A Color Map of the Sun, the new Pretty Lights album due out this Tuesday, took Derek Vincent Smith on an adventure through musical eras. We recently spoke with the homegrown Pretty Lights mastermind about the trust he has placed in his fan base, his own self doubts about taking…
In a scene oversaturated with bands mining the 1960s, Shannon and the Clams manage to stand out in stark contrast to their peers. That’s partly because their songwriting is simple and strong, but mostly because of Shannon Shaw’s powerful, soulfully melodic and emotionally gripping voice. Shaw sounds like she took…
Nu metal is the non-alcoholic beer of metal. Why waste your time? Altering, developing and tweaking metal is fine (see sludge or progressive metal), but nu metal strips away everything that is good about metal and somehow makes it sound tepid and miserable, with generic words describing the collective dejection…
John Dadzie, the orbital center of Los Angeles’ dubstep galaxy known as SMOG, is the mastermind behind 12th Planet. Transitioning from drum and bass to dubstep seems to be a natural course for producers in the past few years, and Dadzie has been at the forefront of that movement’s progression…
These are the phantoms of the metal opera. They are the faceless. Human? Alien? Robot? Beast? Pinky and the Brain? Luke Skywalker’s father? Nobody knows for sure. The only way we could ever find out is if we go back in time to the ’50s to collect a bunch of…
Queensryche was formed in 1982 in Bellevue, Washington, by friends who played in various metal bands from the region. Since the band’s debut EP in 1983, Queensryche has consistently set itself apart by incorporating progressive elements into its music with a vivid, almost dystopian, reflection of society in a way…
So if you can’t tell by our wall-to-wall coverage, we’re pretty damn geeked about the Westword Music Showcase this weekend — and for good reason. It’s our absolute favorite time of year, the time when we get to put the spotlight on our beloved scene and — more important –…
Chuck Morris, percussionist for the jam-tronic band Lotus, has started a new project with Anthony Fugate called Nunchuck. Since rejoining Lotus, Morris wanted to find new outlets to experiment with sounds, rhythms and beats, which prompted him to get back behind the drum kit. In advance of Nunchuck’s set at…
So if you can’t tell by our wall-to-wall coverage, we’re pretty damn geeked about the Westword Music Showcase this weekend — and for good reason. It’s our absolute favorite time of year, the time when we get to put the spotlight on our beloved scene and — more important –…
Trampled By Turtles, due at this weekend’s Westword Music Showcase, was started in 2003 by a group friends from Duluth, Minnesota, who knew each other from playing in various bands. Liberated by the freedom and mobility of playing acoustic instruments, the players honed a sound that happened to benefit from…
Francesco “Phra” Barbaglia, the man behind Crookers, never flew out of his small town in Italy until he started touring the world a decade ago. These days, the Italian producer/DJ leaves the travel planning to somebody else and focuses on keeping everybody dancing until the lights come up. In advance…
P.O.S, due at this weekend’s Westword Music Showcase, is a founding member of the eclectic and independent Minneapolis hip-hop collective Doomtree. He’s been dealing with kidney problems of late, and although he’s started dialysis and is back performing, he’s still hoping for a transplant. In spite of all this, the…
The Mowgli’s was started by a group of friends who wanted to make music with universal appeal. The act’s sound is rooted in the kind of breezy, folk-inflected, psychedelically tinged music from Southern California that dominated the ’60s and ’70s, and its outlook is imbued with a positive spirit that…
Hipsters weren’t the first to sing and dance in a spontaneously choreographed group for a musical, and probably will never feel compelled to in this world, but in the movie world they have now given into this urge in Hipster! The Musical. The musical didn’t immediately take form as a…
A few years ago, Jon Spencer was getting the Blues Explosion’s Matador albums ready for expanded reissues when he thought about getting the band back together after an extended hiatus began taking root. The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion subsequently regrouped and spent the intervening years touring, writing new material and…
In the darkest recesses of the metal world, truly shitty albums lurk. Now, these albums aren’t necessarily 100 percent shitty (there may still be some redeeming music to be found), but they are certainly incredibly disappointing, particularly given the otherwise worthiness of their creators. Plug your nose and dive on…
With heavy distortion and intergalactic samples, Datsik fuses the heaviest elements of rap and dubstep to create a sound that’s equivalent to standing in the middle of an epic man-versus-machine battlefield. Datsik, known in his native British Columbia as Troy Beetles, followed up on the promise of his first studio…
David Sugalski, a Philadelphia native with a business degree from the University of Colorado, has carved out a respectable career for himself in dance music. Better known in EDM circles as the Polish Ambassador, Sugalski is creating music that reflects his life while constantly evolving as an artist and finding…
Guitarist Charlie Hunter and drummer Scott Amendola teamed up in the mid ’90s as part of T.J. Kirk, an outfit that played the music of Thelonious Monk, James Brown and Rahsaan Roland Kirk. Amendola, who also appears on a few of Hunter’s mid-’90s Blue Note recordings, has worked with a…
The Psychedelic Furs formed in 1977 in the wake of the explosion of punk rock in England. By the 1980s, the group had evolved from its earlier musical impulses into a kind of atmospheric, at times brooding, at times celebratory, post-punk band with a broad emotional and sonic palette. See…
Wampire is a five-piece whose music doesn’t seem fixed to a particular musical period, especially the current era. If anything, the band’s gently swirling, swaying melodies are buoyed almost imperceptibly by a distinct if informal structure that keeps the music from wandering completely where it will. It’s almost like psychedelic…
It took decades, but Joan Baez has finally overcome her stage fright. The legendary folk singer and activist, who initially found fame during the folk renaissance of the 1960s, partnering with Bob Dylan on stage and fighting for a wide range of causes into the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s, says…
