Massive Attack’s sound, which integrates street life, DJing, music, art and angst, has played a major role in shaping the pop music of the Nineties–and with this accomplishment have come some impressive spoils. Today the group’s Robert del Naja (aka 3D) is as comfortable ordering room service in swanky hotels…

Aceyalone A Book of Human Language (Project Blowed) Why do so many artists choose to take the path of least resistance? The current plight of rapper Aceyalone offers an answer. Born E.M. Hayes Jr., Aceyalone was part of the Freestyle Fellowship, a West Coast act that incorporated jazz sounds every…

Hole Celebrity Skin (Geffen) When a colleague of mine who’d heard an advance copy of this disc told me that it was essentially a Go-Go’s record, my first reaction was relief: Thank God it’s not a heartfelt screed about how Courtney Love really didn’t kill Kurt Cobain, I thought. But…

Most local gay nightlife languishes in self-imposed mediocrity that couldn’t be further removed from the exciting club milieu invented by queers back in the Sixties and Seventies–which is why Kim Fronapfel, aka DJ Sentiment, is such a valuable part of the community. By blending funk, jazz, R&B and rap from…

Public Enemy He Got Game (Def Jam) Like Michael Jordan when he gave up shagging baseballs in the hot Alabama sun in favor of reclaiming his NBA crown, Public Enemy is attempting the most unlikely of comebacks. And while it’s too soon to say if the outfit retains the moves…

The goth movement of the Eighties introduced or incorporated some now-familiar fashion touches: body piercing, tattoos, and the teased hair and black eyeliner favored by groups like the Sisters of Mercy. But 23-year-old Chad Boltz, half of the Denver industrial duo called Phenylketonurics (PKU for short), has taken things much…

Garbage Version 2.0 (Almo Sounds) Given how many copies of Garbage’s first disc flew off the shelves, you know that critics are sharpening their skewers over this one. But Version 2.0 is so steely that such jabs will likely bounce right off it. Producer/drummer/mastermind Butch Vig may have worked his…

Many American DJs leave the sophistication that’s part of the European electronic mileu begging at the door of bland musical purism. But not Peter Gurule, aka DJ Aztec. Unlike plenty of his Denver peers, who favor the baggy-pants uniform that came into vogue during the early Nineties, Aztec prefers Armani…

The Smashing Pumpkins Adore (Virgin) This is the best Pumpkins album to date by a very great distance, in large part because it hardly rocks at all. Few tunes on the disc get within thirty beats per minute of up-tempo, and those that do–such as “Ava Adore,” the platter’s first…

Propellerheads Desksanddrumsandrockandroll (DreamWorks/’Heads Spin) Alex Gifford and Will White, a once-underground U.K. pair known by pretty much everyone but their mothers as Propellerheads, are the latest artists to be hyped relentlessly by a major label–in this case, Dreamworks, the Spielberg/ Katzenberg/Geffen behemoth–in an effort to infect America with electronica fever…

Scott Scholz is to musical ambition what Boris Yeltsin is to vodka consumption. Rather than taking the predictable course and putting together a band dedicated to the realization of his ideas, the 21-year-old student at the University of Denver’s Lamont School of Music has formed his own movement: Neon Renaissance…

Colorado has produced more nationally known dance-music figures than many observers inside or outside the state realize. An example is David Winsett, known to the world at large as DJ Swingsett. This former local boy, now a resident of New York City, is a prime mover in the field of…

When New York’s Superstar DJ Keoki first entered the Denver dance community two years ago, everyone knew about it: Keoki–whose latest doings are chronicled in Feedback, page 80–made sure of that. But he was not the only nationally recognized DJ holed up in Colorado at the time. From 1996 until…

The Halo Benders The Rebels Not In (K Records) The Halo Benders are generally referred to in print as an indie-rock supergroup, and that tag is certainly justified: The main men behind it are Calvin Johnson (founder of K Records, leader of Beat Happening and Dub Narcotic Sound System) and…

Pearl Jam Yield (Epic) The amount of ink spilled over Yield by our friends at daily newspapers across the country suggests that mainstream pop scribes view it as the most awaited disc of the season, but I see little evidence of that. A lot of people with whom I’ve spoken…

San Francisco’s Charlotte Kaufman, whose nom de plume is the Baroness, is an exemplar of a rare species: the female DJ. But even though she’s the only woman in the Hardkiss Family collective, a group that’s considered legendary by many participants in global electronica, neither of her names is of…

Virtuosic guitarist/singer-songwriter Adrian Romero grew up as a classical-music prodigy. So why has he placed this style on the back burner in order to roam the pastures of pop music alongside his band, Love Supreme? He shrugs off the question with a caustic comment: “Denver isn’t really concerned with that…

Denverites Recone Helmut and Clark ov Saturn have not gone out of their way to disassociate themselves from their previous group, Westword profile subject LD-50 (“Lethal Dose,” March 13). Like LD-50, which broke up this past summer, their new act, pH-10, shares its name with a chemical abbreviation–and they chose…

At first blush, the decision by the members of Isis Curtain to throw a CD-release party at Antropolis, a new art gallery, seems strange. After all, standard rock-scene etiquette calls for such bashes to take place at the Bluebird or the Ogden instead of a spot more accustomed to displaying…

Jan St. Werner and Andi Toma, the German duo behind Mouse on Mars, live in a world in which music is king and other matters rarely intrude. So naive were they about marketing that they had to be cajoled by record-company executives into coming up with a name for their…

That Denver DJ Larry (L.L.) Bishop remains deeply involved in dance music is a tribute to his resilience. After all, his wife and constant companion, Wreath Rose Bishop, died in an automobile accident in Boulder a mere five months ago, and thoughts of her continue to fill his head; his…

Singer-songwriter Jeb Loy Nichols is flattered that many of those who’ve heard his new CD, Lover’s Knot, feel that his writing is poetic. But that doesn’t mean he does. “I don’t write poetry; I write lyrics,” he says. “And the lyrics that I write are very structurally concerned with being…