True Aristocrats

Isaiah "Ikey" Owens has left his mark on more than his fair share of Colorado music in the past few years. The eight tracks on True Aristocrats' Mary Amygdala bear the hallmarks of his production, including adventurous jazz structures and psychedelically tinged keyboard work. And although the band's Tyler Lindren...

By Tom Murphy

August 22, 2013

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Isaiah "Ikey" Owens has left his mark on more than his fair share of Colorado music in the past few years. The eight tracks on True Aristocrats' Mary Amygdala bear the hallmarks of his production, including adventurous jazz structures and psychedelically tinged keyboard work. And although the band's Tyler Lindren and Will Wayland were no strangers to avant-garde prog prior to making the album, Owens helped them express a German-prog side that had really only been hinted at in previous efforts. There's a darkly cinematic flavor to these songs, like something from Goblin or latter-day Tangerine Dream. The two parts of "SMIRH" could be music for a noir film of the not-too-distant future. And closing track "Apollo" has an organic yet haunting strangeness, akin to Pink Floyd's own forays into film scoring.

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Tom Murphy is a writer, visual artist and musician from Aurora, Colorado. He was a prolific music writer for Westword and a documenter of the Denver music scene.

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Twitter: @simianthinker