Old Curtis St. Bar has given way to The Curtis Club. Before shutting its doors in 2012, Old Curtis St. Bar was a host to an eclectic schedule of shows starting around 2003, when Kosta Razatos brought live music regularly into the long-running family business. An anecdote that serves as…
Communikey Festival: 8th Edition has released its initial line-up. Scheduled to run Thursday, April 16th through Sunday, April 19th in Boulder, the Communikey Festival has consistently brought in some of the most innovative international and local experimental music and visual artists throughout its run. The programming of events, workshops, installations…
Itchy-O, by virtue of the sheer numbers of its membership, should devolve into chaos. Its shows can seem chaotic and on the brink of tipping over, especially when the group engages in that hybrid of tribal, traditional and Western marching band percussion and the crowd dances in kind. But it…
Mouth House, located at 2858 California Street, was host to the most eclectic shows in the DIY circuit. From 2011 to 2013, it had a festival called Festibowl that included comedy and the kind of music you weren’t going to often find playing in bars or more commercial venues. It…
Although experimental music has been a part of the Denver scene for decades and the bands who perform it have enjoyed some critical acclaim, those artists are still largely unknown in this town. But 2014 was a breakout year for the city’s experimental-music scene, with a few key tours, label…
SPELLS set up on the floor along the south wall of the hi-dive. Wearing matching Christmas sweaters, which each member later took off, the band set the mood for what turned out to be a rowdy and light-hearted performance. Their set was perfect way to end an entire night of…
Crash 45 ended its three-year run on Saturday, December 20. It was a place you could see experimental music, bike clubs, “burners” and b-movies. Its very unassuming facade hid the array of metal art inside. When you stepped inside on the final night, the staff cheered you in welcome and…
When some people think about noise as a genre, they think of harsh noise. But this show was somewhere else on the spectrum. Using samples, guitar, processed vocals, theremin and beats, Tom Smith and Mark Morgan, performing as T/SMM, created an immersive environment with their own musical language, enhanced by…
The Goth and industrial bands from Denver enjoyed a kind of heyday in the ’90s in Denver, with several active bands playing live. There was even a high-profile festival for a handful of years: the Denver Dark Arts Festival (later Tte Colorado Dark Arts Festival). When the momentum behind any…
The members of good-times punk band SPELLS will happily share their opinions on any number of things. Mythical creatures, for example: “I think Bigfoot is just John Lithgow in a costume,” says Peter “P” Bohner. “That’s where he vacations. Some people go to Vail or Aspen…”A band that isn’t short…
Kicking off early with relatively short sets from Youth Code, Haujobb and Front Line Assembly, this weekend’s Skinny Puppy show at the Ogden Theater seemed refreshingly succinct. And everyone, crowd and performers alike, seemed in good spirits. It was mostly electronic music, but what sets these particular artists apart from…
Front Line Assembly is part of what is arguably the greatest electronic industrial music tour in years. Alongside Skinny Puppy, Haujobb and Youth Code, FLA will take the stage this Friday, December 12, at the Ogden Theatre. All together, the lineup represents major stars of experimental electronic music from their…
Chella & The Charm is releasing its self-titled, full-length album at the hi-dive on Friday, December 12. The folky Americana project is the latest incarnation of a band fronted by primary singer and songwriters Michelle Caponigro. Performing as Chella Negro for the last several years, Caponigro has established herself as…
The Samples are among the most successful bands ever to come out of Colorado. But primary songwriter and singer Sean Kelly got his start far away from the mountains, playing for unlikely audiences.As a young man, Kelly and his fledgling band, the Last Straw, couldn’t get the time of day…
The Czars were one of the more popular bands from Denver in the 1990s and early 2000s. Theirs was a style of music could never be limited. It wasn’t dream pop or shoegaze or slowcore. It wasn’t even really just moody post-punk. It was all of that, and its dynamic…
Mad Genius Radio, which launched around Halloween this year, is Denver-based a service that allows subscribers to create their own radio stations. What separates it from a service like Pandora is that, it allows users to rate a song or an artist on a scale from to 5, rather…
Unlike a few of the other area record stores, Black & Read doesn’t have many shows. So when a band does play at the store, it’s kind of a special occasion, especially when it features legendary ’70s psychedelic hard rock band Medusa. This was one of only a handful of…
The truth is that no one in his or her right mind wants to go shopping on Black Friday. So rather than waiting at the doors early morning at some big box store hoping to get one of the five rare items before the other barbarians at the gate can…
Isaiah “Ikey” Owens would have turned forty on December 1, but heart failure on October 14, 2014 took him from us before that could happen. Those who knew him best have already offered their memories and condolences. He was a great mentor and friend to various musicians around the country,…
Tyler Jacobson is best known for his involvement in some of the most popular parties in Denver in the 21st century with Lipgloss, Casual and Mile High Soul Club. Today, Jacobson is offering a free download of the first song he was involved in writing in more than twenty years:…
Coyote Poets of the Universe has cultivated a unique songwriting style over the years in order to accommodate the disparate voices of its nine-piece membership — the results will be on display during a show this Saturday at the Oriental Theater. But the band did not have ambitious beginnings; in…
Judas Priest (due tonight, November 19, at the 1STBANK Center) is one of the most influential heavy metal bands in the history of the genre. From Birmingham, England (the same city that produced Black Sabbath), Priest basically created the blueprint for the sound and look of most of the heavy…
