When it comes to punk, Johnny Wilson thinks of himself as a behind-the-scenes kind of guy. As bass player and backing vocalist for Denver band the Gamits and founder of the popular underground music website For the Love of Punk, that image seems a bit self-deprecating. But as the forty-something…
Vince Staples didn’t set out to be a rapper when he was growing up in Long Beach, California. But a chance trip with some friends to Los Angeles, where he met and befriended members of the Odd Future collective, changed his life trajectory. Now considered not just a promising rapper,…
LVL UP put out one of the better indie rock records of 2016 with Return to Love. It is a disarmingly moving album, imbued with warmth and introspection. Though based in New York City, the four-piece band was founded at SUNY Purchase in 2011. The group started as a recording…
In the wake of the Ghost Ship tragedy in December 2016, the network of informal, unconventional and otherwise underground music and art venues took a major hit nationwide, as many were shut down or put on indefinite hiatus in the name of safety. But in Denver, a pair of shows at the Five Points vegan hole-in-the-wall, the Handy Diner, proved DIY is thriving.
Omaha-based project CBN, which combines power electronics with drone, has been on a nationwide tour with Filth from Denton, Texas, and Gnawed from Minneapolis. For years, the bands had crossed paths on the DIY circuit and online. One weekend, they happened to be in the same place at once and…
The political post-hardcore act Milemarker, which began in 1997 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, defied Maximumrocknroll’s rule that bands with keyboards were not punk. The musicians decided the band was “going to be even more punk and get keyboards and make some music that you couldn’t say wasn’t punk and see…
The members of the influential hip-hop crew Hieroglyphics grew up within walking distance of each other in Oakland. They steeped their psyches in the city’s diverse cultural offerings and cultivated their instinct for originality on their own terms.
Thundercat has had a career that would be the envy of any modern musician.
Last week we brought you a list of twelve defunct DIY spaces that shaped Denver’s music scene; this week we’re focusing on alternative venues. Though the distinction between the two is blurry, what distinguishes an alternative space is that it has another function entirely: Perhaps it’s a coffee shop, an art gallery or a bike repair shop, but it also hosts occasional concerts.
This Tuesday night, February 21, at Alamo Drafthouse, Billy Overton, the founder of experimental electronic band Loanword, will do a live film score for Swedish filmmaker Benjamin Christensen’s most acclaimed work, Häxan.
Electronic music maven Veronica Lamaak’s neighbor Craig Sandoval was shot while trying to stop a burglary at her home. She’s half of the duo that runs Sorted, a group that throws underground, electronic music parties in the Denver area. She decided to hold a benefit for him.
Larry Damore played in a new-wave cover band in Chicago throughout most of his teenage years. Like many people growing up in the ’80s, he was inspired by The Decline of Western Civilization, a documentary chronicling Los Angeles’s early punk scene that included bands like Black Flag, the Germs and X.
Colorado has been home to DIY spaces since at least the 80s. These venues have been critical to the growth of the local music scene, providing places outside of commercial venues for musicians to experiment. What follows are twelve of the most important DIY spaces to have emerged in the eastern Colorado Music scene since the turn of the century.
Lo Moon took a different route than other bands coming up in the age of the Internet. Rather than share musical ideas and songs immediately through social media or a digital platform like Bandcamp, the Los Angeles group worked on its music for four and a half years before releasing its debut single, “Loveless” in 2016.
When people who knew Clayton Counts saw a Facebook memorial account for him, they assumed it was a joke. That would be his style. He had faked his own death on at least one occasion and left in his wake a long string of pranks. Sadly, this was no hi-jinks.
Vahco Before Horses was three when his grandmother heard somebody playing Beethoven on a piano. “She walked in, and it was me sitting on phone books playing by ear,” the now-43-year-old underground hip-hop musician says.
Indie rock band Lemuria is on tour, celebrating the tenth anniversary of its debut album, Get Better. But the band’s tour line-up will include long-time collaborator Tony Flaminio on keyboards, vocals and guitar, meaning Get Better will be presented as it was recorded.
Patrick Dethlefs looks like he could have stepped out of a 1960s folk club, where some of his earlier songs would have fit right in. But his new six-song record, Beauty in the Unknown, is the kind of shimmering, atmospheric offering that wouldn’t have been possible had Bob Dylan not gone electric, had Neil Young not given country rock such a road-worn, big-sky sound, and had alt-country pioneers like Green on Red and Camper Van Beethoven not woven threads of psychedelia and punk into folk music.
If all goes as planned, the small house on the northwest corner of Bayaud Avenue and Pennsylvania Street will be demolished soon. The building most recently served as the home of Moon Magnet, a combination art collective, studio and residence led by music impresario Reed Fuchs, whose goal is to foster a more colorful music community in Denver.
Despite Trump-loving keyboard warriors posting ignorant, racist, misogynistic comments on the Facebook page for Punk Against Trump, the event sold out and raised $3,000 for the various charities.
When Michael “Eyedea” Larsen passed away in his sleep, on October 16, 2010, the world lost one of its great musical talents.
Youth Code may not have its roots in the Goth scene, but the duo is arguably the most popular of the current wave of bands influenced by early industrial music.
