There are reasons why the angels in old Renaissance-era frescoes are always toting horns, and they aren’t all biblical: Blown just so, brass instruments have a way of setting a tone, inducing feelings — from reverent to melancholic and back again. PW3, one of Denver’s more successfully nebulous outfits, folds…

Backwash likes to play a little game at the Fox Theatre: When the music begins, we head up to one of the raised railings that extend from both sides of the stage, set a pint on the ledge, and watch the foamy liquid in the glass pulse along with the…

Rachel Simring’s sultry husk of a voice is reason enough to head to either of her new band’s shows this week: Rachel’s Playpen appears Thursday, February 21, at Sportsfield Roxxx, and Friday, February 22, at Cricket on the Hill. Unfortunately for those who fear a triple threat, vocals are only…

In 1993, the Breeders surprised everyone by going platinum overnight and then imploding almost as suddenly. Nearly ten years later, it’s good to know that Kim Deal — former Pixies bassist, current multi-instrumentalist and perennial patron saint of smart indie pop — still believes in the band as much as…

To paraphrase a famous musical meditation on solitude: As numbers go, two can be just as desperate, miserable and lonely as one. Over the past couple of years, several duos have shown us that simply equipping an outfit with both a boy and a girl does not guarantee anima-like harmony…

Drummer Kenny James has done time in so many local outfits, from Sympathy F and the Samples to United Dope Front and Judge Roughneck, that one might think he has some sort of chameleon type of musical sensibility. The famously active local skinsman — who last appeared on local stages…

At the end of last year, many businesses and music fans declared victory when the Denver City Council approved an ordinance allowing patrons over the age of sixteen to play with the big kids at approved establishments that provide both booze and entertainment. The city had changed its all-ages enforcement…

Record collectors have long known that there’s more to a slab of vinyl than whatever music is captured in the circular depressions rotating beneath the turntable’s needle. There’s the kinesthetic appeal of the material, at once so fragile and yet so sturdy, and the almost meditative quality of those shiny…

How long does it take for a new art form to be embraced as legitimate by the music-listening public, a group that, as any modern radio programmer can tell you, is generally wary of change? Judging by the recent surge in the popularity of turntablism, about 25 years. Ever since…

Orbit Service releases Space & Valium, its first full-length album, this week with a pair of shows: Friday, February 1, at Boulder’s Penny Lane, with This Film, and Saturday, January 2, at the Crowbar with Fort Collins’s DJ F and This Film. The swirling, ambient aspects of this Denver four-piece…

Felix Stallings Jr. has used many names during his ascension through the world of homeland electronica: Since the age of fifteen, when a chance encounter with Chicago’s DJ Pierre expedited his auspicious entry into the house realm, Stallings has worked under the tags Thee Maddkatt Courtship, Elektrikboy, Aphrohead and Sharkimaxx…

So far, 2002 has been a bummer year for clubs. In just one month, Denver has seen the abrupt — though not totally unexpected — combustion of three venues that regularly featured live music: The House of Rock and Alice Coopers’town have both closed, while the Flying Dog Pub has…

Buck Wild & His Cocaine Rangers are riding high these days, roping in audiences with their dark but danceable odes to countrified rock and roll. Sporting vintage cowboy duds and a semi-crazed expression, Buck Wild (né Rex Moser) smokes on the electric guitar, while serial bassist Mike Mayhem (who moonlights…

A couple of days before Limp Bizkit and its muscle-bound posse arrived in the parking lot of the Arvada Guitar Center, where one of 23 dates on the band’s current and highly publicized search for a new guitarist was scheduled last week, a teenage boy in Portland, Oregon, greeted frontman…

Esperanto a sort of alphabetic goulash that, some hope, will eventually be spoken by all of the worlds people as a linguistic interface for humanity may well have found a musical manifestation in the Denver band of the same name. Esperanto, which performs Sunday, January 20, at the 15th Street…

So far, Jay Munly is having a big year. He’s now one of the few remaining Denver-rooted members of Slim Cessna’s Auto Club, which saw a significant change in its roster following the band’s two farewell performances at the Bluebird on December 30 and 31. Those Club-gazers who managed to…

Eric Shiveley has shed the Shive-Tones, the band that backed him since the release of Everything Is Good in late 1999. He’s also bucked any notion that his moves as a songwriter can be easily predicted. On Desert Airport, unveiled on Saturday, January 12, at Herman’s Hideaway, with Carolyn’s Mother…

Maggie Simpson is an acoustic guitarist and songwriter, a teacher who instructs other musicians on how to connect emotionally with their own art. Three years ago, Simpson left Boulder for Laramie, Wyoming, our dusty metropolitan cousin to the north, where many a saloon window is darted with historic bullet holes…

The 8 Bucks Experiment is still technically a local band, though its knack for crafting smart, mathematically precise blasts of post-punk aggression has earned the Denver four-piece a name outside its hometown. A touring machine driven by the three brothers O’Meara, 8 Bucks is always worth the price of admission…

Further proof that the digital age can make strange bedfellows: This week, the Mercury Cafe will christen the Denver Barn Dance, a monthly series of country-music performances that hark back to the days when a nice, whoopin’ hootenanny closed a day of ridin’, ropin’ and Bible reading. And while the…