Denver has had a healthy underground hip-hop scene going back to the ’80s, including significant acts like Legion of Doom, Apostle, Future Reference, the Strange Us, the Pirate Signal and Ground Zero Movement. Newer artists like Jimmy V are keeping that world vibrant and breaking ground in establishing an audience…
Dillon Francis is one of the most recognized names in the EDM world these days. But Francis got his real leg up in that world when well-known producer Diplo championed his work, and the two collaborated on a track. Since then, Francis has become associated with moombahton and electro house,…
The fifth Make Music Denver event is happening on Tuesday, June 21. The free, all-day festival features live music performances, instruments on hand for attendees to play, and music-related workshops all across the city. The event is a branch of the international Make Music Day, which started in 1982 in…
On Saturday, June 18, Esmé Patterson bemusedly told us that the last time she had played the Larimer Lounge, it was probably with one of her old bands, Harpoontang. Which dates that show to several years ago, since that project was concurrent with her involvement with Paper Bird, a band she…
The summer solstice was nigh, and the sun set late in the evening. At the Gramatik show at Red Rocks last Friday, June 17, the artists adapted accordingly to the season with the actual light show put off until the sun had all but set. Hippie Sabotage, from Sacramento, is…
Influential science fiction and horror filmmaker John Carpenter is currently on his first national tour as a musician. However, the Denver tour stop, scheduled for Tuesday, June 21, has been canceled. Refunds available at point of purchase. Carpenter was to perform selections from his two albums, 2015’s Lost Themes and this…
Rossonian occupies a now-unusual musical space that would have been called alternative rock in the early ’90s. A decade ago its sound would have been lumped in with the term indie rock. But the Ross’ likes to refer to its particular brand of pop-and-rock as “electro-sensual rock and roll.” On…
The Museum of Contemporary Art Denver is continuing its B-Side Music Thursdays summer concert series on the MCA rooftop for the 2016 season. Aiming to present “the best up and coming Colorado bands and side projects of well known Denver bands and musicians,” the current schedule makes good on that…
The Hi-Dive Hullabaloo will return this weekend for two days of music and festivities at the South Broadway venue. The small festival began in 2010 with the simple intention of bringing together bands made up of friends who held like-minded aesthetics but rarely got to play the same bill. Tom…
Nearby lightning and waves of torrential rain pummeled downtown Louisville, on Sunday, June 12, but the storm seemed to disappear right before the show started in the basement of Dona Laurita Gallery known as Down Space. Combining the qualities of a house show and a DIY space (off-the-cuff vibe, relatively…
Few people had heard of Dylan Montayne before he posted his YouTube video, “Uber driver raps for car full of babes,” on May 24, 2016. The video, which captured Montayne rapping for his Uber passengers, quickly went viral once blogs shared it and has since garnered attention from celebrities like…
Domenic “Nicky” Palermo of Nothing has certainly paid his dues. Earlier in life he had been a rough-and-tumble punker who spent two years in jail for stabbing a guy during a fight. Once he got out of jail he spent some time discovering the meaning of his life and returned…
Portland, Oregon-based experimental rock band RLLRBLL makes an appearance this Sunday, June 12, at Down Space in the Dona Laurita Photography and Fine Art gallery. Starting in 1994, the group, which completely resists any pat classifications, came together after Mae Starr, Monte Trent Allen and Gilles left Bozeman, Montana and…
Codename: Carter emerged from a recording project that guitarist and vocalist Steve Gray undertook in 2008. Though more known as a guitarist, Gray discovered sounds that inspired him on keyboard, and he shared demos with old friend and longtime musical collaborator, drummer Michael Behrenhausen. The two filled out the demo…
At a time when all things indie rock have been relegated to the dustbin of pop culture, Denver band the Outfit still stands out. The group’s soon-to-be-released self-titled album is representative of its current creative ambitions. The Outfit is the first twelve-inch vinyl record that the band has released; it…
On an early tour through Colorado in 2003, Sam Beam, performing as Iron & Wine, was scheduled for a March show in Denver at the Climax Lounge, a then small rock club north of downtown. It was the night of the worst blizzard in recent memory. “I do remember the…
The Chromeo concert with What So Not, Four Tet and Jamie xx had all the trappings of a large-scale EDM concert: the elaborate lighting rigs and sets of music aimed at the dance-music crowd. Opener What So Not and especially Four Tet should have had their set times pushed later…
The inaugural edition of 71Grind (a play on nearby area code 719), a kind of celebration of heavy music of various styles, is in Colorado Springs on Friday, June 3, and Saturday, June 4 at Black Sheep and Flux Capacitor. Organized in part by Sean and Bryan Ostrow, brothers who…
M83 is undoubtedly a band of its times, which, of course, means it takes as much from the past as it does from the future. At Red Rocks Tuesday the band took full advantage of its brilliant surroundings and presented its luminous, spacious and triumphant music the way it was intended…
Most of the bills for Red Rocks concerts tend to make sense in both an artistic and commercial sense. Even when Soundgarden played the show there in the summer of 2014 with Nine Inch Nails and Oneohtrix Point Never, it felt like a good fit since Trent Reznor has had…
D.O.A. from Vancouver is considered one of the foundational bands of hardcore punk. Its album Hardcore ’81 is generally believed to be the first time the term was used in connection with punk’s second wave. As with contemporaries like Black Flag, Bad Brains and Middle Class, D.O.A. drew inspiration from early…
Blasting out the gates with “No Wow,” The Kills spent little time with preambles and set the stage for a ferocious energy that lasted for the rest of the show. The Kills aren’t really known for low-key shows, but this performance was especially generous. Even with the drummer, the keyboard…
