Siem Reap is celebrating a monumental live music experience this weekend with free performances at three venues by the au courant hot band, The Cambodian Space Project.

It’s also a monumental experience for the band because it’s their first Siem Reap performance.

And it’s an even more monumental occasion for the band’s Australian founder and singer Julien Poulson because, as he confesses, in all his time in the Kingdom he’s never seen the Angkor monuments and this will finally give him the opportunity.

“One of my embarrassments is that I have only spent one afternoon in Siem Reap and I haven’t seen Angkor Wat,” he told 7Days by phone while recording in the Cambodian Living Arts studio in Phnom Penh.

“I came to Siem Reap in 2007 with Cambodian Living Arts to look at some traditional music and have never been back because I’ve just been so busy.”

The Siem Reap performances are the result of collaboration between three local venue proprietors who will each host a night of free music.

The Cambodian Space Project was due to kick off its debut performance Thursday night at Silk Garden with an acoustic set featuring Poulson and the band’s female singer Srey Thy whose inspiration comes from Cambodian 60s and 70s songs and whose voice has been likened to the iconic Ros Sereysothea, a star of the short-lived pre-Khmer Rouge Cambodian rock’n’roll scene.

But the big nights will be Friday and Saturday night when the full powerhouse eight-piece band convenes, performs and pumps.

Friday’s performance at Abacus Restaurant kicks off around 9pm and saturday night’s farewell starts at X-Bar at 10pm.

There’s a strong push on to make sure that as many Khmer fans as possible get the message to come along and partake.

Following the Siem Reap performances, the band will travel to Hong Kong to perform during Film Festival week from March 23-28.