You have been here: the beach-side, in the evening? The lights and music at the edge of humanity. Mediocre music heard filtering out of distant doors, the words garbled. Contemplating a long night, to come or perhaps already passed. Attention at the edge of engagement. Confusion: should you go in or not?
You have surely wanted to be here: a foreign land, the beach-side, in the night? A grimy place, humid.. warm.. comfortable.. cheap. Bad beer, perhaps, but plentiful. The lyric of sex hovering around you all evening. The poorly tuned band, and the woman singing in a strange tongue, too fast for you to follow the sounds, but too slow to be exciting. Confusion: should you tune her out or not? Nothing else to do, but no energy to do anything else, either.
This is the delirium of Dengue Fever. The dreamland of Cambodia, captured in the white man’s gaze in City of Ghosts, and brought to life by the wonderfully anachronistic music of Ethan & Zac Holtzmann and Chhom Nimol. Like Arcade Fire, but twisted in the direction of some rather obscure (to Western ears) pop music, from 60′s Cambodia – how did they even discover this stuff in LA? – Dengue Fever is equal parts throwback and re-invention. It’s definitely an unusual sound to create: the screechy guitars reminiscent of bad tapes & tape players, a harsh, flattened bass (courtesy of tinny amplifiers) and Nimol’s high-pitched vocals all conspire to produce a slightly sad, jangling effect (despite the irony of doing all this on modern sound systems).
The mood is one of loss, kitschy love, lust, and plain heat, but in a nice South-East Asian sort of way (with song titles like Ethanopium, Flowers, I’m Sixteen, Monsoon of Perfume, 22 Nights, We Were Gonna). In one of their rare English-language songs Tiger Phone Card, they declaim:
“You live in Phnom Penh (Zac)
You live in New York City (Chhom)
But I think about you so so so so (together)
So much I forget to eat
If you’re a guy with an Asian chick fetish, grab your feni and listen up.
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Hold My Hips from the album Dengue Fever by Dengue Fever
More Dengue Fever at Last.fm |
~posted by arvind
This was my ex-roommate’s favorite song through Spring 2009. Distinctly reminiscent of some of the 80s Indian ‘filmi’ music that took on a new wave.
“Grab your fenny” – now that cracks me up!
Oh, by the way, the female vocalist reminds me way too much of P. Susheela.
who’s p susheela? (fenny, fanny. all the same. it’s quite a lousy drink, by the way, and about the only place in the world you can actually enjoy it on a goa beach, and only if you have some port to wash it down with. it’s practically toxic)
P Susheela is an Indian female playback singer who was very active in the 60s-80s period (I was hoping that you would have searched on Google/Wikipedia), and she has a high-pitched and seemingly wailing voice (that Chhom Nimol’s voice reminded me of).
Fenny – extra-distilled palm toddy with who-knows-what-else, the essential Goan equivalent of “saaraayam” (if you follow Tamil). Mostly inconsequential to me – I don’t drink.
never get the objective version when you can get the subjective version
never heard of saaraayam: guess it’s what you get for growing up in delhi.
haha saarayam is just alcohol in tam lingo…it’s the stuff of TASMAC (govt. approved liquor stores) there’s “bir” for beer, “whisky” for whisky, “brandy” for brandy, and every thing else is probably saarayam
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