Dengue Fever

Ethan Holtzman went to Cambodia in the 1990s and returned with music culled from the rich Cambodian rock scene that had existed before the Khmer Rouge put an end to just about everything in that country for five years. Holtzman recruited his brother Zac and some musician friends to do...

By Tom Murphy

January 17, 2012

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Ethan Holtzman went to Cambodia in the 1990s and returned with music culled from the rich Cambodian rock scene that had existed before the Khmer Rouge put an end to just about everything in that country for five years. Holtzman recruited his brother Zac and some musician friends to do a one-off show of Cambodian rock covers. The fledgling group needed a suitable vocalist and managed to entice Chhom Nimol — a singer well known in Cambodian circles, and whose own parents had been famous musicians in the old days — into joining the group. The band was an immediate hit, and while its first two records were more or less covers of classic Cambodian pop songs, 2008's Venus on Earth and, even more so, 2011's Cannibal Courtship revealed an act capable of reviving a once-dead sound with an infusion of psychedelia.

Tom Murphy is a writer, visual artist and musician from Aurora, Colorado. He was a prolific music writer for Westword and a documenter of the Denver music scene.

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