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Cambodian and American Band At The Forefront of Developing Trend In Indie Rock Circles

On Friday, November 12, Dengue Fever (www.myspace.com/denguefevermusic) will perform the Los Angeles premiere of their original live score to the silent film The Lost World (1925) at UCLA’s Royce Hall.  Tickets and information available at www.uclalive.org/calendar/event_detail.asp?id=29.

Presented by UCLALive, this score was originally commissioned by the San Francisco Film Society for the San Francisco International Film Festival in May 2009.  That show at the Castro Theater was a sell-out event of 1,400 capacity, at the end of which Dengue Fever received a standing ovation.  In November of 2009 Dengue Fever performed The Lost World at the Cinema Arts Festival in Houston, the only other time band has performed this score live, which makes this upcoming hometown Royce Hall performance all the more special and rare.

Just last week, entertainment trade magazine Variety noted (www.variety.com/article/VR1118025306.html?categoryid=16&cs=1) that Dengue Fever is at the forefront of a developing movement, with this “venture see[ing] Dengue Fever join a growing list of indie bands enlisted to compose and perform live scores for silent films, a trend that’s beginning to break beyond the few film festivals that first nurtured it.”

The Lost World plot revolves around a journal which points to the existence of dinosaurs in current times. An expedition is formed to find these lost creatures. Harry Hoyt’s adaptation of The Lost World (1925), Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s classic novel about a land where prehistoric creatures still roam, stars Bessie Love, Lewis Stone, Wallace Beer and Lloyd Hughes. Willis O’Brien’s pioneering stop motion special effects of prehistoric beasts encountered by a scientific expedition are a precursor to his remarkable animation achievements for 1933’s King Kong. The Lost World was entered into the National Film Registry in 1998.

Furthermore, The Lost World is a classic exploration of man’s fascination with his own prehistory. It contains amazing animated sequences and inventive costumes and sets depicting a land that time forgot. Today, audiences can also read the film as a campy silent documenting how we used to think of the age of dinosaurs. It is full of anachronistic cultural stereotypes regarding science, marriage and race. Like the territory depicted in the film, Dengue Fever’s music comes from a time and place that no longer exists. The band and film both evoke the same kind of nostalgia for a place that may never have existed.

Dengue Fever’s ascent from local eastside Los Angeles indie band to international pop attraction has been a steady climb. Known for their high-energy live shows at clubs, theaters and festivals, the band has captured attention from some unconventional corners. Metallica’s Kirk Hammett chose their song “One Thousand Tears of a Tarantula” as his second favorite song of the decade in Rolling Stone; in 2010, Dengue Fever was the answer of a question on Jeopardy!; and, True Blood, HBO’s smash television series not only featured band’s music but also named an entire episode after their composition, “Escape from Dragon House.”

Worldwide media includes features in Time Magazine International, UK’s Mojo magazine, Voice of America, Norway’s NRK television and Cambodia’s CTN. Topping it all off, the band appeared on the BBC’s popular British television series Later With Jools Holland. Ray Davies of the Kinks, also appearing on the program, said “They sound like a cross between Blondie and Led Zeppelin and I should know, I’ve toured with both.”

Dengue Fever is presently on tour Australia and will make stops in Hawaii this November at the Hallowbaloo Festival (www.hallowbaloo.com) and will appear at the Transmusicales Festival (www.lestrans.fr) in Rennes France in December.