Dengue Fever
Venus On Earth

THE REVIEW

THE MOSQUITO OF PHNOM PENH

"Venus on earth" is nostalgic fever, that of a Californian group from Los Angeles, which looks at the 60s garage sound and merges it with the KHMER tradition through the reissue of martyrized pop surviving from Pol Pot's Cambodia.

Chhom Nimol is a sex symbol as one would say in the West, her voice evokes atmospheres close to Thailand, India, and Vietnam, but above all to Cambodia. That same Cambodia which in April '75, under one of the most brutal regimes of the twentieth century, had forcibly stifled everything that was popular music; the regime of Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge had killed music as well as millions of people.

After almost 30 years, that music reemerges from the dusty streets of Phnom Penh, Cambodia is more alive than ever. The Holtzman brothers bring Venus back to earth, Nimol's hypnotic voice flirts with languid guitars and Farfisa organs, Nimol sings in Cambodian and travels through time, bringing music back home. New sounds rise from the dirty water of the past, psychedelic and fragrant melodies seduce and fascinate, amplifying the sense of world music, the Venus on earth has killed the bloodthirsty dictator.

"Venus on earth" is nostalgic and super-sentimental pop-rock, an unusual experimentation of a past that no longer exists, traveling into a denied future, but above all, it is the music of the world, returned late at night.

This album is what the "summer of love" would have wanted to see and perhaps did see, but only thanks to LSD in the 60s or 70s, the victory over dictatorship, the spread of culture in any form of art and morality.

Nimol's Cambodian singing imparts a sense of mystery, with an exotic charm, emphasizing the danger that unknown future dictatorships can impose on us and that the unknown tomorrow can amplify.

"Venus on earth has brought its buzz, so sensual, and we our desire to dance, all together, tourists and locals, to the rhythm of surf-pop"