(Paradise Bangkok, London)

Chris Menist is a writer, DJ and musician who currently resides in the UK.

Alongside his DJ partner Maft Sai (ZudRangMa Records) he has hosted the Paradise Bangkok nights for the last 6 years, showcasing vintage Asian sounds as well as music from Africa and the Caribbean. The duo has also taken these nights to Japan, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, France, and the UK. For their 3rd anniversary they launched their new Paradise Bangkok imprint, which reissues little-known music from across Asia and Africa, and the project now includes The Paradise Bangkok Molam International Band (with Chris on percussion duties) whose live shows (including Worldwide Festival, OFF, Field Day and Glastonbury) and LPs "21st Century Molam" and " Planet Lam" have been received to great acclaim.

In addition, Chris has co-curated the "Sounds of Wonder" series with the Finders Keepers label in the UK, that focusses on reissuing gems from the EMI Pakistan archive, as well as compiling the "Sound of Siam" (Soundway) and "Thai? Dai!" (Finders Keepers) compilations of vintage Thai luk thung, molam and psych music. He also recently compiled Dust-To-Digital's 'Qat, Coffee and Qambus: Raw 45s from Yemen', and wrote the "Black Fire! New Spirits! Radical and Revolutionary Jazz in The USA 1957 - 1982" book for Soul Jazz.

Various shows for NTS, a Boiler Room session alongside Kieran Hebden (Four Tet) and appearances on BBC6 all help spreading the word about the unique Paradise Bangkok sound...