The Sublime Frequencies of New Old Media David Novak A new world of world music was built on Cambodian Rocks. The CD was released on the New York City – based Parallel World label in 1996, and for most listeners, it was hard to find anything else like it. The com- pilation collected tracks from a number of legendary 1960s Phnom Penh bar bands, most of whose members were executed by the Khmer Rouge soon after the recordings were made. Their brief reinventions of garage rock powerfully echo the impact of the US presence in Southeast Asia and the global spread of record- ing and broadcast technologies during this period. On Cambodian Rocks, the Western listener hears the psychedelic sounds of Santana, James Brown, and the Animals anew through the ears of seemingly anonymous Cambodian musicians. The mystery of the music was amplified by the opaque presentation of its ori- gins. The compiler, Paul Wheeler, an American English teacher in Japan who had collected cassettes on a brief tour of Cambodia in 1994, provided no biographi- cal detail for the material, neglecting even track titles or artist names. Although several of these songs are beloved classics for Cambodians, the backgrounds and artistic intentions of the musicians were unknown for Western listeners. For those cognizant of Cambodian folk music styles, the mix of sounds might suggest the continuity of traditional vocal techniques and local song forms beneath the novel rhythms, reverb, and twang of imported rock music. But most North Americans, who heard this music for the first time in the 1990s, were surprised and intrigued I would like to acknowledge the Society of Fellows in the Humanities at Columbia University for support in writing this article. Earlier versions were presented at the Experience Music Project Pop Conference and meetings of the Society for Ethnomusicology and the American Anthropological Association. I am grateful to all respondents and readers, including Dilip Parameshwar Gaonkar, Marilyn Ivy, Wayne Marshall, Brian Karl, and Alan Bishop. Public Culture 23:3 doi Copyright 2011 by Duke University Press