After a trip to Mali for 'Every Song Has Its End: Sonic Dispatches From Traditional Mali', Glitterbeat Records takes to Southeast Asia again for 'Khmer Rouge Survivors', the third volume in their Hidden Musics series. After Vietnam, producer Ian Brennan now focused on another war-torn country in the region: Cambodia. From 1975 to 1979, Cambodia, or Democratic Kampuchea as it was then called, was under the harsh rule of the Khmer Rouge led by Pol Pot, who, during his reign of terror, brought about a genocide, directed against the country's higher educated. Just about all forms of cultural expression were taboo as well; so many artists ended up on the killing fields as forced laborers or were simply executed. At one stage it even sufficed to put glasses on your nose to make yourself a suspect. During that period about a quarter of the Cambodian population was exterminated, so it should come as no surprise the country still bears the scars today. Most of the Cambodian music heritage has disappeared, making finding the few survivors who have contributed to this compilation a true tour de force. 'Khmer Rouge Survivors' will definitely not be to everyone's taste, and a party starter it's neither, but that's not this compilation's ambition. Perhaps it's best to consider it a time capsule containing the last remnants of a rapidly disappearing music culture.