The accolade ‘the world’s premier Cambodian psychedelic rock band’ is a curious one. It does have a certain Flight Of The Conchords ring to it (‘Formerly New Zealand’s fourth most popular guitar-based digi-bongo acapella-rap-funk-comedy folk duo’); and makes you wonder if the poor sods who came second on the local charts that ever find themselves being introduced as ‘the World’s second most popular Cambodian psychedelic rock band’. Surely not.

Anyway, jokes aside, Dengue Fever really are a breath of fresh air on London’s live scene. Once you’ve dispelled any images of sped-up, kung-fu chase scenes round Hong Kong in the 1970s from your mind, you quickly realise that Dengue’s appeal goes well beyond the comic value of Cambodia’s apparently burgeoning psych rock scene.

Singer Chhom Nimol’s vocals waver between surreal acid trips into the old orient on songs like ‘Sleep Walking Through The Mekong’ (also the title of a documentary film the band have just made about a recent trip to Cambodia) and light-hearted sixties Cambodian pop on ‘Tip My Canoe’.

Having been discovered in a night-club in a Cambodian area of Long Beach, California, Nimol was already a well known Karaoke singer in Cambodia, and is fast emerging as a major star on the alternative world music scene. Usually singing only in khmer, the band’s third album introduces some English lyrics, and though Dengue Fever will doubtless remain in the impenetrably uncool ‘world music’ bracket, their songs are as catchy and hook laden as anything around at the moment.

Michael Wylie-Harris