Flier of the Week: Hello Kavita at the hi-dive

Today I woke up thinking, “Thursday already, and no Flier of the Week to light the way?” Then I saw this delightful work and knew the gods of graphic design had seen my plight and taken pity on me. The muted color palette and sea-creature graphic seem especially suited to…

Record Store Day preview: Uncontrollable Serge

Histoire de Melody Nelson, a 1971 tour de force by eccentric French singer-songwriter Serge Gainsbourg, is among the top reissues of this still young year — and thanks for unearthing it goes to Light in the Attic, an imprint that specializes in bringing worthy oddities back onto the market. (Its…

Welcome to the magnificent (and unpronounceable) world of Iuengliss

Iuengliss. The name is damn near impossible to pronounce. Tom Metz, the up-and-coming electronic wunderkind who performs under the moniker, knows his handle causes fits. So there are no hard feelings if you butcher it. “It doesn’t matter how you pronounce it,” he says. “I pronounce it I-win-gliss. I put…

You can leave your (cowboy) hat on at Stampede

I’ve been into Western shirts for a few years and wear one pretty much every day of the week — usually solid black or some sort of plaid, untucked, with snaps. But that’s as close as I come to being a cowboy. I don’t have cowboy boots or a hat…

Eight Bucks Experiment at the Gothic

Evan and Paige O’Meara have been at the punk-rock thing with the Eight Bucks Experiment since the mid-’90s. To say this project has changed its sound over the years is a bit of an understatement. In the late ’90s, Eight Bucks (due at the Gothic Theatre on Saturday, April 18,…

Felix da Housecat

You can’t talk about house music without bringing up Chicago, and you’d be remiss to discuss Chicago house without dropping Felix da Housecat’s name. A central figure in second-wave Chicago house, Felix was the legendary DJ Pierre’s protegé, releasing his first single way back in 1987, long before he became…

Cameron McGill & What Army

McGill’s “autobiography” claims that he was born in 1877 and lived in seclusion in Illinois until his death in 2056 — a joke that, intentionally or not, gets to the heart of his appeal. The Chicago-based performer, who follows Schofield and John Common to the Walnut Room stage, has been…

Black Lips

The dudes in the Black Lips get naked on stage sometimes. But a few months ago, some folks in India weren’t too stoked when guitarist Cole Alexander stripped and jumped into the crowd. Let’s just say a little chaos ensued and the rest of band’s tour got canceled. And last…

Sole

As a core member of the Anticon collective, Sole is arguably one of the most influential hip-hop artists alive today. Anticon artists aren’t generally on Top 40 radio. Instead, the imprint has been involved in developing, promoting and otherwise shaping — unwittingly, perhaps — the sound of cutting-edge hip-hop around…

The Kills

The Kills haven’t let artistic progression compromise their minimalism. For nearly ten years, Alison Mosshart and Jamie Hince have offered a defiant, stripped-down brand of indie rock, music that’s reveled in the power of stark and simplistic ingredients. While 2008’s Midnight Boom showed a maturation of sound and sentiment from…

Synthetic Elements

The April 2007 review of Standing Still, a previous release by these ska-punkers, declared, “There’s nothing new in the band’s sound, but the players channel old styles so well that the album is kinda fun despite itself.” And while the group’s membership has changed since then, its basic characteristics haven’t…

Magic Cyclops

From the guy who did Kiss covers at a Devo convention a few years ago comes this latest offering of absurdist humor blended with bare-bones synth-pop. Putatively filmed live and broadcast via satellite to other parts of the country from the Quad Cities, this “digital” VHS release looks and feels…

Neil Haverstick

For two decades, Neil Haverstick has explored microtonal guitar, using a nineteen-tone system of tuning rather than the standard twelve-tone one. Having performed previously with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra, for this record the guitarist joined forces with the Colorado Chamber Orchestra to create a enthralling four-song suite titled “Spider.” Starting…

Taarka

Listening to the mad Gypsy sounds of Taarka’s Seed Gathering for a Winter Garden is like a temporary escape from the mundane modern world into an exotic caravan traveling a fantastic world. The instrumentals range from the frenetic bluegrass stylings of the opening track, “Artic Meltdown,” to the insistent, intricate…

Immortal Dominion rounds off its edges on a new album

Over the past few years, the members of Immortal Dominion have undoubtedly experienced a gamut of emotions, from paralyzing grief spurred by a harrowing personal tragedy — the murder/suicide of former bassist Stephen Sherwood and his wife, Sara Elizabeth (guitarist/vocalist Brian Villers’s sister-in-law, whose children Villers and his wife are…

Behold the hard rock and hijinks of Forth Yeer Freshman

If you heard Forth Yeer Freshman’s 2001 debut, Drunkinomicon, and then listened to Regulators, the band’s new album, and thought you were hearing two completely different bands, you’d be right. As it happens, this is a completely different band. Literally. The only member remaining from the original lineup is frontman…

Thomas Fehlmann at the Fox Theatre

The resumé of Thomas Fehlmann is truly awesome. It stretches all the way back to the late ’70s, when he began experimenting with synthesizers in the company of people such as Robert Fripp and fellow Palais Schaumburg member Holger Hiller. Later, Fehlmann worked with seminal techno artists Eddie “Flashin” Fowlkes,…

No 1 Left Standing in talks with a major label?

Take this for what’s it’s worth; we’re still considering this hearsay (given the name of this section of the blog, that actually seems kind of fitting) at this point until we’ve had the chance to speak with the band to get confirmation: Several independent (and reliable) sources with ties to…

Free Tauntaun show Saturday at Wax Trax for Record Store Day

It’s not just big, name-brand superstar acts contributing to the orgy of dead technology, outmoded business models and rampant nostalgia that is Record Store Day. No, local acts are in on the fun, too! What that means for you is that this Saturday, April 18, you can catch Denver’s own…

Guest DJ with DJ MU$A at the Coral Room

My buddy Chris has a song called “Everyone’s a DJ,” and bygod if that doesn’t seem like gospel truth these days, doesn’t it? DJ MU$A evidently subscribes to this sentiment — or at least he’s willing to give folks a shot to prove that notion otherwise. Last Thursday, he kicked…

Update: Hot IQs calling it a day

Update: As if you needed any more incentive to attend this — we just learned that the Bluebird show, which is all ages and will in essence serve as Hot IQs’ farewell show*, is FREE for those who are of legal drinking age. Original post after the jump.* Hot IQs…