Best Use of Non-Traditional Percussion 2012 | Echo Beds | Best of Denver® | Best Restaurants, Bars, Clubs, Music and Stores in Denver | Westword
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Best Use of Non-Traditional Percussion

Echo Beds

Take a contact mike and one or more of the following: water bottle, stacked cymbals, detached hood of a car, a sheet of metal, floor tom, chains, bricks, file cabinet — any item that can make a sharp, clattering sound — and process or amplify the sounds these items make together, and you'll get a bit of the confrontational and eruptive sounds that Echo Beds uses in all of its sets. Echo Beds is to noise or the avant-garde now what Suicide was to the New York underground scene in the 1970s. These are not percussive sounds and textures for the sake of a cheap startle; they work in the context of unconventional songs and compositions. With its distinctive approach to rhythm, Echo Beds is effectively creating a new industrial music to reflect the harsh realities of the current era.

Best VJ — Individual

VJ Dizy Pixl

VJ Dizy Pixl (aka Alie Lane) may be a VJ based in Denver, but the excellence of her craft landed her a gig doing visuals for cEvin Key of Skinny Puppy on his tours, as well as for group tours with Download, Otto Von Schirach and Dead Voices on Air. At home, Lane is an in-demand VJ for various shows, mostly at events hosted by the Backwards Records collective and avant-garde musicians including Orbit Service. She was originally inspired by experimental filmmakers like Alejandro Jodorowsky and Stan Brakhage, whose own unforgettable imagery clearly informs her own approach. Her early interest in the visual presentation of bands like Meat Beat Manifesto and Skinny Puppy also clearly taught her a thing or two about fusing the visual with the musical, which you can see from her intuitive and interactive co-performances.

Best VJ — Team

Audio Visual Violence Club

Jeromie Dorrance is not a name many people know right now, but teaming up with Mario Zoots, of Modern Witch and Men in Burka renown, was a stroke of good fortune for him. Both Dorrance and Zoots are talented visual artists in their own right, with Zoots having been a visual artist long before trying his hand at music. Together the two provide panoramic, colorful projections for various artists around town, including Snake Rattle Rattle Snake and Hearts in Space, as well as Zoots's own musical projects. In collaborating with musicians, whether through video improv or prepared visuals, Dorrance and Zoots make every show in which they participate that much more engaging, adding another layer of meaning to enhance the experience and stimulate the mind and senses.

Best Warehouse Show

Iceage at Rhinoceropolis

Denmark's Iceage has been a bit of a buzz band for the past year and a half or so. Oftentimes, such bands are unable to live up to the hype that surrounds them — but when these guys played to a packed house at Rhino, from the beginning it felt like you were in an important moment. The stark iciness of the music was clearly coming from a place of raw emotion needing an outlet, and the crowd was swept up in that energy. Sometimes a show like this can get boringly out of control, with violence eclipsing any possible enjoyment, but this performance felt like everyone present was of a single spirit and discharging pent-up energies together rather than against one another. That unintentional togetherness is one of the marks of a truly great musical experience and not common enough.

Best Way to Publicly Embarrass Yourself and Still Have Fun

My Teenage Angst

Looking through your old journals can be fun, but reading from them while you're on stage in front of a room full of strangers somehow makes the experience incredibly awesome. From first-period nightmares to tales of selling kids fake LSD, the true stories keep spilling out during the monthly My Teenage Angst, each one more painfully true than the next. Host and organizer Megan Nyce sets the tone by kicking off each installment with a revealing chapter from her own teenage diaries, as well as notes from a middle-school sex-education book that serves as the perfect icebreaker. My Teenage Angst might be the most fun you'll have at a bar without having a drink. It's definitely more fun than being a teenager.

Best Weekly Hip-Hop Party

Club Dreams

It's almost unheard of for a hip-hop club to consistently draw 1,000 people these days, but somehow, each and every Friday, the guys from Parlay Productions and 1600 Entertainment do just that. Whether it's the alluring sounds of DJs Ktone and Top Shelf that continually entice the masses, or the club's three-level setup, which is perfect for seeing and being seen, one thing is certain: Club Dreams owns the Friday-night hip-hop club scene.

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