Music

In the context of the Curiosa Festival, an apparent attempt to build an Ozzfest-like event around the nostalgia-fueled rediscovery of Robert Smith, Mogwai (below) is the odd band out. In a lineup that’s chock-a-block with acts heavily indebted to the man with the pastiest complexion in show business, this Glaswegian…

If there’s an award for most-improved female death-metal band, the academy gives the satanic salute to Kittie. While 2001’s Oracle fell on the unlistenable side of awkward, Until the End, the outfit’s latest effort, proves this cat has landed on its feet. Built on a bottom-heavy Pantera crunch, melody seeps…

There, in a dark corner of the thrift store, trembling beneath a pile of Commodore 64s and busted answering machines, you might find a Casio. Never considered much of a serious musical instrument, the Casio keyboard is the type of cheap, disposable noisemaker you might have let your younger siblings…

Beauty may be only skin deep, but bad goes straight to the bone — for George Thorogood, anyway. But the slide-guitar guru wasn’t exactly “Born to Be Bad.” Before he started playing the blues, Thorogood played minor-league baseball — and if not for a pivotal concert by John Hammond in…

If any more proof was needed to bolster the claim that the public education system — and, indeed, society itself — is barreling straight into the crapper, behold Forth Yeer Freshman. The arch-nemesis of intellectuals and spellchecks everywhere, FYF has been wrecking eardrums and test scores across Colorado and the…

When electronic music was first gaining a foothold in America in the early ’90s, Denver’s Eric Galavis, or DJ Hipp-E, was at the forefront of the movement, throwing raves and deejaying as part of the Energy Posse and A&E Productions. Hipp-E essentially put Denver on the map. Now based in…

Darrell Robinson knows what it’s like to ride in the back of the bus. To be scorned, mocked, even spit on. But he suffered these slings and arrows not because of the color of his skin, but for the content of his record crates. Robinson is a house DJ, born…

In the summer of 2002, Truth Hurts, aka Shari Watson, couldn’t have had it better. She had a huge radio and club hit with the DJ Quik-produced single “Addictive,” featuring hip-hop living legend Rakim. She had a star-studded album, Truthfully Speaking, produced collectively by Dr. Dre, Timbaland, Organized Noize and…

Ketchup and mustard. Guns N’ Roses. Sifl & Olly. Ham and burger. Some things were meant to be together. Then again, some pairs that seem inseparable do split up. For a decade, Greg Diehl (aka DJ Dealer) and Craig Christenson (aka DJ Craig C) burned up the house scene. The…

In Widespread Panic, bassist Dave Schools provides a bottom to ditties that sometimes seem as if they’ll never end. Stockholm Syndrome (below), Schools’s latest project, may be a bit more song-based than his main combo, but it’s not exactly a departure. The new band teams him with several kindred spirits,…

There’s a certain swagger to ’60s rock, a hip-loose and almost sexual sinuousness that most revival acts and garage bands can’t even begin to replicate. The Waxwings are one of the few who can. The group’s new and third disc, Let’s Make Our Descent, shakes and shimmies like the most…

What to do on tour when you need to play several instruments at once? You can hire a band, or you can pre-record your accompaniment. But either of those options would make you feel like a jerk once you saw a solo Andrew Bird show. While drums are usually not…

When it comes to straight-up mixing — the most essential element in any DJ’s toolbox — there are few DJs who can hold a candle to the U.K.’s Mampi Swift. Swift has been sitting pretty as one of the top drum-and-bass DJs and producers since his days at the now-legendary…

These kids nowadays and their band names. The Bee Eaters? Besides conjuring vague impressions of Fear Factor, the moniker seems to be yet another puke-inducing exercise in cutesy cleverness. Luckily, there’s nothing remotely glib or smirking about the Bee Eaters’ music. Hailing from the decidedly non-rapid locale of Rapid City,…

After a long, silent slumber, the king of soul, horns and hip-hop’s second golden age has awoken. Having sacrificed the keys of his hip-hop production kingdom to the King of Crunk — and the prince of frontin’ — Rock recently released his first album in three years, Soul Survivor II,…

With war being waged at every level and in almost every corner of the world right now, it’s no surprise that Massachusetts metal powerhouse Shadows Fall has named its upcoming album The War Within. The disc’s first single, “The Power of I and I,” is a venting of pent-up savagery…

Some records demand the closest of attention, the most probing scrutiny, upon which they promise to uncloak their hearts and unravel their inner sonic secrets. But Ataxia, an ad hoc collaboration between the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ John Frusciante and Fugazi’s Joe Lally, is one of rock’s glaring rarities: a…

Consider the sad fate of the typical cult artist. He puts out one consistently enjoyable disc after another, earning positive reviews on each occasion. Unfortunately, his work is too modest to attract monster sales, and after a while, even critics tire of saying the same nice things about him. When…

A thirty-year veteran of the Front Range country scene, Dick Frost (second from left) isn’t exactly a household name, but he’s rubbed elbows with enough legendary figures to distinguish himself from the pack. Back in the mid-’70s, fronting a house band at the Four Seasons, Frost performed alongside Ernest Tubb,…

On his latest CD, former Boulder-dwelling, banjo-plucking jam-grasser Tony Furtado (due at Trilogy in Boulder on Friday, August 6), now a resident of Los Angeles, highlights a newfound joy in songwriting; his own singing voice is another welcome addition. Produced by Dusty Wakeman (Lucinda Williams, Dwight Yoakam), These Chains comprises…