I may have seen the future last night, if the future brings more hybrid diversity as I do believe it will, Dengue Fever is definitively the future. The Los Angeles sextet was giving an in-store at Amoeba on Sunday night to celebrate their fifth album ‘The Deepest Lake’, released on their own label, Tuk Tuk that they founded in 2013.
I remember hearing about them decades ago, and I even caught them during a performance at the Getty museum years ago, but I hadn’t followed them closely. However, they were so good at Amoeba that I immediately subscribe to their email list. They are a grand ensemble, playing music with a lush and ample orchestration, using a lot of instruments, saxophone, small trumpet, keyboard and flute beside the usual guitar-drums-bass classic rock combination, and they could be one of the most diverse rock bands I have ever seen, on the human as well as on the sonic levels. Their lead singer Chhom Nimol has this inimitable voice, crooning tearing lullabies, producing a high-pitch Khmer chant on almost every number, while she can also rap in the middle of a song (‘No Sudden Moves’). The other musicians bring a bit of everything in the complex mix, from groovy sax to western guitars, from soul horns to afro percussion, and the result could make you think about Buena Vista Social Club suddenly getting lost in the yellow sea, or Kan Wakan jamming with Tinariwen. But I am sure they would not like to be classified as world music, a term I have always despise because what could possibly be the opposite of world music? All music belongs to this world and we all know how much popular musicians have ‘stolen’ or ‘borrowed’ from this so-called world music, should I also add that Peter Gabriel is a big fan of Dengue Fever?
There is something very moving about Nimol’s chant, it’s a serenade that touches the deepest corner of soul on ‘Uku’ for example, even though she sings in Khmer and you don’t understand a word of what she says, but there are sometimes some English words and a few male-female duos, like during ‘Tiger Phone Card’, an older song they also performed at Amoeba, a sort of Belle-&-Sebastian-via-Cambodia catchy tune.
But what I could hear of their new album seemed even more diverse, with long jams showcasing their great musicianship, gentle grooves served by a full orchestration, and exotic incantations which seemed to come from another era and re-animated by modern arrangements. They bring a super exotic feeling but at the same time they don’t lose you a minute as they always wander into a very familiar catchiness, with strong emotion during ‘Ghost Voice’, some real dance cuts during ‘Tokay’, whereas the older song ‘One Thousand Tears of a Tarantula’ took an epic and cinematic dimension, with an hypnotic sax and a psychedelic trance. And did I say they truly rock?
Influenced by Phnom Penh’s 60’s-70’s pop styles, Dengue Fever are said to have taken a more experimental new direction with ‘The Deepest Lake’,… whatever, it is sumptuous and rich music embracing the future as a fusion.
Setlist
Ghost Voice
Tiger Phone Card
Tokay
Uku
No Sudden Moves
One Thousand Tears of a Tarantula
More pictures of the show here.
