DENGUE FEVER – Wake Me Up Slowly (2023)

Dengue Fever is an American band from Los Angeles who combine Cambodian rock and pop music of the 1960s and 70s with psychedelic rock and other world music styles. Their most recent album, Ting Mong, was released in September 2023. “Wake Me Up Slowly” is the fourth single from Ting Mong. In Khmer folklore, a Ting Mong is a decoy or mannequin, similar to a scarecrow, used to fight away evil spirits and plagues, an effigy of protection.

DENGUE FEVER:

• Chhom Nimol / Vocals

• Zac Holtzman / Guitar

• Ethan Holtzman / Keyboard

• David Ralicke / Horns

• Paul Smith / Percussion

• Senon Gaius Williams / Bass

As they celebrate the 20th anniversary of their self-titled debut, Dengue Fever emerge with their most cohesive and immersive album to date. It’s been eight years since the release of The Deepest Lake; during this time new generations have been catching up to the same omnivorous music taste the band has practiced since its inception. Full-length number seven Ting Mong (September 15) captures yet another enthralling dimension of their genre-defying journey. A lot of groups working on their first new collection of songs in eight years would probably favour clamour and bombast – by contrast, Ting Mong seeks the sonic balm these times so desperately need.

Before the world went into full apocalypse mode, Dengue Fever were already looking for peace and quiet. Once the touring cycle of 2015’s The Deepest Lake was over, they were a band whose members needed time to focus on different ventures, whether those might be family or visual arts, session work or…metal detecting.

Never really on hiatus, band members were soon drawn back to each other. Ask them, and they’ll tell you that they are a band because they’re family first.

So they reconvened in 2019, rented a small cabin in the California desert near Joshua Tree, and converted it into a recording studio. They spent the day jamming and slept under the stars at night. Then, the pandemic hit, sending everyone into retreat. It was 2021 when Dengue Fever could meet in person again, and so they did: piecing together the many desert recordings they had, recording vocals, turning open jams into songs, casually reinventing their own music. They did a lot of writing, but also a lot of shredding. Of the 20 or so songs they ended up with, they only kept those that felt more natural and immediately fit in with Chhom Nimol’s one-of-a-kind vocal style. It had to be spontaneous. If in the past the band had extensively worked and reworked songs until they felt right for her, this time things simply had to come naturally. Tracks that sounded too tricky or had too many parts were swiftly scrapped. Dengue Fever were looking for a cohesive, mellow vibe. More than in the past, they set to play minimal, repetitive sounds, choosing nuance over intricate composition. And what they eventually emerged with was an album unlike anything else they had ever worked on. Ting Mong.

In Cambodian culture, a Ting Mong is an effigy of protection, a scarecrow-like figure usually placed at the entrance of a village or a home. It wards off diseases and evil spirits. We’re all in desperate need of a Ting Mong, band members occurred.

Here is Dengue Fever’s take on the concept of Ting Mong, then: half hour of mellow, soothing music. A response to what they were looking at when they first conceived it – walking among cactuses, flowers and snakes between recording sessions made the music subtler, and the players more observant – but also a reaction to what humanity at large faces. If life kept proving so jarring, they figured they’d gravitate towards a sound that could be comforting. As they were writing and recording, they never formally discussed it, but they ended up creating a record that has the feel of one long movement, where different songs are brought together by a similar groovy, soul-searching flow – you can put the album on, lay back and meditate to it… [+]