Escape From Dragon House
Named for a remarkably unpleasant tropical disease, Dengue Fever is a seething Petri dish of mutating influences. The band was spawned when the American founders became fascinated by an unlikely combination of Cambodian music and Buda Musique's multi-volumeEthiopiquesseries, which documents that country¹s sixties pop heyday. Meanwhile, their future lead singer, famed Cambodian chanteuse Ch'hom Nimol, had grown up with East Asian/American hybrids which had erupted when local musicians internalized and transformed sounds they heard on Vietnam-war-era American Armed Forces Radio. Churning, vertiginous rhythms and honking sax lines betray the Ethiopian sources while stratospherically ornamented yet demure Cameroonian folkways inform the lead vocals (sung in English and Khmer) and Zac Holtzman¹sdan bau(a Vietnamese mono-string instrument). But the mix further incorporates campy organ riffs straight out of Question Mark and the Mysterians, the Shangri-Las' stiletto-edged girl-group theatrics and Ennio Morricone¹s surreal Spaghetti Western guitars. The group's stage persona is equally eclectic, ranging from a sweet-faced "Oriental" B-movie heroine, to a guy whose beard would scare the heck out of ZZ Top, to a latter-day Super-Fly clone. A testament to following your own star no matter what,Escape from Dragon Houseis at once blindingly authentic in the cosmic sense and delightfully deranged. --Christina Roden