Dengue Fever 'Escape from Dragon House' album

Dengue Fever is in the vanguard of an emerging global pop sensibility, making music that’s both familiar, yet eerily unique. Fronted by Cambodian pop star Ch’hom Nimol, who sings in Khmer, the Los Angeles sextet blends the rhythms of ‘60s Cambodian pop - heavily influenced by American surf, rock and early psychedelic garage bands - with their own eclectic mix of American and international styles. Unlike the world music bands of the late 80s, Dengue Fever is more concerned with a universal groove and breaking down musical barriers than with notions of authenticity. There are echoes of Bollywood soundtracks, Ethiopian soul, American R&B, Cambodian folk, Spaghetti Western weirdness and girl group angst in the mix, but the resulting concoction is all their own.

In addition to vocalist Ch’hom Nimol – who sang regularly for the King and Queen of Cambodia - Dengue Fever includes Farfisa organist Ethan Holtzman, his guitarist brother Zac (ex-Dieselhed), sax man David Ralicke (Beck/Brazzaville), bassist Senon Williams (Radar Brothers) and drummer Paul Smith. The band’s imaginative sound grabbed listeners from their first appearances. They won the LA Weekly’s Best New Artist Award in 2002, being cited for Ch’hom Nimol’s remarkable use of her high shimmering vibrato, theatrical stage moves and the band’s understated virtuosity. The band was also tapped by actor/director Matt Dillon to supply a Cambodian version of Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now” for his Cambodian based thriller “City of Ghosts.”

On Escape From Dragon House, the band’s latest effort, out September 13th on M80 Music, the sound is denser, thicker and richer than on their 2003 self-titled debut. The songs on Dengue Fever, with two exceptions, were covers of the bright, bouncy pop and rock songs that dominated Cambodian music in the optimistic days of the early ‘60s, songs of boy-girl romance and innocent pleasure. The two originals “22 Nights,” a song inspired by Nimol’s arrest in 2002 during a post 9/11 code Orange alert on an expired visa infraction that landed her in jail for 22 nights and “Connect Four,” a tale of the board games ladies play in Cambodian cafes and shops as time slips between their fingers, hinted at the direction the band was moving in, a sound that emerges fully developed on Dragon House.

“Dengue Fever was the springboard,” explains Zac. “We were still discovering how the songs were constructed, slowly finding a way to put our own stamp on the music. We’ve come up with something that isn’t exactly Cambodian or American, although it is rock’n’roll.” Bass player Senon Williams agrees. “Dragon House is expression, where Dengue Fever was interpretation. Sonically Dragon House is more psychedelic, more free, more loose, more experimental.” There’s another unexpected international connection as well. The musicians were all fans of Buda Musique’s Ethiopique series, CD compilations of ‘60s Ethiopian pop and jazz hits by artists influenced by the sounds of American and British rock and soul. “The Ethiopians play amazing grooves,” says drummer Paul Smith. “But the way they accent the beat and the melodic approach is different, with longer phrases. It parallels what was going on in Cambodia at the same time, a musical style crossing borders and getting transformed into something new that comes back to its originators only to be transformed once again.”

As promised, the songs on Escape From Dragon House showcase a band moving in many directions at the same time, forging a sound that’s all their own. “Sni Bong,” which will be the band’s first video, has a jittery Motown meets Funkadelic rhythm that leads into a soaring chorus that Ch’hom Nimol delivers with a soulful wail, before dropping a bit of Cambodian rap into the coda. The mostly acoustic “Sleepwalking” is based on a folk song Nimol used to sing back in Cambodia and offers her a chance to show off her remarkable vocal technique, sliding from note to note and ornamenting lines with short arpeggios. Zac plays a dan bau, a single-string Vietnamese instrument and contributes subtle guitar accents full of bent and slurred notes while David Ralicke’s flute adds a soothing pastoral texture. The title tune is a straightforward rock tune with a catchy melody and a driving, garage band delivery. It tells the tale of a pretty girl forced to jump from job to job after encounters with lecherous bosses. The sinister groove of “One Thousand Tears of a Taratula” matches its subject matter. After the Khmer Rouge took over, pop singer Huoy Meas was taken out into the jungle and forced to sing and walk in circles, naked, until she was executed. Nimol’s dark, heavily processed vocals evoke the terror the musicians must have felt in their last moments; when Ralicke’s sax breaks out of the mix, his solo leaps up like a phoenix. Even though the singer is gone, the song lives on.

Escape From Dragon House is darker musically and lyrically than the band’s debut, with a fully realized style that’s pure Dengue Fever. While Ch’hom Nimol’s Khmer vocals may sound a bit strange to American ears at first, her extraordinary range and impressive vocal power assure the listener that this band is serious about its mission of blending Cambodian, American and, yes, Ethiopian music to create something that’s beautifully new and distinctive.

In the 1960s, American Forces Radio stations in Vietnam were beaming out a mix of rock and soul music that made an immediate impact on the popular music of next-door Cambodia. Artists began blending American rhythms and instruments with their own traditional music, giving birth to a hybrid that had Khmer society reeling and rocking, some with joy, others with shocked disbelief. This was the music that inspired Dengue Fever. “We all discovered Cambodian music on our own, before starting the band,” Ethan Holtzman says. “I traveled throughout South East Asia in ’97, I heard the classic Cambodian music rock music of the ‘60s and ‘70s and it stayed with me, particularly tunes like Ros Serey Sothea’s ‘New Year’s Eve’, which we did on the first album. When my brother Zac moved back to LA, he brought along a bunch of Cambodian music he’d gotten at Aquarius Records in San Francisco. So instead of starting another rock band, we got together with [drummer] Paul [Smith] and started playing our favorite Cambodian covers.” Bass player Senon Williams, a long time friend of Zac’s, had also visited Cambodia and fallen under the spell of Cambodian music, so he was a natural fit. Then they needed a singer.

“We went looking for a singer in Long Beach, which has the biggest population of Cambodian people outside of Phnom Penh,” Ethan recalled. We invited several girls down to audition, including Ch’hom Nimol, and when Nimol showed up, everyone else left.” The moment Nimol cut loose, it was easy to see why the other singers were intimidated. Her vocal prowess and charisma was palpable, and the band knew it had found their singer. Nimol wasn’t so sure. She was a star back home and was making a respectable living singing at Cambodian weddings in the US. Her English wasn’t good and she wasn’t sure the band knew what it was doing. Their original repertoire was songs she considered classic rock, but when Matt Dillon hired them for “City of Ghosts” she knew that Dengue Fever had a chance to build a few musical and cultural bridges.

Dengue Fever has to be seen live to really be appreciated. Words can’t really do justice to their incendiary blend of Cambodian, Ethiopian and American grooves or to Ch’hom Nimol’s sizzling charisma and vocal pyrotechnics. As they move from dark ballads to bouncy dance numbers to deeply rhythmic, trance inducing psychedelic jams they capture the audience with an effervescent vibe that makes people go slightly crazy. See them when they come to your town and catch the fever.

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Dengue Fever - Escape from Dragon House