In the hands of introspective virtuoso Robert Eldridge, a guitar can summon the depths of the ocean, conjure deep-space nebulas or transport listeners to a swampy backwoods juke joint soaked in moonshine. Hailing from Charleston, West Virgina, the lead electric-ax-man for Zeut has spent much of his 25-year career exploring…

Drummer Sly Dunbar and bassist Robbie Shakespeare are not only reggae’s definitive rhythm section and production team, but they’ve worked with every major artist in Jamaica, from Jimmy Cliff, Culture and Peter Tosh to U-Roy, Grace Jones and Beenie Man. Internationally, the pair has provided the crucial bottom end for…

Moving at the speed of a glacier, Knife & Fork deploys an electro-torch sound that skirts genres as varied as experimental ambient and the Gregorian blues. Melancholic Laurie Hall, who helms the Bay Area’s Ovarian Trolley, possesses a cystalline yet downbeat voice that transports her emotional baggage through customs without…

There’s probably enough hair between the members of Throcult to braid Lucifer a sick pair of suspenders — assuming that Ol’ Horny ever bothers to wear pants. For the rest of demonkind, however, the Halloween season presents a fashionable opportunity (with or without trousers) to take a walk on the…

The fall of 2004 has ushered in an embarrassment of riches for Absinthe Studios sound wizard Bob Ferbrache. After mixing Wovenhand’s devotional master stroke, Consider the Birds, Big Bob further establishes Denver as ground zero for American roots music with an extraordinary self-titled effort from Munly & the Lee Lewis…

Blind Marky Felchtone grew up in the Ozarks, where Grandpa owned a still and raised a field of corn. But for Felchtone, a rowdy guitar slinger who now calls Seattle home, backwoods Arkansas summons other golden memories: the Benton County Speedway, Schmidt value packs and a small house on cinder…

Ed Hamell is often referred to as a one-man punk band. But what he does for a living isn’t exactly easy to categorize. He’s not quite a pundit, not quite a comic, and definitely not a touchy-feely singer-songwriter mope. “I’m at a loss of what to call it,” says Hamell,…

In the loosely defined underground genre of experimental noise, one man’s cement mixer is another man’s celestial choir. For the local racket merchants in Page 27, whose carefully sculpted dissonance has soothed and jangled nerves in the Queen City since 1994, noise is a many-splendored thing. With a shape-shifting audio…

New Jersey’s Electric Frankenstein actually gives grave-robbing a good name. By stitching together the castoff limbs of ’50s rockabilly, ’60s garage and ’70s hard rock, the revival-minded quintet reanimates a buzzing corpse to match the monstrous fury of the Stooges or the MC5. Brothers Sal and Dan Canzonieri have been…

Free of lyrical worries, Paul Weller spent five relaxing weeks in Amsterdam, turning a dozen of his favorite songs into a curiously appealing all-covers album. By reinterpreting everything from an anonymously penned Scottish traditional tune (“Black Is the Colour”) to a sugary Top-40 hit that could still rot teeth from…

Depending on which voting poll you buy into, Colorado is a battleground state worth nine measly electoral votes — winner take all. Still undecided? East L.A.’s Richard Lopez, a barrio-bred showman turned rhinestoned candidate (minus his running mate, Eddie Vedder), stumps through the Queen City mid-week with a ridiculously patriotic…

Christopher Watkins sings that “everyone here can be repaired with a bottle of wine.” But to truly invigorate the battered human spirit, the bitter disappointments, the never-ending compromise with cruel fate and her seven disfigured sea hags, a little wine goes much further when it’s accompanied by the Delta blues…

After blossoming from a regional phenomenon into what’s arguably the nation’s best unsigned band, DeVotchKa reasserts itself as Denver’s most exotic musical export with a sumptuous new full-length — the third in a succession of delightful mind-blowers. Recorded and mixed by WaveLab veteran Craig Schumacher (Calexico, Giant Sand, Beth Orton),…

It’s hard to jam econo with a catheter. Ask Mike Watt. In 2000, after an abscess in his perineum burst, the legendary Minutemen and fIREHOSE bassist found himself bedridden with a raging fever, pounding Percodan, hallucinating, peeing orange and contemplating death more than the engine room. Fittingly enough, Watt used…

Our approach is to find a new instrument and figure out what new things it can do,” says Sleepytime Gorilla Museum’s Dan Rathbun. “And then we write songs around those abilities of the new instruments.” When Rathbun speaks of finding new instruments, however, what he really means is hammering, welding…

Back when simple-minded slogans like “Just Say No” inspired more laughter than allegiance, the Butthole Surfers charged head-first into the dilated eye of the storm, conjuring nightmares of Nancy Reagan breast-feeding the Pope with her hair on fire. Ah, the early days, when a live Surfers set guaranteed strobe lights,…

A certain funky charm guides Denver’s Log through an energetic long-player that combines relentless stoner logic with propulsive, industrial grooves. And while several seemingly unscripted interludes regarding stolen Pop-Tarts and lost umbrellas pad the album’s overall total of 25 track listings, its wealth of noise, texture and rubbery bass lines…

Transglobal debauchery rears its exotic horns when Ukrainian gypsy Eugene Hütz takes a break from fronting Gogol Bordello to mix together the sounds of an underground discotheque. Balkan, Turkish, dancehall and flamenco collide with Bhangra, Rai, Klezmer and international kitchen-sink stylings to produce an altogether foreign strain of Fellini-approved combat…

Trumpet-driven acid jazz and loose-limbed reggae tempos dominate the followup to Sons of Armageddon’s funky self-titled debut, which utilized no less than nine players from various local outfits — including the Psychodelic Zombies, Groove Kitchen and the Emergency Broadcast Players. Whittled down to five this go-round (with its core of…

Summing up the Melvins’ contribution to rock and roll is a fool’s errand at best. While the band introduced the world to a slow-plodding sludge later marketed as grunge, the sound’s early pioneers moved from Washington to San Francisco well before the mega-hype hit the fan. And though former Melvins…

A thirty-year veteran of the Front Range country scene, Dick Frost (second from left) isn’t exactly a household name, but he’s rubbed elbows with enough legendary figures to distinguish himself from the pack. Back in the mid-’70s, fronting a house band at the Four Seasons, Frost performed alongside Ernest Tubb,…

Hailing from a corner of the globe better known for the breezy sounds of samba and the bossa nova, Brazilian speed-metal sensation Max Cavalera logged plenty of hard miles fronting Sepultura for twelve years. But following the mysterious death of his beloved stepson Dana Wells in 1996, the dreadlocked showman…