The Eleven Best Concerts in Denver This Week

There are a few kings in town this week, including King Diamond and King Dude as well as Korn, Sufjan Stevens and Of Montreal. Here’s our list of the eleven best concerts this week: MONDAY, OCTOBER 26 Aiden  $18, 7 p.m., Summit Music Hall Blitzen Trapper  $16-$20, 8 p.m., Bluebird…

How Chvrches Builds an Unusual Connection to Fans Using Pizza

Scotland’s Chvrches will be performing at the Fillmore Auditorium on Thursday, October 22. The pop group got off the ground in 2011, when Iain Cook and Martin Doherty decided to go in the studio and see what would come about. At that time, Cook had been producing an EP by…

How Mike Devine Became Denver’s Hip-Hop Pastor

A church service is scheduled to begin at 6:30 p.m. on the first Friday of October at Church in the City-Beth Abraham, at the corner of Gaylord Street and 16th Avenue, and about forty worshippers have gathered in the main sanctuary. But this will not be a traditional church service…

The Denver Music Legends Behind DBUK

Slim Cessna’s Auto Club has been delivering riveting, high-octane sets for more than two decades, earning a sizable international audience along the way. And for nearly half that time, some members of the Denver-based group have been part of a much quieter quartet called DBUK. “It’s a different experience,” says…

The Zombies’ New Tour Was Worth the Fifty-Year Wait

The Zombies, both versions of the band, are hardly new to the music world but there was still a freshness and purity about how they approached playing the music and the self-effacing graciousness with which they conducted themselves on stage. Like they still had something to prove but in a…

Autechre and the Saturday Night Anti-Show

The rumor going around was that Autechre would play in total darkness. This proved to be mostly true as the room and stage lights went down at the beginning of the band’s roughly hour-long set with only the running lights on the stairs, the bright green exit signs on either…

Autechre’s Electronic Music Has Its Roots in Hip-Hop and B-Boy Culture

Legendary experimental electronic duo Autechre performs at the Bluebird Theater this Saturday, October 16. Rob Brown and Sean Booth formed the project in 1987 out of a shared interest in electronic music and the hip-hop world in Manchester UK. “Looking back, as a kid, it appears it was everywhere,” says…

The Darkness Almost Didn’t Happen Because of South American Bees

The Darkness return to Denver to perform this Friday, October 16, at the Summit Music Hall. The U.K.-based rock band made a big splash with its 2003 debut album, I Believe In a Thing Called Love. Its brash and theatrical performance style and music sounded like it could have existed…

How the Latino EcoFestival is Using Music to Inspire Conservation

The third annual Americas Latino EcoFestival is ongoing in Denver, and it’s using music to inspire conservation efforts. The downtown festival, which features over 400 presenters and takes place now through Saturday at the Denver Art Museum, History Colorado and Denver Public Library, features presentations by advocates and experts designed…

Celebrate Tapes With Cassette Store Day 2015

You remember cassettes? The cases always broke after you accidentally stepped on them. The actual tape caused you mental anguish as you attempted to manually rewind it with a pencil. Loading it in a tape deck made the best analog sounds known to mankind. Well, good news lovers of both…

Z2 Takes Over as Promoter for the Chautauqua Summer Concert Series

A Boulder-based concert promotion powerhouse just got a little bigger. The Colorado Chautauqua Association has just announced that Z2 Entertainment will become the exclusive promoter of the long-running Chautauqua Summer Concert Series. The South Boulder music venue is over a hundred years old and is a National Historic Landmark. Z2…

Jazz Pianist Tamir Hendelman on Adapting International Influences

Tamir Hendelman discovered jazz while growing up in Tel Aviv, but after moving to Los Angeles when he was thirteen years old, the pianist, who had already had seven years of keyboard studies under his belt, took his musicianship to another level. Hendelman, who performs with his trio at Nocturne…

Lara Ruggles’s Debut Full-Length Was Worth the Wait

“Fighting Time” is one of the standout tracks on Cynics & Saints, the debut full-length from singer-songwriter Lara Ruggles. It’s brooding, poetic, and angry as hell. Ruggles hurls threats with her impressive vocal range: “It’s fighting time, and I need to see blood on the floor/Whether it’s mine or yours.”…

The Zombies’ Colin Blunstone on the Beatles and Writing New Material

The Zombies were one of the most popular bands of the British Invasion in the mid-1960s. Their vocal harmonies and simple but sophisticated songwriting on hits like “She’s Not There” and “Time of the Season” struck a chord with audiences. In 1967, the Zombies recorded the classic album Odessey and…

Simon Katz Was One of Denver Music’s Brightest Young Talents

Pablo Garduno’s favorite memory of his friend Simon Katz was the time Katz showed up at his house, unannounced, with an adventure in mind. “He just showed up at my house and we drove 45 minutes to a skatepark because he wanted to watch people skate,” Garduno says. “Simon doesn’t…

The Oversized Ambition of Titus Andronicus

Earlier this week at the Marquis Theater, opening band Spiderbags introduced Titus Andronicus as the “best rock n’ roll band on the planet,” and that just might be true. No band in the last decade has been as ambitious or creative. Between this year’s rock opera The Most Lamentable Tragedy…