Dengue Fever - Escape from Dragon House (2005)

«Even when you consider the cultural cross-pollination that goes on in large metropolitan areas, L.A.'s Dengue Fever had perhaps the strangest genesis of any band in recent memory. It's left-field enough for a group of white musicians to cover psychedelic rock oldies from Cambodia, but finding a bona fide Cambodian pop star to front the band – and sing in Khmer, no less – is the kind of providence that could only touch a select few places on earth. Formed in L.A.'s hipster-friendly Silver Lake area in 2001, Dengue Fever traced its roots to organist Ethan Holtzman's 1997 trip to Cambodia with a friend. That friend contracted the tropical disease (transmitted via mosquito) that later gave the band its name, and it also introduced Holtzman to the sound of '60s-era Cambodian rock, which still dominated radios and jukeboxes around the country. The standard sound bore a strong resemblance to Nuggets-style garage rock and psychedelia, heavy on the organ and fuzztone guitar, and with the danceable beat of classic rock & roll. It also bore the unmistakable stamp of Bollywood film musicals, and often employed the heavily reverbed guitar lines of surf and spy-soundtrack music. Yet the eerie Khmer-language vocals and Eastern melodies easily distinguished it from its overseas counterpart. When Holtzman returned to the States, he introduced his brother Zac – a core member of alt-country eccentrics Dieselhed – to the cheap cassettes he'd brought back. They started hunting for as much Cambodian rock as they could find, and eventually decided to form a band to spotlight their favourite material – much of which was included on a compilation from Parallel World, Cambodian Rocks. In addition to Ethan Holtzman on Farfisa and Optigan, and Zac on vocals and guitar, the charter membership of Dengue Fever included bassist Senon Williams, drummer Paul Smith, and saxophonist David Ralicke. Ralicke shared Zac Holtzman's interest in Ethiopian jazz, further broadening the group's global mindset. Thus constituted, the band went combing the clubs in the Little Phnom Penh area of Long Beach, searching for a female singer who could replicate the style and language of the recordings they had. After striking out a few times, the Holtzmans discovered Chhom Nimol, a onetime pop star in Cambodia who came from a highly successful musical family. According to the band, Nimol had performed several times for the Cambodian royal family before emigrating to Los Angeles. Initially not understanding the band's motives, she was suspicious at first, but after several rehearsals, everything clicked. (AMG, read full bio & album review)

Link in comments

Cambodian Cassette Archives: Khmer Folk and Pop Music Vol. 1 (2004)

Pol Pot's horrific regime in Cambodia wreaked destruction in multiple directions, including irreparable damage to the country's culture and musical heritage, as well as the loss of so many lives. It's sadly appropriate, then, that this compilation of Cambodian pop music, spanning the 1960s through the 1990s, had to be pieced together from more than 150 cassettes (described as "ravaged" in the liner notes) found in the Asian branch of the Oakland, CA, public library. Though some of this was recorded in Cambodia before Pol Pot's ascension, much of it was likely done from the 1970s onward by expatriates in the United States and other countries (the presence of synthesizers on some cuts makes it pretty certain that they don't predate the '70s). Here is one case where you really can excuse the lack of documentation in a historical archive release: artists are known for only two of the 20 tracks, and even more than half of the song titles are unknown. Despite the mystery surrounding who made this music where (and the inescapably subpar, erratic sound quality), it's an interesting and, to an admittedly variable degree, fun anthology that captures different admixtures of Western pop/rock with more indigenous Cambodian influences. For Western listeners, much of the interest lies in the sheer novelty of hearing unfamiliar collisions, with melodramatic Cambodian vocals, melodies, and operatic orchestration charged by raw psychedelic guitar, cheesy organ, and fusion-like horns. Some of the later-sounding recordings suffer a little from mechanical synths and percussion, though even then there are some intriguing combinations, like "Sat Tee Touy (Look at the Owl)," which sounds a little like Fairport Convention gone disco. It gets even more unpredictable than that, with one sadly untitled, uncredited number (it's track number 11 on the CD) fusing girl group-inflected singing, British Invasion-type melodic drive, hi-life horns, and upper-register nasal vocal tone in quite invigorating fashion. Though late-20th century Cambodian pop can probably never come close to being documenting with any reasonable thoroughness, this unusual reissue captures at least a slice of it, performing a valuable artistic and musical service. (AMG)

Link in comments

Love, Peace & Poetry - Vol.3: Asian Psychedelic Music (1999)

"Love, Peace and Poetry is a consistently high-quality series, with nine volumes to date covering almost all of the world. The focus here is on psychedelia, with most of the recordings coming from the late sixties and early seventies. These collections have very little overlap with any other series out there. Each volume is well documented and the tracks are varied and well chosen. A particularly nice touch is that each volume includes information on obtaining original records or reissues, as well as other psych related contacts.

This collection of Asian psychedelic music, the third volume in the series, is perhaps the best of the lot – and that's saying quite a bit. Perhaps the reason that this collection is so strong is that many of the artists on this compilation were stars in their homelands with long careers, despite being little known in the West. As the liner notes point out, the combination of Asian musical traditions and the experimentalism of psychedelia often produced breathtaking results. This is particularly true of the four Turkish artists on this volume of Love, Peace and Poetry. The chords and rhythms that drive these tracks are not rock and roll, but the guitar sounds featured on these tracks draw freely on Western influences in the late 1960s, from the fuzz guitar of Erkin Koray and Baris Manco, to the trippier guitar sound of Mogollar. Japan is also represented by three artists on this collection, all of whom were no doubt listening to what was going on in the West in the late 1960s. You Know What I Mean by Justin Heathcliff (apparently the band's name was an attempt to sound British) had the Beatlesque sound of I'm Only Sleeping, complete with backward guitar solo. Blind Bird by the Mops could be mistaken for an American record (other than the Japanese lyrics) and Yuya Uchida & the Flowers cover the Jefferson Airplane's Greasy Heart. That is not to say that these artists were just imitating Western music, but rather they were creating compelling hybrids. And while British and American rock and roll bands were drawing on Indian music, the two Indian artists on Love, Peace and Poetry demonstrate that this was a two-way exchange. The tracks by the Confusions and the Fentones are taken from the Simla Beat collections, which came from «battle of the bands» competitions in India where the winner was determined by who could play the best garage rock. Though the title Voice from the Inner Soul by the Confusions would suggest a psych freak-out, this track is straightforward garage rock. The other Indian entry in this collection, Simla Beat Theme by the Fentones, is one of those transcendent tracks that stays with you long after you hear it. It's ironic that the Fentones achieved that «eastern» sound with a guitar-bass-drums arrangement that so many American garage bands were trying to achieve by adding a sitar to their sound. The two tracks from Korea (It Was Probably Late Summer by San Ul Lim and Korean Titel A2 (huh?) by Jung Hyun and the Men are latecomers, having been originally released in the 1970s but they each have a sixties light psych sound. Also represented on this collection are artists from Hong Kong (the trippy Magic Colours by Teddy Robin and the Playboys), Singapore, and Cambodia (the best track from the comp Cambodian Rocks). In fact, every track on this compilation is interesting." (Turnmeondeadman)

Link in comments (always appreciated)