Hideous Men at Rhinoceropolis

The burbling expansiveness at the heart of this band’s soundscaping probably gives the impression that the music is all whimsical playfulness and wandering noise-collage melodies. With Ryan McRyhew of BDRMPPL as one of the minds behind the project, it could be enjoyed for the beauty of the songs, but with…

Congorock at Beta

The music of Congorock sounds like the bastard child of hard house and a coked-up, hard-partying Nintendo Game Boy. The Italian DJ/producer is quickly garnering a reputation for party-starting tracks and mixes that cross all boundaries and take no prisoners. Take his debut release, “Runark,” for example: It kicks off…

P.O.S. mates punk and hip-hop with aplomb

Combining hip-hop and heavy music can prove disastrous (Limp Bizkit, anyone?). Minneapolis rapper P.O.S. (aka Stefon Alexander), however, proves that when a punk discovers hip-hop, the results can be amazing. Combining four-on-the-floor-style house beats with the exuberance of his punk-rock past, P.O.S. exists in a world where it’s okay to…

Tjutjuna’s music takes you far beyond the mundane world of the everyday

Named after a Siberian cryptid cognate of Bigfoot, Tjutjuna emerged from the band Mothership when guitarist Brendon Schulze left to pursue a professional career in television. Rather than continue with vividly imagined, Michael Moorcock-esque tales of science fantasy, however, Tjutjuna focused on the instrumental aspect of the band’s overall sound…

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The songs on Video Games & Popsicle Sticks recall a time before non-mainstream music was splintered off into increasingly hermetic subgenres. Fuzzed-out melodic guitar over insistent rhythms and dark undertones grace each track like cuts from a secret collaboration between Throwing Muses and Band of Susans. A hint of garage…

What About Pluto?

What About Pluto? sounds ridiculously polished for a band one EP into its existence. Part of that is the production, from the Hook Factory. But this is also a sure-handed group, confident in each bass groove, drum kick and vowel wail. For all its technical proficiency, however, What About Pluto?…

Naeem Oba and BrikAbrak

Everything ain’t for everybody — and Naeem Oba and brikAbrak’s You Are Not One of Us bolsters this notion. Brazen and controversial, it is offensive and meant to incite. On “Go Hard,” Oba announces himself as “The General,” with an eloquently contentious testimony, calling Barack Obama a puppet amid conspiracy…

Chris Daniels & the Bmaster

While Chris Daniels has a 25-year history in these parts of horn-based, good-time blues rock/R&B, he gets over to Holland occasionally to team up with the like-minded Dutch R&B/soul act the BMaster. We’ll Meet Again is a collaboration of the two playing live at the Q-Bus in Leiden, Holland. Early…

Panty Raid

When not performing as a member of the Glitch Mob, Ooah (Josh Mayer) sometimes collaborates with Martin Folb in Panty Raid. Not firmly entrenched in a specific style of electronic music, this project seems to freely associate and appropriate sound ideas and techniques from a wide variety of sources, including…

Hermit Thrushes

Coming on like Brian Wilson clad in the leathery hide of Captain Beefheart, the five young men of Hermit Thrushes have no problem gutting indie rock and playing gleefully with its innards. On the Philly group’s two full-lengths, Slight Fountain and Benaki, it uses a mostly conventional batch of instruments…

Telepath

A telepath is a creature that can communicate directly with the mind of another sentient being without the need for vocalization. This fact appears to inform the core of what the band Telepath attempts in its music. Because music transcends language and can communicate ideas and emotions directly, Telepath largely…

Girls

There’s nothing remotely new about Girls, the brainchild of San Francisco-based songwriter Christopher Owens. But what the band brings is in short supply today: tender but not affected pop music with strong overtones of classic songcraft — Elvis Costello and Jarvis Cocker surely rank highly in Owens’s personal pantheon —…

Swingers isn’t your typical swingers’ club

Although golf is a big sport in Colorado, there are few opportunities to play in the dead of winter. Enter Swingers, an upscale sports lounge that just opened next to the Robusto Room at 9535 Park Meadows Drive in Lone Tree. The bar has state-of-the-art golf simulators that allow you…

Jay Reatard’s cause of death determined

Earlier this morning, The Commercial Appeal in Memphis, Jay Reatard’s hometown newspaper, reported that the cause of his death last month has now been determined. As suspected and widely feared, Reteard’s life was evidently cut short by his hard-living lifestyle. Waiting For Something – a short documentary about Jay Reatard…

Flier of the Week: Laser Palace at Rhinoceropolis

If M.C. Escher was into doing collage, we think he might come up with something a lot like this week’s flier of the week. The bizarre, impossible geometry and wash of colors of the main image is eye catching, as a good flier should be. But it’s the weird little…

See with your ears: Behold the Devil’s Tuning Fork

Maybe it’s the post-Grammy slump, or perhaps it’s an entire nation enthralled with something called Lost, but we’ve wandered off into the internet to find something a little different today. That something is something called Devil’s Tuning Fork which made us smile from ear to ear and think of strange…

Last Night: Steve Earle at Boulder Theater

Steve Earle, Hayes Carll Tuesday, February 2 Boulder Theater Steve Earle is going to pretend he’s playing a Tom Waits cover, but we all know he’s doing the theme from The Wire. That out-of-his mind guy in the back with the shockingly loud voice tells him he was great in…