Coming to Phnom Penh this weekend is Acid Fuzz Trio, out of Siem Reap. LengPleng had a chat with bandleader and guitarist Mike Bee to find out what we should be preparing for.
Is this a new band or a reboot of an old one with Siem Reapers in it?
This is a completely new project that I’ve been wanting get up for a while. I’m quite a patient person, so I waited for the pieces to fall into place. I’d been playing a bit with both Carlos Alonso (drums) and Stephane Hebert (bass), and we all ended up in Joshua Chiang’s band, The Dropping Shoes. So we’re the Acid Fuzz Trio but you could also call us The Dropped Shoes! I’m always looking for the right personalities to play with. Eventually Stephane became available. It’s all come together naturally.
The name Acid Fuzz Trio is quite suggestive of a particular sound – like a psychedelic bluesy T Rex.
I’m always a bit wary of labelling things before they’ve even come together, but I was floating a potential band name in my head for some months. Like most band names it came to me about half four in the morning, and I woke up and said: Acid Fuzz Trio! There it is. You’ve got acid jazz, acid house – a bit of an homage towards those styles.
And what’s the repertoire?
We’re essentially an originals band, but we do some covers in our own style. I didn’t do my first covers gig until quite recently, maybe four years ago, so that’s relatively new to me. We like to think we put our own stamp on the cover songs. It’s been good for the band to gel together and find things we all like playing, and if people come to hear you they want to hear a song they know occasionally.
What does your personal musical history look like?
I’ve been a full time musician for about 15 years now. I had a normal job until everything imploded, and I escaped the rat race in spectacular fashion. I’d say it wasn’t really for me, but it taught me a lot of things at the time. Since then I’ve been doing performance, songwriting, session guitar; sometimes I’ve been the frontman and sometimes I’ve just played guitar. So a bit of a mixture really. Acid Fuzz Trio is all of them coming together, in a way.
How long have you been in Cambodia?
I’ve been in Cambodia for about two years, it’s gone really quick. Days go slow but weeks and months fly past. It’s been a whirlwind. After I’d been here a while I popped back to England to sell some more stuff and tie up some loose ends, and I brought as much recording equipment as I could. I’ve now got a studio set up where we can carry on recording. I used to work in bigger studios but I’ve got my gear down to a very small mobile set-up now, a lot less to think about.
And recording is a key part of your activities I understand.
We’ve released the first album and we’re working on the second album at the moment. We’ll be back at work after the Phnom Penh weekend, keep the momentum flowing from the live shows. I wrote the first album predominantly myself, with my friend Craig when he visited Cambodia, and I got some help from Carlos. So the next stage for the band will be more development of the songs – I still write them, but the magic of having a band, and having the right people, is for them to put their personalities into the music. I think it’s important that anybody in a creative situation has the ability to flow and put their own input. That’s also what makes the band fun, so I hope we can get that captured on the second album.
What are your major musical influences personally?
I started off as a blues guitarist when I was young, and I listened to a lot of blues and jazz – BB King, John Lee Hooker, Thelonious Monk, Son House – although I couldn’t even attempt to do what they were doing. But I had this crazy idea that I’d become a guitarist, so that’s what I listened to. Eventually it caught up. A lot of my style comes from blues – Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, the music I grew up on. Being from the north of England it’s very hard not to get involved in dance music, the Manchester scene, so you pick up the dance pop influences. I’ve always got hiphop or beats going in my head, but then Jimi playing over the top. I find if I listen to lots of music my playing adapts to it, so I’m careful to keep my filter clear when I’m creating.
In Siem Reap Acid Fuzz Trio have a Monday residency at Amici Signature. In Phnom Penh this weekend they are at Oscar’s on the Corner on Friday, Motodop on Saturday and The Vine on Sunday.
Check them out on Bandcamp and YouTube.
