093: Venus on Earth, by Dengue Fever

Dengue Fever (USA/Cambodia)
Venus on Earth (2008)
12 tracks, 47 minutes
Bandcamp • Spotify • iTunes

I’m really into Cambodian music, especially classical and folk styles, and we’ll get onto those a little later in the year. This one is something different.

Dengue Fever are an American band that have their roots in Cambodian music, but it’s Cambodian music that has its roots in American music. The group formed to play covers of Khmer pop from the 60s and 70s, pumped up to be extra psychedelic for good measure, and before long they had found Chhom Nimol, a well-known singer in Cambodia who had just moved to LA – she brought a proper air of authenticity to the group’s sound.

I debated for quite a while whether to choose this album, or Escape from Dragon House, which the band released three years earlier, before falling on the side of Venus on Earth. That’s not because this one is necessarily better, and it’s not perfect either – there are a couple of weak points – but I think I prefer this one because there is a bit more of a variety in the styles.

By this point, Dengue Fever had really got that psychedelic Khmer sound down, and they were making musical connections to other styles – the twangy electric guitars, Farfisa organ and roaring saxophone lent themselves as much to surf rock as the Cambodian style, so that plays an important role here. There are also deep Ethiopian influences in the Mulatu Astatke mould, especially evident on tracks such as ‘Integratron,’ which provides an extra layer of interesting connection: the ‘golden age’ of Ethiopian jazz almost perfectly syncs up with that of Khmer rock, both reaching their heights between 1969-1975 before being crushed by brutal regimes. And all the way through the album, Nimol’s beautiful voice cuts through it all, razor sharp but crystal clear, twisting around above the grooves.

From a band that started just to play covers of decades-old music from half-way across the world, Dengue Fever completely transcended that. They manage to keep that time and place palpable within their music, but they turned it into something that is recognisably their own, and all the more exciting for that.