Quietly minding my own business, people-watching out the window, when the Ed. drops a surprise assignment on my desk. By ‘desk’, I of course mean ‘hammock’, and by ‘assignment’, I should really say ‘multiple-choice questionnaire’: a) do you fancy writing a story on an international rock band touring Cambodia? b) unless, that is, you’d prefer to do the piece we’re running on an interpretive dance troupe?
A quick Google-squiz later and it was clear I’d been had. The band, as it turns out, was French. This isn’t necessarily in and of itself a bad thing, but I’m a monolingual Aussie (some would say ‘sublingual’) and I don’t speak a word of French; precisely the language that the decidedly scant web-based information pertaining to the band is posted in. Wikipedia, that last bastion of professional journalism, remained curiously silent. Mystique.
First things first. Rarely do I associate the French with rock ‘n’ roll. Whisper the phrase ‘French music’ in my ear and you’ll synaptically conjure mental projections of a Gauloises-smoking Serge Gainsbourg sleazing it up in bed with a sultry supermodel or, on occasion, his daughter. Innocent incest, yes; tight leathers, no. Just the same as one mightn’t ordinarily think of Cambodia in conjunction with heavy metal.
Yet that’s exactly the deal with the conception-defying double bill on offer at the Chenla Theatre when the French Institute of Cambodia presents up-and-coming French garage outfit Dissonant Nation with support from local Khmer hard-rockers Cartoon eMo (tickets, $4, available at the French Institute and on the door). So that’s the easy part. Established facts. Right there, on the press release.
But how to decipher an odd foreign language in preview of a fledgling band from far away when my entire contingent of Franco-friends have abandoned me for my insistence that big Australian reds are far superior to the relative cordial served up in Bordeaux (I’m totally gluten tolerant, so throw all the baguettes you like)? Simple enough: who needs ‘em when I have the modern wonders of Google Translate on my side? Webzine les inRocks on Dissonant Nation:
‘Of course, the youthful character of the trio Aubagne could include with mallets in the improbable generation of rockers babies’
Biological English: DN are a young trio from southern France who maybe but probably not whack babies with mallets. As to their music:
‘But for two or three things that you feel (the innocence, the ability to truss a bit prolonged adolescents), is allowed to pack the frantic drive of these flyweight Underwear.’
Got it. The sum total of the information I could dig up. Hence resorting to this meta-neo-journalistic article about writing this article. Then a stroke of musical journalism genius: why not perhaps listen to some of their music?
Further scratching yielded the following: DN, comprised of lead singer Lucas Martinez, guitarist Loïc Sanchez and Simon Granier on skins, have recently released their debut album, We Are We Play, citing Sonic Youth and Bowie as influences. Although Bowie is initially elusive, there’s the ‘dissonant’ creative tuning and random off-key strums of Sonic Youth for sure. But while pitching toward the Youth and likely other mid-to-late nineties’ indies (is that the estranged ghost of early Garbage rising on single La Chandon?), the boys – with their driving guitars, tight, rolling drum lines and chanty vocal catches – arrive somewhere closer to a cross between a more obviously commercial QOTSA and the parade of affected, chart-topping indie Brit-rock revivalists of the past decade.
I suspect this is in part to do with the English. No doubting that Lucas could do with a Gauloises or two of his own – the barely post-pubescent vocalising lending an unfortunate pop quality incongruent with the rawer riffs – but it’s the derivative-sounding estimation of English-language expression that I imagine unintentionally tip Dissonant Nation toward the commercial end of the scale.
When Bowie does finally arrive on the bouncy, bullocking Birthday Party it’s mostly in vocal mimicry rather than musical influence, just as the rougher-rocking English-language tracks sound strangely reminiscent of Pete Douherty et al. Still, the track also features a five-second acid freak-out halfway through the breakdown, followed by a cacophonous finale and a strangely subdued, idiosyncratic piano outro. A sign of the more creative things to come with greater maturity and confidence and a growing freedom from commercial constraints?
Dissonant Nation might not (yet) boast the weighty grunt of an Aussie Cab-Sav, but vodka-laced raspberry cordial on a summer’s night can bring its own hyperactive delights, and live, I’d expect Dissonant Nation will – in cahoots with Cartoon eMo – deliver a raucous, energetic evening for all.
WHO: Dissonant Nation and Cartoon eMo
WHAT: French rockers vs Cambodian metalheads
WHERE: Chenla Theatre, corner of Monireth Blvd & Mao Tse Tung Blvd.
WHEN: 7pm June 12
WHY: Not as dissonant as the name might suggest