Tatanka takes its technicolor dream sound to the Marquis Theater

Anyone who saw Dances With Wolves probably recognizes that tatanka is the Lakota word for "bison." The like-named Denver-based band adopted that imagery for the cover of its latest release, Cloudless Thunder. You might expect a band that named itself after the largest animal to roam the plains since the...

By Tom Murphy

January 24, 2013

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Anyone who saw Dances With Wolves probably recognizes that tatanka is the Lakota word for "bison." The like-named Denver-based band adopted that imagery for the cover of its latest release, Cloudless Thunder. You might expect a band that named itself after the largest animal to roam the plains since the Pleistocene era to play doom rock, but instead, Tatanka (due on Thursday, January 24, at the Marquis Theater) has created an alloy of dub, hip-hop, EDM and improvisational rock. The act's 2010 EP, Sounds in Technicolor, lived up to its name with languid drifts of imaginatively crafted melodies nudged along by pulses of drum and bass. The mixture of the purely electronic and the organic is seamless, comparable to the work of the similarly minded STS9.

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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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