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Music CD - Dengue Fever: Venus on Earth
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Music CD: Venus on Earth
Artist: Dengue Fever
List Price: $16.98
Our Price: $10.50
Your Save: $ 6.48 ( 38% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: M80
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Tracks:
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1. Seeing Hands
2. Clipped Wings
3. Tiger Phone Card
4. Woman In the Shoes
5. Sober Driver
6. Monsoon Of Perfume
7. Intergratron
8. Oceans Of Venus
9. Laugh Track
10. Tooth And Nail
11. Mr. Orange
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Binding: Audio CD
EAN: 0723721330354
Label: M80
Manufacturer: M80
Number Of Discs: 1
Publisher: M80
Release Date: 2008-01-22
Studio: M80
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating: 
Summary: Great stuff
Comment: I can't tell you how fun this band is. The first CD is fun silly pop, the next two are darker and more moody but still have some lively party tunes. Hypnotic, addictive so catchy, you'll be singing in Khmer all day! I will say that the new songs in english take some of the fun out of the whole experience but I haven't been this excited about a band in many years.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Destined to Remain a Cover Band?
Comment: I really liked their last two albums, which relied more heavily on covers of and songs inspired by classic Khmer rock hits from the 60s. Unfortunately, it seems that as the band searches for its own voice, the music gets drastically less interesting. Hopefully they'll learn from this and surprise me next time. Still great to see live, though.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A new language
Comment: I give this album four stars but consider it no less than fantastic. I don't like the star rating system anyway. The missing star means only that I think there's much more to come from them, or more that exists and that I haven't heard yet. This album comes across to me as a remarkable seedling one might find in a city sidewalk, a secret desert garden, or another planet.
First of all, the music makes a new language--in words as well as sounds. The mixture of sounds gives a special tinge to the Khmer and English lyrics. There's a slight irony, but not irony in the way we usually know it. Chhom Nimol performs with dignity, heart, soul, and beauty--you sense the warmth and sincerity in every word, whether you understand it or not--and at the same time there's a slight shivery nuance of something odd (to both the English-speaking or Cambodian listener, I imagine). She is clearly aware of it and plays it well without giving up a speck of integrity or sincerity. I would love to hear her talk about her cultural journey--her perspective is immediately interesting.
Then you have the interplay between Nimol and Zac Holtzman, on "Tiger Phone Card" and "Sober Driver," two funny and poignant songs that remind me a lot of Holtzman's former band Dieselhed. Dieselhed deserved to be every bit as famous as Dengue Fever--their albums are full of brilliance--but one can see how Dengue Fever soared. The male-female interplay is delightful and sensuous, and the sounds have seemingly endless textures. Hearing a Dieselhed-like song in this new context gives me a thrill, and I want more. "Tiger Phone Card" and "Sober Driver" seem like two sides of a single tale.
The sounds of this album give no end of delight. "Integratron" sounds a little like a Jewish or Russian dance at the start, and then morphs into something majestic. "Laugh Track" has lovely interplay of vocals and keyboards, and ecstatic syncopated horns. "Monsoon of Perfume" starts out sounding a little like "Hotel California," then takes off into its own world.
I saw them perform in Brooklyn recently. The live show is at least as much fun as the album. "Seeing Hands" stands out as one of the songs that to me captures the spirit of the band, both live and on the record. It seems both melancholic and celebratory, both rock and something else, both serious and strange. It is fun to listen to again and again, and the video is quite addictive. It took me a little while to start listening to Dengue Fever, just because it takes me longer to get to things in general--but I look forward to listening to the other two albums, watching the documentary, and following this band's beautiful story.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Dengue Fever Never Felt So Good
Comment: Dengue Fever continues to make the rounds, infecting people with their surfer/Khmer sound. Great effort in this new release, and it'd be great if both new and old fans support them as they branch out their touring and hopefully make more recordings.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Cambodian Camp
Comment: My first encounter with Dengue Fever (the band) was on National Public Radio's Fresh Air, where Terri Gross interviewed lead singer Ehtan Holtzman. She also played a few cuts, including the second on this CD, "Clipped Wings." I heard the same cut a few weeks later, on another NPR show, including a different interview with Holtzman.
Yesterday, on a lark, I asked for the disc in a CD haunt. The clerk had never heard of "Venus on Earth" OR the band. Who? He said. Fortunately, I found a copy, albeit the store's very last of any Dengue Fever album.
But music stores nationwide should stock and promote this amazing mix of 1960s and '70s rock style, featuring the ethereal, snaking, dipping soprano Khmer vocalizations of Chhom Nimol---pronto.
In 1997, Ethan Holtzman went to the Angkor Wat ruins outside Phnom Penh. On that fateful day trip, his travel companion contracted Dengue Fever and the pair "enjoyed" a sweaty bus ride back to Phnom Penh while their driver blasted classic Cambodian '60s and '70s rock songs.
During his genocide of 2 million Cambodian intellectuals, artists, students and city dwellers, Pol Pot had murdered all the talented composers and performers whose songs and performances they heard. The soul-stopping mixes---of static-guitar, fuzzy Farfisa organ, metal percussion, and Khmer women singing like perfectly high-pitched violins---blew Holtzman away. He bought all the Cambodian rock he could find and flew back to Los Angeles.
When Ethan's brother Zach also returned to L.A.---from a decade playing San Francisco clubs---the brothers started combing Long Beach's neighborhood known as Little Phnom Penh for a Cambodian singer to join their nascent band, Dengue Fever. In summer 2001, they found Chhom Nimol, at the Dragon House club.
Reluctant to trust them, she finally agreed to join the group, to which Zack also added some buddies---fans of Ethiopian jazz---Dave Ralicke (formerly of Brazzaville) on saxophone, drummer Paul Smith, and bassist Senon Williams (formerly from Radar Brothers), who'd also been to Cambodia.
This CD is Dengue Fever's third album; I love it so much I now plan to buy the first two also.
--Alyssa A. Lappen
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Editorial Reviews:
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At last, Dengue Fever has made an album that quite nearly matches their incredible live performances. The group began at least as a tribute to the playful yet heavy psychedelic pop scene that flourished in Cambodia before Pol Pot came to power and silenced countless suspected dissidents in that country's infamous killing fields in the mid-1970s. Like the Cambodian pop music that so enamored them, Dengue Fever began by revitalizing strong elements of '60s surf and garage rock in their sound. Over time, they've expanded their influences to Ethiopian funk and modern dance-rock. Once a multi-culti California band with a Cambodian-born singer paying homage to the past, Dengue Fever now plays original, swirling, psychedelic pop. With Western audiences ever more open to hybrid sounds, it will be a huge surprise if Venus on Earth doesn't allow Dengue Fever to quit their day jobs for good, especially after the film about their trip to Cambodia, Sleepwalking through the Mekong, hits the festival circuit in 2008. --Mike McGonigal
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