Dengue Fever: Mercury Lounge, 3/4/08

Even with the aid of a few well-timed hallucinogens, it’s usually a tall order to close your eyes at a live show and find yourself in a completely different time and place—but somehow, Cambodian-born singer Chhom Nimol manages to induce that state of time travel. In her case, the destination is mid-1960s Phnom Penh at the height of the Khmer pop craze (touched off by such icons as Sinn Sisamouth and Ros Sereysothea), and she conjures it in deceptively easy fashion with a little well-shaped reverb on her vocal mic—oh yeah, and five Cali-based musicians who are all arch purveyors of the style.

Dengue Fever brought their distinctive psych-rock surf sound to New York’s Mercury Lounge last night, and as it turned out, the small venue was a perfect outlet for the band’s raw energy. From the back of the room, Nimol appeared barely more than five feet tall standing on a phone book, but when she belted out wistfully haunting pop rockers like “Tiger Phone Card” (from the band’s latest album Venus On Earth, out now on the L.A. label M80) in her strong soprano, it quickly became clear who was running the show. And although she’s not a technically perfect singer, Nimol throws her heart and soul into it, which makes her an instant hit with just about any crowd. Clad in silver lamé and looking in every respect like a young nightclub diva from a bygone age, she was regaled between songs by the (significantly) male audience with hoots and hollers, and basked in it all with grace and good humor.

Gilberto Gil, open source, and a (legal) link to lots of free music

Gilberto Gil,Tropicalia-legend-turned-Brazilian-Cultural-Minister, has for a long time been calling for an international overhaul in intellectual property/copy rights. Here’s a post from Martin LaMonica at CNet (via Wired) on a speech Gil gave at the MIT EmTech conference last month. Gil’s theory is that an “open-source” model of digital music/technology/software licensing will “give more people the freedom to use and republish digital forms of content as a way of encouraging personal expression, culture and political participation.” Gil points to success in the creation of 650 “tech centers” throughout Brazil, which have for the first time given some Brazilians access to computers, internet access, and audio/video technology at no cost. And just in case the cynics out there were wondering, the Tropicalisto put his money where his mouth is and reissued some of his music to encourage sharing and remixing. Free music after the jump.