What is your background before starting the Cambodian Space project?
Julien: I've always been involved with music in Australia, including The Stiff Kittens, Moler, Jen Cloher and The Endless Sea. I've released a lot of records where I've collaborated as a guitarist with singers like Mick Blood of The Lime Spiders fame and also with Simon Day from Rat Cat. I've recorded a lot of my own projects, a cult kind of album with a group called Cashcow and more recently released a bunch of my own albums as frontman with my Tasmanian collective The Green Mist, TGM's first album Next Stop Antarctica features a mix of Australian and US musicians from renowned bands The Beasts of Bourbon and The Violent Femmes.
Srey Thy: I was born in hard times in Cambodia and moved about the countryside with my father who was a tank driver in the army. My family has never had money and we were very poor. Music has always been my solace something that got me through hard times and something that also brings a lot of happiness and hope. From age nine I worked in the rubber plantations but later when I was nineteen, i moved to Phnom Penh to look for work, I had to support my family as both my parents were sick and unable to work. It wasn't easy and I had some very bad times but after a while I got a job singing in a Cambodian restaurant. I learnt a lot of songs and have worked as a musician ever since but for very small money.

How did you guys meet each other?
Julien: By accident, I first came to Cambodia on an Asialink Artist Residency program. I was supposed to go to East Timor but conflict had flared to a crisis point and no-one was traveling to Timor to start music projects, I called Asialink and they told me the program was for all Asia and to go ‘look at the map, and call back with another choice’ so I went to Cambodia. I soon met and heard Master Kong Nay whose gravely, blues-like Chapei Dong Veng songs just blew me away, I was hooked. I made several more trips, whenever I could, made a series of videos and a film called Mekong Delta Blues and started working on a dramatic screenplay, a musical or sorts, involving a character from a small village who ends up in the city and becomes involved in unexpected twists through a preoccupation with music. I filmed, interviewed and recorded people, from master musicians and university professors through to singing hawkers, orphans and beer ladies. On one occasion, a young woman told me I should meet her friend who was a ‘a really good singer’. I took her advice and went to a bar where Srey Thy had just started working. Chanthy had consulted a fortune teller just a week earlier to ask if she was making the right decision to work in a bar entertaining ‘barang’ foreigners. She’d long been a karaoke singer in Cambodian bars but this was different. The fortune teller said she would meet a foreigner who would offer her a job and this would change her life. So it seems that was me. When I met Srey Thy, the only English she knew was ‘Hello, you like eat drink beer”. I stuck around for a few beers and played Thy a bunch songs I had with me, her face lit up and she seems really surprised I had this music. We agreed to meet and rehearse a few songs, I found some more musicians and organised a show. The first gig went really well and before we’d even finished the night we had a band. All we needed was a name, and for a few reasons The Cambodian Space Project seemed to fit the bill perfectly. It then took Srey Thy about 4 months to learn to pronounce the name in English.

Do you ever have any problems with cultural differences as a band?
Julien: Yes, but it's usually funny stuff and not a problem as such. Cultural differences add a lot to what we do and what we're hoping to achieve artistically. But yeah, there's been some funny stuff.

Most bands might dabble in influences from other music, but the very existence of your band is a mix between Khmer music and pop rock. Why was that important to you?
Julien: Yes, the mix is the driving wheel of the band, it's something that keeps us all interested. But more recently we've had the opportunity to travel and play with musicians from other cultures, in Austin, Texas, just Srey Thy and I travelled to perform a showcase at the South By South West Festival and were backed by a Cumbia band made up of Texan, Mexican and Colombian musicians, a great experience and some of Srey Thy's new songs like Not Easy Rock'n'Roll have a real Colombian influence.

How did you guys become so involved with Cambodia?
Julien: Well a few of the band members are Cambodian and born here while the others have come here to work. I came on an Asialink artist residency, Scott Bywater worked with the Khmer Rouge tribunal, Gaetan Crespel (accordion) worked at Bophana (film and sound archives) and sometimes the band includes Gildas (bass) and Irene (guitar) both who grew up in France but have Khmer parents.

What is the music scene in Cambodia look like?
Julien: The music scene is small but it's huge compared to 2 years ago. It's very exciting and there's this whole new community of Khmer-Barang bands playing this inspirational mix of music. Good bands to look up are Dub Addiction and Cyclosonic. Aside from this there's a whole lot of regular Cambodian bands and music is a big part of the culture. NGO's such as Cambodian Living Arts have contributed a great deal to the cultural revival of more traditional music forms.

In composing a song, what normally is your inspiration?
Srey Thy: Music can make you laugh or cry or both and for me the inspiration can come from anywhere. Sometimes when I try to write a song I can't really think of much then another time the idea will almost write itself. I write about whatever I'm feeling, experiencing or worrying about. Sometimes sweet, sometimes sour.

What else are you listening to?
Srey Thy: I'm listening to a lot of French music, gypsy guitar music, Edith Piaf and now a song I love by Serge Gainsbourg but sung by France Gall. I'm also listening to Peggy Lee, Nancy Sinatra, Jimi Hendrix, Ray Charles, stuff I find on youtube. But really I mostly listen to Cambodian rock music and singers from the 60's like Pan Ron, Ho Meas, Sin Sisamuth, Ros Sereysothea, Pov Vannary, I also listen to Chapei music and a lot of Khmer Surin. Now I'm really loving the Sounds of Siam album.

People probably draw a lot of comparisons between you and Dengue Fever. How do you respond to that?
Srey Thy: I met them once when they came to Cambodia but I didn't know them before and now I don't think of DF as a Cambodian band but it's great that they like Cambodian music. I new about Chom Nimol's family who are well known musicians in Cambodia. I don't have any of their albums but I know their songs are often the same songs that many bands (including CSP) play in Cambodia. Same same but different.