far out pop/rock from any time and place.

*Here's an ABC radio documentary Saigon's Wartime Beat which features interviews with some of this compilation's musicians and its compiler that I discovered after writing this.