From Scotland to the Outback
A Journey with The Cambodian Space Project’s “The Raft at Night”
I. Red Earth, Ether Waves: The Desert Listens
The Theremin’s Call & The Painter’s Ghost: Tracing Fairweather’s Songline. The track unwound like a rusty ribbon west of Mparntwe (Alice Springs), bleeding into a landscape the colour of dried blood and forgotten dreams. Dust, fine as ground bone, hung suspended in the ochre light, catching the low sun like smoke from some ancient ceremony. Inside the 4WD, cocooned against the desert’s vast hum, headphones became my world. And within them, a revelation: Peter Theremin’s first tracks for The Raft at Night. Not merely music. A vibration. A frequency resonating with the very essence of Ian Fairweather’s sixteen nights adrift on the Timor Sea in 1952.
Imagine it: a raft, not much more than lashed aircraft fuel tanks and desperation, pitching on monstrous swells under a sky indifferent as God. Fairweather, the misanthropic Scottish-Australian painter, reduced to a sun-blistered wraith, adrift between delirium and death. His story is etched into Antipodean art lore, yet the voices of the Rotenese fishermen who hauled his shattered body from their treacherous reef remain whispers on the wind. This is the odyssey haunting us.
Peter Theremin—great-grandson of Leon, inventor of the ether-sculpting instrument bearing their name, keeper of the Russian Theremin School in St. Petersburg—makes the century-old device breathe. Above the deep, pulsating currents laid down by The Cambodian Space Project (CSP) at Jim Moginie’s Sydney studio, Peter’s theremin sings. On ‘Cormorant’, it soars – a spectral seabird riding minimalist Omnichord waves, evoking perhaps the artist’s spirit detaching from his tortured flesh. On ‘Stingray’, it plunges into dark, electric currents – the lurking dread beneath the waves, the distorted shriek of fevered hallucinations. It is the sound of the uncanny, the vast indifference of the ocean, and the fragile beauty found in its terrifying embrace. The perfect, wordless articulation of Fairweather’s limbo.
And it fits. Of course it fits. History hums beneath the surface. Cambodia remembers. It remembers Soviet engineers shaping its modern institutions like the Institute of Technology in Phnom Penh. It remembers postage stamps celebrating Sputnik, emblems of a shared, skyward gaze during a complex era. Russia’s touch lingers in the very bones of Phnom Penh, a subtle counterpoint to French colonial facades. Now, through Peter’s hands in St. Petersburg, navigating the complexities of our present, this ethereal sound finds Fairweather’s 70-year-old delirium. Digital packets traverse firewalls, carrying ghosts across continents. Art laughs at borders. Cambodians, perhaps more than any, understand culture as an act of resilience, a liferaft through adversity. This connection isn’t incidental; it’s foundational to the project’s soul.
Clara Reisenberg Rockmore was a Litvak classical violin prodigy and a virtuoso performer of the theremin
II. The Pilgrimage: Chasing Ghosts in Frozen Lands
The Raft at Night is no mere spectacle; it’s a songline. And a songline demands walking. Five years into this voyage, the project insisted on tracing Fairweather’s own erratic path. Last January, the call led north into the deep freeze. Jason Shaw – sonic alchemist behind Fuzzface Studios, the CSP’s steadfast guitarist, and a cornerstone of this journey – alongside his partner Gillian, whose quiet strength is a constant, piled into their brand-new car with me–ooch aye! all set for a wintry road trip. We pointed it towards Scotland’s gnawing cold.
The Scottish backroads were arteries of ice. God, I was freezing. Each breath crystallised in the air, a stark contrast to the Cambodian heat baked into our collective memory. Destination: Bridge of Allan, Fairweather’s birthplace near Stirling. We found a town cloaked in damp stone and mist, handsome in a subdued, weathered way. At the local gallery, hopeful: “Ian Fairweather? The painter?” Blank stares. The librarian? A polite shake of the head. The pub keeper? A shrug. Australia’s revered abstract expressionist was a phantom here, his legacy evaporated like morning fog off the loch. The profound disconnect – giant in one hemisphere, ghost in the other – spoke volumes about the man: the eternal outsider.
Retreat was necessary. We dashed back across the winter-locked landscape to Fairlie Village, nestled on the Firth of Clyde, and the sanctuary of Fuzzface Studios. Jason’s domain is a temple of wires, valves, and latent sound. Heat seeped back into bones alongside the glow of tube amplifiers. And then, serendipity: Sophie Ek, the gifted Belgian-Khmer artist, arrived. Almost on a whim, drawn into the orbit of this quest. In the studio’s focused hush, her voice – a unique instrument blending Khmer inflection with European resonance – wove itself into the tapestry. A sudden, vital thread connecting Fairweather’s Scottish roots to the Cambodian heart of the project, a diasporic echo finding its place in the narrative. We recorded fragments, ideas, sonic textures chasing the painter’s elusive ghost through the Highland chill.
Then, the path forked. Gillian and Jason held the Fairlie fort. I turned south, alone. A train, a blur of English countryside, then the shuddering embrace of a ferry ploughing through the grey chop of the English Channel towards Jersey. This wind-scoured Channel Island felt like a fortress rock rising from the sea. Beaumont, the Fairweather family seat, stood imposingly – a grand, shuttered mansion whispering of faded Empire and quiet money. Undeterred by the January bite, I knocked. The caretaker, tending the pristine gardens of the trust-owned estate, emerged. “Ian Fairweather?” I asked, hopeful despite the Bridge of Allan lesson. Her brow furrowed. “Never heard mention of him, sir. Sorry.” The door closed softly on generations of forgotten history. Even the grand Jersey Opera House, a beacon of culture, knew no applause for this son of the island. The silence was profound.
Dawn saw me walking the granite Jersey seashore, island of tax exiles and forgotten painters! the cold salt wind scouring my face, towards the Condor ferry terminal. Another crossing, this time to St. Malo in Brittany, France. Purpose: Dinan. Not for its picturesque ramparts, but for its grim past. Here stood the imposing Château de Dinan, a medieval fortress repurposed during the Great War as a prison for German POWs. It was here, or a place chillingly like it, that young Lieutenant Ian Fairweather, captured in the chaotic early weeks of WWI near Loos in 1914, was held. Walking the cold stone corridors, peering into cramped cell blocks, the weight of history pressed down. You could feel the chill – not just of the Breton winter, but of confinement, despair, and the crucible in which a young man’s character was forged, perhaps hardening the reclusive artist-to-be. He stepped off a Flanders field into German wire; I stood where he might have paced, decades later his near-death sea voyage echoing this earlier captivity. The resonance was unnerving.
My brief overnight visit to Dinan was made special by the chance to reunite with old friends. Gaetan, CSP co-founder and accordion player, picked me up at the ferry terminal. “Okay,” he announced, “we’re staying with Nat and Saus tonight for a long-overdue reunion – it’s been years!” True to form, Gaetan soon pulled out his Welt Meister accordion. He began riffing away, the instrument wheezing out alluring notes and melodies like a time capsule. Adventurous Bretons have set forth across the seas for centuries, and Dinan’s most renowned Cambodian connection (after Gaetan) is explorer Auguste Pavie. Men like Pavie travelled to Indochine with their accordions and culture in tow. As I sat back sipping whisky, lost in Gaetan’s instrumentals, I wondered what Fairweather would have made of Pavie – “The Barefoot Explorer,” also known as “the man who mapped Cambodia” and once governor of my second home, Kampot. But who really knows? It all felt something akin to a long, opiated dream: a symphony of sounds and stories, tiny threads laced together into a tale I call The Raft At Night (Lit Bateau).
III. The Raft Rises: Stitching the Tapestry Across Continents
Back in the present, back with the CSP, the raft steadily takes shape, plank by cultural plank. It’s more than a performance; it’s a vessel carrying fragments of worlds, bound by Fairweather’s cracked biography and the sea’s immutable pull.
From Cambodia, the sublime, celestial gestures of Apsara dance flow into the narrative. This ancient tradition, embodying myth and spirit, finds new expression, reinterpreted by dancers in Java, Indonesia, where our collaboration deepens. There, the incredible Mugi, a master of movement, embodies Chi-Tien – the drunken monk who materialises on Fairweather’s raft. Neither purely friend nor foe, Chi-Tien is Fairweather’s hallucinated castigator, companion, and the chaotic embodiment of his internal turmoil, a figure drawn from the depths of isolation and cultural fascination. Mugi’s artistry translates this complex role into physical poetry.
The sonic spine remains the CSP: raw, evocative rhythms captured in Sydney, pulsing with their signature alchemy of Khmer rock roots and expansive, psychedelic voyage. Channthy Kak’s voice, though tragically silenced in this world, remains an eternal spirit guide on the recordings, her haunting Khmer laments a poignant thread. Sophie Ek’s Khmer-Belgian tones add another layer of diasporic resonance. Soon, Jason’s guitar will weave through it all – adding shimmers of electric twelve-string, gritty fuzz (‘sonic soup!’), and space echoes, a nod to the cosmic sprawl of Ludovic ‘Lud’ Navarre, perhaps.
And now, the ethereal wail: Peter Theremin’s contribution is the quantum leap. It’s the century-old ether made audible, singing across continents like a wireless telegram from the past, connecting St. Petersburg’s legacy to Phnom Penh’s memory and the vastness of the Timor Sea. Listening to his tracks ripple through the evolving mix is electrifying. It transcends a collection of songs; it becomes the soundtrack to the ordeal itself. The creak of the raft under alien constellations. The silent menace of circling sharks. The siren call of surrender. The fragile epiphanies glimpsed in the maelstrom. The sound of rescue, viewed through Rotenese eyes. The sound of art forged in extreme isolation, yet speaking of profound, unexpected connection.
IV. Desert Resonance: The Unseen Layer
Now, returned to the Australian desert, the perspective shifts. The immensity is staggering – red earth stretching to meet an infinite cobalt sky, ancient and watchful. Under this dome, Peter’s tracks resonate differently. The dry, clear air seems to hum with them. The desert isn’t silent; it listens, it vibrates. It offers another layer, unexpectedly uncovered. Like finding a perfect, sun-bleached conch shell high on a dune’s crest, miles from any living ocean. What stories does it hold? What secrets does this ancient land, immortalised in the watercolours of Albert Namatjira (another artist navigating cultural divides), whisper about displacement, survival, and the search for meaning in desolate beauty? How does the solitude of the desert mirror Fairweather’s oceanic isolation? This red earth feels like another character in the saga, a silent witness urging deeper listening. The track, faint but undeniable, leads onward across the dunes. I’ll follow.
V. Listen: The Raft Sails On
We are building something vast, strange, and undeniably beautiful. A vessel stitched from fragments of Russia, Scotland, Cambodia, Indonesia, and Australia. Its hull is Fairweather’s impossible raft and his even more impossible life. Its sails are billowed by the CSP’s driving energy. Its course is charted by his delirium and steered by the hands of Rotenese rescuers. Peter Theremin’s otherworldly instrument has gifted it a new, essential voice – the cry of the lost, the sigh of the ether, the song of the stars reflected on a midnight sea.
The next waves are visible on the horizon: the dancers solidifying their movements in Java, the shadow puppets waiting in the wings, the lights poised to sculpt the stage. The full theatrical spectacle – weaving Khmer dance, Indonesian physicality, Fairweather’s fractured visual essence, and the CSP’s immersive soundworld – draws closer, though its launch requires patience.
But for now, listen. Close your eyes. Out on the boundless sonic sea, the theremin sings Fairweather’s ghostly, sublime song. It sings of desolation and discovery, of borders crossed and connections forged against the odds. It sings of the artist’s eternal struggle and the lifeline of human encounter.
The raft sails. Its call carries on the wind, through the wires, across the deserts and oceans. We are all, in some way, adrift. We are all, ultimately, seeking shore.
Stay tuned. The journey deepens.
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