If you’ve gotten around to reading this week’s issue, you might have seen my gushing review of the incredible new record from the Jim Jims. Now, it isn’t often that I do this (and by isn’t often, I mean I have never done it before and may never do it…
With so many music festivals to fill up your summer and drain your pocketbook, we put together a handy rundown of Denver’s fests, in order of their appearance on your calendar. Which are you looking most forward to? What should concertgoers know about each? Use the comments section below –…
Moderat May 23, 2009 Beta Better than: Much of clearly unengaged crowd deserved. As if to signify this would not be a typical club set of techno, the three-man operation that is Moderat had set up along the side of the room that’s usually the main-room bar at Beta. This…
Local dubstep producer Alert is re-releasing his July 2007 release Dark Heart as a free, 320 kbps MP3 download. The two-track EP finds Alert emphasizing the dub in dubstep, especially the second track “Creepsville,” which could almost pass as a minimal, stripped and slowed-down slab of old-school Jamaican studio magic…
This week’s Freaky Friday is something truly special. Let me set the scene: It’s 1986 or ’87, somewhere in the Midwest. A grocery store wholesaler marketing and sales manager with delusions of grandeur alights upon a brilliant idea: let’s force our sales team to recreate the “Super Bowl Shuffle” as…
Eric SkiffResistor AnthemsSelf releasedReleased last year, Eric Skiff’s charming Resistor Anthems is a nine tracks of chirping, lo-fi electronic beauty. Reportedly created almost entirely on a borrowed Gameboy hacked into a musical instrument, the album displays an impressive grasp of melody, space and sound design…
Are you in a band? Is your band terrible? If so, I want to say thanks — thanks for sucking. You might think I’m joking but I want to assure you that I am fully serious. In a world filled with mediocrity, being truly terrible is a genuine accomplishment. And…
Can it be summer already? I don’t know about anyone else, but for me this winter was both brutal and interminable, and spring has been too wet and cold to offer much relief. Maybe it’s just the combination of expensive heating oil and living in a poorly insulated house, but…
Do you believe in ghosts? Maybe, like me, you find the idea fascinating, but there’s that whole science thing and the need for evidence bringing you down. If so, you might want to join author and paranormal researcher J. Allan Danelek’s Spirit Photography class at Colorado Free University today. The…
Supergroups aren’t just for bloated ’70s rock stars. In the world of techno, Apparat and Modeselektor are both top-tier acts in their own right. Together they’ve joined forces to become Moderat (due on Saturday, May 23, at Beta) and produced something special. The process of recording the threesome’s first collaboration…
Listening to this EP makes me wonder if I’m not missing the gene for liking the kind of music you hear on the radio. I mean, I can identify that these melodies are appealing, that the sound and vibe are contemporary and that this would sound right at home playing…
Just received word of a cool new initiative to empower girls and get them involved with music called Girls Rock Denver. It’s a non-profit volunteer group running a summer camp to teach girls an instrument, help them form bands and write songs and play a show at the Mercury Cafe…
The Ideal Fathers are four guys (singer Jesse Hunsaker, guitarist Adam Rojo, bassist Michael King and drummer Michael Perfetti) who play gloriously chaotic, hyperkinetic dance punk with verve and abandon. If you haven’t caught one of their sets or heard any of their songs on one of the fine radio…
This week’s entry into the Freaky Friday canon is both fun and educational. It’s a little ditty called “Sashimi” and it will teach you a thing or two about that Japanese delicacy in the course of burning its horrid, horrid melody inexorably into your brain. It’s the work of a…
Seems like just yesterday I was writing about the influence of horror movies on my musical taste (okay, it was two days ago) when along comes a flier sporting an image of the kind of thing I’d expect to see chasing some hapless victim in the next Silent Hill movie…
Who owns our culture? Should ideas and creations be locked into gilded cages to maximize profit, or set free to breed strange new forms? That’s the central question in RIP: A Remix Manifesto, screening tonight at Denver Open Media. The film centers on the work of Gregg Gillis, the sample-mashing,…
Well known for his intensely idiosyncratic approach to music, top-notch sound design and prolific output, the enigmatic Tipper has made waves throughout his career. Early on, he carved out a place as a breakbeat tastemaker by producing huge, body-shaking slabs of God’s own breaks layered with gut-wrenching sub-bass frequencies, shifty…
I’ve been thinking a lot about the way that my tastes and interests outside of music influence my musical taste. The most recent example is my fascination with horror movies over the past year, which has caused me to start listening to a number of movie scores, a practice I…
Boulder-based producer Jantsen wants to welcome you to his world of “glitchdafied whomptronica” and to make you feel at home, he’s giving you a whole slew of free tracks and mixes. His work incorporates influences from dub, drum and bass, IDM, electro and hip-hop into a mind-warping, ass-shaking unified whole…
Tonight at Beta, local experimental electronic auteur CacheFlowe is releasing his new dubstep EP Cache, Stacks and Queues. It features a collaboration with Brer Rabbit of Flobots and a remix by Planet Mu dubstep artist Starkey, who will be headlining the event. And as an extra special treat for those…
President Barack Obama has just passed his historic first 100 days in office and what better way to look back on it than via a goofy YouTube mashup via the magic of AutoTune? None. None better way, I say. And so I present to you “Obama Flashback,” a look at…
The late, lamented Machine Gun Blues was a band known not only for its raucous, high-energy rock and roll but for the intensely theatrical and physical performances of its frontman, Aaron Collins, who would get naked, throw himself around the stage, often careening into the audience and end up covered…
