This past weekend, over 20 bands took to two stages on one of Chicago’s major thoroughfares, Division Street. The performances were part of the annual Do Division Street Fest & Sidewalk Sale. In addition to the music, local purveyors of food, drink, retail, and crafts offered a family-friendly crowd a wide variety of sustenance and shopping. Photographer Elizabeth Gilmore captured these images of A Place to Bury Strangers, Bonobo, Big Freedia & The Divas with Rusty Lazer, Javelin, and Dengue Fever over the course of the weekend.
Righteously capturing the free spirit of Cambodia’s 1960s surf-rock and psychedelic-pop scene is Dengue Fever‘s fourth LP, Cannibal Courtship. For almost a decade, the Los Angeles-based ensemble, led by Cambodian songstress Chhom Nimol, has shone a light on the undeniable wealth of grooves that Khmer music has to offer, intricately reworking its musical foundations in an approach that is vintage in style with an ear towards global sounds.
Cannibal Courtship shows the band expanding its sound into new territories, playing a more fuzzed-out, rock-and-roll style while keeping true to the dreamy, reverberated guitar licks and driving bass riffs that make its music so hypnotic. Guitarist Zac Holtzman takes a prominent vocal presence, and Nimol’s English has become increasingly better, resulting in a record that is sung half in Khmer and half in English. The two linguistic styles are tied together with groovy dual vocal parts from the singers.
Whereas the larger Southeast Asian scene — including Thailand, Indonesia, and Vietnam — saw an incredible boom of Western-influenced, psychedelic rock and roll as early as the ’60s, Cambodia had its golden era of musical mutation before the horrifying Pol Pot regime took over in 1975. During his reign, Western-influenced musicians were killed, and their music was banned and destroyed.
The long-rumored Faith No More reunion has been confirmed (!!!). Vocal heavyweight Mike Patton keeps busy with a feature-film soundtrack, MF Doom drops half his name and a new album, Dengue Fever provides accompaniment to The Lost World, hip-hop duo Themselves returns, and much more.
Our plans this weekend include local shows with the massive stoner metal of The Sword, the experimental jazz of the Umbrella Music Festival, and the raw alt-country of O’death.
And our friends in Austin have another great festival of their own, as the Fun Fun Fun Fest run on Saturday and Sunday.
