Thai Music Mashes It Up

Great bands are starting to come out of Thailand, with Futon and Thaitanium leading the way. You can experience Thai music for yourself through the magic of YouTube.

If you come to Thailand, it won’t be long before you hear traditional Thai music – usually when you’re in a taxi cab. There’s a preponderance of quite mournful sounding ballads that are heavy on synthesisers and, even though I don’t speak Thai well enough to understand the words, I’m pretty sure they’re about the plight of having to leave your family in the country to come and find work in the city – it’s like the Thai equivalent of country music.

On the other end of the scale, there’s Tata Young, Thailand’s answer to Britney, who’s big in Japan and pretty much everywhere else. Her stuff is formulaic pop music sung in English, so it’s not that exciting.

What is exciting is Futon – a Thai band who’ve been around for several years now and just got back from playing gigs in the UK. Their drummer is Simon Gilbert, originally from Suede, and Futon’s sound is a raucous electroclash punk pop that is just glorious. Check out their brave electro cover of the Stooges’ “I Wanna Be Your Dog” which manages to be even more sleazy than the original and sung in Thai and English, and their originals “Tokyo Sunset” and “Rain Baby” – the last one probably being my fave – there’s a real charisma to their videos which shines through, I think.

Futon are releasing a new album soon and hopefully playing gigs in Bangkok – it would unthinkable if they didn’t – so I am already looking forward to that, as live music is the one thing I miss about not living in London anymore.

Also worth investigating is the divinely named Thaitanium, who are a rap band – what else could they be? Their style is a little more generic, but it’s interesting to see the way they’ve taken on all the usual rapper stereotypes – the bragging and posing – but doing something different with it. It’s also weird how rap trademarks – money, gold, looking hard – seems to translate to every culture. “Doown” is still a great rap track though, and you can sing along in Thai thanks to the helpful subtitles! I have asked a Thai friend for a translation of the lyrics – if she gets round to doing it, I’ll post them here.

Lastly, I will mention Palmy, about whom I have no idea but this video showcases her outrageous headgear to great effect, all the while morphing from a country hoedown complete with stetsons and chaps into a Joan Jett rock’n'roll lookylikey followed by some flower power pastiche. I don’t understand it but I like it.

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