Tyler Gilmore helped launch Dazzle Recordings while he was Dazzle Restaurant and Lounge’s music director, and since releasing the debut of his seventeen-piece jazz ensemble, Ninth & Lincoln, in late 2007, the label has gone on to put out a number of albums by local jazz artists. Gilmore is now…
Notorious B.I.G. died fifteen years ago this week, on March 9, 1997, at age 24, and Ready to Die is the only studio album released during his lifetime. (Life After Death was released fifteen days after his death, on March 25, 1997.) But Ready to Die album contained hits that…
Over the last year, three dueling-piano bars have closed, including Chez Cirque in Greenwood Village, Wild Ivories and, most recently, SingSing, which went dark at the end of last year. Howl at the Moon, which has more than a dozen locations across the country, will fill that dueling-piano void when…
Although no acts have been announced yet for the Vail Soul Music Fest, which runs Friday, August 17, through Sunday, August 19, at the Gerald R. Ford Amphitheater, pre-sale tickets go on sale today at 10 a.m. through TicketHorse. In the meantime, there’s more information at the festival’s website. Check…
AMERICAN IDIOT @ BUELL THEATRE | 03.06.12 See also: Interview with Gabrielle McClinton (Whatsername) The first murmurs of canned news clips and talking heads began before the house lights went down and the curtain went up on the Buell stage last night. They started as hints and whispers, really –…
Well, how about that? Another act fresh off its appearance at this year’s SnowBall Music Festival and another Westword Music Showcase alumni, is coming back to the Centennial State. We’ve just received word that BoomBox, an act that’s built up a sizable following in these parts, is slated to make…
This week, we’re celebrating the life of the late, great Christopher Wallace, aka the Notorious B.I.G., who died fifteen years ago this week. One of hip-hop’s most important teachers, Biggie Smalls, as he was affectionately known, empowered corner boys everywhere to tell the story of their struggle through eloquently violent…
While Butch Vig is probably best known for his work as a Grammy-winning producer who’s worked with the likes of Nirvana or, more recently, the Foo Fighters, he’s also a member of Garbage, an alt-rock act (and a rather decent one at that) that formed in the mid ’90s and…
Hope you have your dancing shoes. You’re going to need them for this pair of back-to-back shows at Red Rocks this summer. Fresh off their stint at this year’s edition of the SnowBall Music Festival, former Westword Music Showcase headliner, Ghostland Observatory and MiM0Sa are coming to Red Rocks Amphitheatre…
It was bound to happen. Travis Egedy is leaving Denver. When Egedy moved here in 2003 to go to art school, his one-man experimental music project, Pictureplane, was just getting off the ground. For a handful of years, he mostly played to his immediate group of friends, often at DIY…
The Drive-By Truckers recorded their last two releases — The Big To-Do and Go-Go Boots — during the same sessions in 2009, yet the albums sound quite different. The former is raucous, raw and rocks something fierce, while the latter, for the most part, is a more toned-down affair, a…
You may have seen Kamran Khan playing bass and other instruments in Modern Witch — and while that band was one of a wave of acts that got lumped under the inside-joke genre “witch house,” it also explored electronic minimalism, dark house music, dub and performance art, all informed by…
You can listen to Gogol Bordello’s albums, watch videos, see photos or read about the gypsy punks, but none of it can really compare to the act’s vigorous, highly charged shows. Fronted by wiry frontman Eugene Hutz, who’s a whirring ball of energy on stage, the band usually blasts through…
Is any band in America more revered or respected than East Los Angeles roots vatos Los Lobos? The core members of this American musical treasure — David Hidalgo, Cesar Rosas, Steve Berlin, Louis Perez and Conrad Lozano — have produced nineteen albums and played everywhere from an Angeleno quinceañera to…
It hasn’t been that long that Trevor Powers has been playing out live with his band Youth Lagoon — or even very long since he started posting his early bedroom recordings and the blogosphere started writing about his music. While that’s a typical story these days, Powers’s music has struck…
The last time they were in town, the little hip-hop hellions known as Odd Future had people jumping from second-floor balconies and raising Cain long before they took the stage. Tyler, the Creator, Hodgy Beats and the rest of the crew still don’t give a fuck, and their gore rhymes…
For every argument that Wes Borland is an innovative guitarist or that Limp Bizkit had some songs that weren’t that awful, there’s the requisite acknowledgement that Fred Durst is terrible at writing lyrics, even worse at rapping them, and is, in general, a monumental douchebag whose emotional repertoire is more…
Wheelchair Sports Camp has begun to fully realize its sound as a band on this EP. Whereas Mixed Tapes felt more like a solo album from MC Kalyn Heffernan, here things are more collaborative, fully incorporating Heffernan’s wit and flow, Isaac McGaha Miller’s eclectic drumming and his sister Abi McGaha…
It’s too bad that the title Headphone Masterpiece has already been claimed, because that’s a perfectly fitting description of what Overcasters have delivered here. Actually, check that: Headphones merely allow you to better absorb and appreciate the nuances. Fact is, this record would sound utterly sensational on a pair of…
While Raincheck pianist Ben Markley says much of the band’s inspiration is taken from classic 1960s Blue Note recordings, the quartet puts a bit of an updated spin on that era with eight original tunes and a reworking of George Gershwin’s “Love Walked In.” Tracks like “Boogalues,” meanwhile, recall the…
There doesn’t seem to be much obvious or interesting use of stereo effects on recordings anymore. But on “Fire,” the opening tune on Sonolumina’s Solar Logos, the hand-drum sound travels back and forth from one speaker to the other so that it feels like you’re in the middle of a…
So you think you’re a Radiohead fan. But have you spent hours considering what the band’s songs would mean if they were all really about sex? If they were sung by Barry White (or, in some cases, Marilyn Manson)? If, instead of doom and gloom, they were just about getting…
