Copyright 2009 Houston Chronicle
Nov. 13, 2009,
Kevin Estrada
Dengue Fever, a Los Angeles band, puts a rock stamp on Cambodian music but is trying to broaden its sound.
Zac Holtzman, guitarist for the Los Angeles band Dengue Fever, says he was 3 when he saw his first film, the 1933 version of King Kong. The film's stop-motion animation — crude by today's computer-generated standards — stuck with him, which makes a certain amount of sense. There's a scrappy quality to the music made by Holtzman's band. Their sound includes some old or exotic styles like psychedelic rock, Cambodian pop, klezmer, jazz, surf-guitar rock, in a wondrous creative mix.
Dengue Fever's latest project is a score the band created for the film The Lost World, a 1927 film that featured stop-motion work by Willis O'Brien, who would go on to do the animation in King Kong.
The band will play the piece along with a screening of the film at Warehouse Live tonight.
It will be only the second time Dengue has played the Lost World compositions. It premiered at San Francisco's Castro Theater earlier this year. Holtzman says he “was more nervous for that show than for any other live performance.
“With regular rock shows, you use that nervous energy in your performance. This was about sitting down, looking at the notes and playing it clean.”
To compose the music, Holtzman sat down with the movie, his guitar and a notepad, writing for characters and scenes.
“It wasn't until later that I realized that some of the same people that made that movie worked on King Kong,” he says.
The band recorded its San Francisco show, though Holtzman says there are no plans to release it yet. Dengue has also been working on about 20 songs for its next album.
These projects are part of an ongoing effort to expand perception of Dengue Fever beyond a one-trick Cambodian psych-rock band. The group got its start in the early '00s when Holtzman's brother Ethan came back from a trip to Cambodia with a collection of cassettes. (A friend who went with Ethan returned with the disease that gave Dengue Fever its name.)
They searched for a singer and found Chhom Nimol performing in a nightclub in Long Beach, Calif.
Nimol didn't speak English, so 2003's Dengue Fever featured the band's cool '60s-influenced sound backing her singing in Khmer. Over two subsequent albums, Holtzman has directed the band into a broader, more inclusive sound. “We try not to get hung up in it,” Holtzman says. “Our singer is Cambodian, so we touch on that for a few tracks within each album. But we don't feel a responsibility to play music, lyrically or musically, that is Cambodian-themed.”
andrew.dansby@chron.com
DENGUE FEVER
Performing with a screening of The Lost World
• When: 8 tonight
• Where: Warehouse Live, 813 St. Emanuel
• Tickets: $20; www.cinemartsociety.org.
Dengue Fever's latest project is a score the band created for the film The Lost World, a 1927 film that featured stop-motion work by Willis O'Brien, who would go on to do the animation in King Kong.
The band will play the piece along with a screening of the film at Warehouse Live tonight.
It will be only the second time Dengue has played the Lost World compositions. It premiered at San Francisco's Castro Theater earlier this year. Holtzman says he “was more nervous for that show than for any other live performance.
“With regular rock shows, you use that nervous energy in your performance. This was about sitting down, looking at the notes and playing it clean.”
To compose the music, Holtzman sat down with the movie, his guitar and a notepad, writing for characters and scenes.
“It wasn't until later that I realized that some of the same people that made that movie worked on King Kong,” he says.
The band recorded its San Francisco show, though Holtzman says there are no plans to release it yet. Dengue has also been working on about 20 songs for its next album.
These projects are part of an ongoing effort to expand perception of Dengue Fever beyond a one-trick Cambodian psych-rock band. The group got its start in the early '00s when Holtzman's brother Ethan came back from a trip to Cambodia with a collection of cassettes. (A friend who went with Ethan returned with the disease that gave Dengue Fever its name.)
They searched for a singer and found Chhom Nimol performing in a nightclub in Long Beach, Calif.
Nimol didn't speak English, so 2003's Dengue Fever featured the band's cool '60s-influenced sound backing her singing in Khmer. Over two subsequent albums, Holtzman has directed the band into a broader, more inclusive sound. “We try not to get hung up in it,” Holtzman says. “Our singer is Cambodian, so we touch on that for a few tracks within each album. But we don't feel a responsibility to play music, lyrically or musically, that is Cambodian-themed.”
andrew.dansby@chron.com
DENGUE FEVER
Performing with a screening of The Lost World
• When: 8 tonight
• Where: Warehouse Live, 813 St. Emanuel
• Tickets: $20; www.cinemartsociety.org.
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