Something is happening in Siem Reap, and it’s big. Over the last few months the small town, known as the gateway to Angkor Wat, has been bringing some serious heat in terms of entertainment. Seemingly out of nowhere, a label named Danceservatory sprung up and started bringing in top level DJs from around the world – starting with Stanton Warriors.
In this article we catch up with Heuristic (Cam PoiZen), an American DJ who is one of the people behind Danceservatory, and dive deep into why Siem Reap may well be the next Ibiza.
Interview below.
What is Danceservatory? Stanton Warriors Tour Leads to Siem Reap
NewsWorthy: It’s a pleasure to meet with you Cam, do I call you Cam? Also what is PoiZen?
Yeah man, no skin off my back, it’s been my name for ages. The PoiZen moniker comes from a 40 acre property I used to live on where we built a stage and threw underground parties in the Santa Ynez mountains. It happened to be covered in poison oak, so my friend Persep Sion coined the term PoiZen Cove. I come from a background as a fighter and when you fight Muay Thai, you take the name of your gym as your last name, so I followed that tradition. Those were some crazy days for sure.
NewsWorthy: I can only imagine. Daceservatory, what is it? Why that name?
Long story [laughs]. It started off as The Crossroads Galactic Danceservatory, a medium scale art installation. This was in 2012 I believe. I had this crazy vision to build three towers, all made of equilateral and isosceles triangles. They had to be climbable and rigged up with circuits of LEDs made to react to sound frequencies.
The first time around I built two of the towers at Lucidity Festival in Nomad’s Nook on a hill in front of their stage. I went on to build it at Burning Man in a much larger format. They placed us in front of Osiris Temple at 10 O’clock and Esplanade, one of the two craziest areas at the Burn.
We built the first one out of all upcycled wood that my friend Dave Moore rescued from the dump. The second time we had to buy lumber for the front tower because it was 15” tall and couldn’t risk any structural problems. The back two remained the same.
We built it seven more times over the years in different places and then retired it. Then it became the Stolen Art Gallery – that’s a story for another day.
Years later, people were still interested in it, so I made it an event production company. We Dance, We Serve and We Observe the Dance. What that means is, we create safe spaces for people to dance, we dance with them and we have people making sure everyone is not only enjoying themselves, but don’t have to worry about anything other than just dancing and being happy.
NewsWorthy: Sounds like a good concept. So how did you end up booking the show for Stanton Warriors in Siem Reap of all places? and opening for them?
It’s also a long story as to how I ended up in Siem Reap, so I will skip that part. When my partner Bio and I moved here I pretty much planned on retiring from the industry and focusing on making movies again as well as continuing to build our SEO and web development company. Life had other plans, I got the itch to produce events again. It’s an addiction I have never been able to crush.
So I rebooted my brand Danceservatory a few years ago, started booking events which went well and booked some really solid events with promoters such as Secret Guests Asia, great people to work with.
Last month I noticed Stanton Warriors were booked in Chiang Mai [Thailand] with my friend Jeremy Gaysek opening. They [Stanton Warriors] are quite literally my favorite Breakbeat producers ever, I am one of their biggest fans – they are legends.
I have this belief, if you don’t pick up the phone, you will never get an answer. So I hit them up through the proper channels and surprisingly got a response. From there we had 6 days to pull off the event, so I was an unfortunate necessity [as a DJ] on the line up [laughs]. Luckily [DJ] Don Stone was available to make sure I didn’t [expletive] anything up during my set and had a good dancefloor built by the time Stanton Warriors was on.
NewsWorthy: What was it like opening the show for someone you admire on that level? There must have been a lot of pressure.
Well, Dominic [Stanton Warriors] showed up early for soundcheck and I’m not going to lie, I fanboy’d up right out the gate [laughs]. He was super cool. Probably my favorite moment of the show was him telling me he had to hit the bathroom while I was stage managing after my set. I jokingly said “I’ll just stand in there and act like I am you” – 3 minutes later he looks at me and gives a nod for me to come into the DJ booth.
Thing is, I expected him to put up like a 7 minute track, turns out he gave me a test instead and left me with 30 seconds and told me to mix it in [laughs]. So of course I freaked out, but mixed in the track. When he came back he said “You just went back to back with Stanton Warriors”.
It’s hard to explain what that feels like to have your hero test you.
My other favorite moment was getting to see Stanton play Good Vibrations live while I was in attendance for the first time since Opulent Temple at Burning man. There had to have been twenty or thirty thousand people there at the Burn.
So it was pretty surreal to have booked them in Siem Reap, opened the show and then stage managed for them. Life is crazy if you let it be.
NewsWorthy: So you were basically thrown under the bus, how did you fair?
I don’t know, it was all in the moment. When I listened to the recording it was hard to find where I mixed in, so that’s good.
NewsWorthy: How did you find a venue? Is it easy to do so out there?
I mean, there are of course barriers of entry to clubs, like there are anywhere. I had already produced a music festival called PunkAcolypes with my mate Joshua Hiram Banks at a venue called X-Bar, which is one of the big clubs out here.
So I reached out to the owner and he cracked a deal for us that made sense. Well enough sense [laughs], we knew we wouldn’t get a return on our investment, but we also knew it was worth it on a personal level and for the brand. The club probably would have been busy anyway, so it was nice of him to swoop in and provide a venue.
NewsWorthy: You said you only had six days to promote, did you get a good turn out?
Yeah man. For one, we made it a free show, which doesn’t hurt, and we were pretty much the only club in town with anyone in it. Otherwise it was a ghost town.
NewsWorthy: How receptive is Cambodia to events like these as far as local support, government, etc.?
Part of the reason I got back into it was when we first moved here, it’s pretty easy to tell the Khmer people love to party. Every weekend there seems to be a massive wedding on every other corner and that’s not an exaggeration. They block off the street and roll in 60k watts of sound, I mean the smallest wedding here has way bigger sound than most California desert parties.
In American culture a wedding is like an 8 hour affair at most. In Cambo they start at around 8-11am on the first day, which is a more formal party where the guests give their gifts to the couple throughout the day and have sound going from the beginning till they end around 10pm usually.
Then the next day is the actual wedding which starts at the same time, but the beginning is mostly Buddhist monks chanting for 4 or 5 hours to bless the couple. Following that part of the ceremony they elope. After that, [laughs] man it’s on like Donkey Kong. They turn the music up to 11 and go until the last person falls down – literally. The whole village is there, it’s crazy. I’ve seen weddings last 7 days out here, no joke.
But yeah, they party for everything, just as hard for a funeral as a wedding. So I got the itch and decided to dip my toes in the water. That was 2 years ago now. I don’t even know how many events we’ve produced since then.
NewsWorthy: So to bring it back, how does the government view a foreigner producing events there?
[Laughs] Yeah sorry, went on a tangent there. This country is by far and away the best place I have ever produced events – that includes the United States, Mexico and especially Thailand. The government here is extremely welcoming to foreigners opening businesses, especially in the tourism industry, which we fall under.
I’ve had events shut down in California that were fully permitted, had everything in order, and the judge a half mile away decided he didn’t like the music, so at 8:30pm, on the dot, we had every level of law enforcement, fire department, the employment department, even federal agents show up.
They shut us down based on an electrical outlet that had exposed wires at the venue. Thing is, the electrical outlet, and the whole system leading to it, had been disconnected in like 1976 – POOF twenty-eight thousand dollars up in smoke [laughs].
Thailand was even worse. My partners and I lost thirty-six thousand dollars paying bribes, they still showed up every four hours to keep shaking us down with twenty cop cars, which scared away everyone in the festival. They even told me they wanted a five star meal for twenty-six government officials onsite. So we made that happen and only one official showed up, said he wasn’t hungry and wanted more money. Ridiculous.
In Cambodia, at least in Siem Reap – I don’t know about the rest of the country because we haven’t done anything out there yet – as long as you follow the law, you have no problems. The only thing you have to do if you are producing an outdoor event or festival, depending on the size and scope of course, is go to the [village] chief and ask permission in the area where you hold the event. We hire a private security company to make sure there are no problems with parking so the locals don’t have trouble getting through to their homes.
Otherwise, you work with an existing club. There are a bunch of them, most are three to four stories, so there are plenty of ways to make it work with no headache. Also it never hurts to have a guy in your corner like my man Samnang from Kingdom Brewery helping out as a sponsor, problem solver and friend.
Of course you also have to have your business visa and work permit in order as well.
NewsWorthy: Wow, sounds like you’ve been through some interesting situations. Is it hard to get those papers in order in Cambodia?
Not at all, but you do need to find the right agent. One thing that I see happening right now is people who’ve had a three month business visa with no work permit, then want to get a one year business visa and get hit with a pretty hefty fine.
Then they have to leave the country as well and the options aren’t great for that right now. It’s either roll the dice and try going to Thailand, where even if you pay for your visa at the embassy and are approved, they often still refuse to let you in once you are in the airport or at the border.
The other is going to Vietnam which is expensive and takes time to apply for a visa or head to Laos, which is fine, but you will still be out the money for yet another visa and all of the travel.
Never listen to a visa agent that says you don’t need a work permit. You absolutely have to by law, it’s only like $190 USD – don’t quote me on that price – and the process is super easy. It’s one of those [expletive] around and find out situations otherwise.
NewsWorthy: Interesting. So what is next for Danceservatory?
Well, we just did JFB, the DMC World Scratch Champion up here, which was mental. By far one of the best scratch DJs I have seen since Grandmaster Flash. I opened for him as well. That one was a bit more of a challenge for me [Laughs], I am far from a scratch vinyl DJ, so I had to dig deep to find tracks that matched the style of the night.
We only had 5 days to promote on that one. Shout out to Eddie from Code Red Agency for letting us book Stanton while they were on tour, he didn’t have to do that, and for sending us JFB. We certainly look forward to working with them again.
Anyway, next up we are bringing out Graham Gold. Certainly one of the most famous DJs to come out of the UK. From his days at KISS FM to PEACH, which is mental. Him and his crew just brought it back a few years and are packing out venues in the UK – to his residencies in Ibiza, Koh Phangan and Koh Samui, Thailand and his Esta La Musica radio show, the guy just never stops.
His next show after playing with us is with Ministry of Sound. Anyone in the industry knows what that is, so we are stoked to host him just before. We had him out here a few years back for a festival and people have been asking about his return ever since.
Then from there, we are looking to create a tour route for artists, both bands and DJs, that lead from Siem Reap through some other cities, down to the islands and then to Phnom Penh.
NewsWorthy: Sounds like big things are happening. What about you and Heuristic? Anything in the works there?
Yeah man. First off I need to get [expletive] better as a DJ [laughs]! But there is talk of a tour in Kazakhstan in August or September, they reached out to me a few months back. I am working on my first album as a producer, which I plan to drop a single for in May.
I have some pretty ridiculous artists that will be working with me on the album. So very excited about bringing that into the world with some of my closest friends on different tracks.
Then there is a developing livetronic project with a looping artist out here named Brooke Palmer. We just did a set together up here in Siem Reap at a place called Good Vibes – shout out to Matt – at my weekly gig called Sunset Sessions where I play with Don [Stone].
Other than that, there is a possible tour in the States and China developing, but that would be next year. The whole festival scene in California basically collapsed under the pressure of the current State government. It also didn’t help that half the state burned down. So a lot of the promoters and venue owners out there are still trying to recover.
But there is always the Casino circuit, so I may well end up doing club gigs instead, which is a different vibe, but also fine with me. It’s where I started after all, kinda full circle.
NewsWorthy: Anything else going on that you want to mention?
I think that about covers it. Thanks to Dominic [Stanton] for answering the call and thanks for the interview man, it’s been a pleasure.
NewsWorthy: Thank you for taking the time, we hope to see more of you in the future, have a good day out there in the Wild East!
Sweet, have a good one yourself.
