One of the more exciting pianists in jazz today, Vijay Iyer has won a slew of awards over the past few years, including five different nods in the DownBeat International Critics’ Poll. Awards notwithstanding, if you need proof of what amazing chops this Grammy-nominated composer-pianist has, look no further than…
Laetitia Sadier was the charismatic singer of the influential and experimental Stereolab, a band she started with guitarist Tim Gane after a short stint in the political post-punk band McCarthy in the late ’80s. Combining krautrock drones and hypnotic rhythms with a lounge-jazz sensibility and a willingness to make the…
Three decades into her career, Aimee Mann remains as consistently fresh and challenging a singer/songwriter as in her days fronting the mid ’80s new wave band, ‘Til Tuesday. Since then, Mann has had a strong solo career, delivering one of the greatest film soundtracks in recent memory with P.T. Anderson’s…
Poor Moon is a side project of Christian Wargo of Fleet Foxes fame, who before joining that outfit toured with both Danielson Famile and Pedro the Lion. Through his time playing guitar in David Bazan’s band, Wargo became friends with the guys from Fleet Foxes and ultimately ended up joining…
Beach House became a bit of an underground sensation with the release of its self-titled, debut album in 2006, followed by 2008’s warmly enchanting Devotion. Lead singer Victoria Legrand’s rich, deep, yet feminine voice and Alex Scally’s delicate melodic sense on guitar creates a disarming sense of intimacy that soothes…
Garbage was one of the most popular and arguably one of the best bands out of the second wave of early ’90s alt rock. Benefitting from the production skills of drummer and renowned producer Butch Vig (Nevermind) and Steve Marker, Garbage was able to put out a body of work…
The music industry sucks, and the Epilogues know it. They’re no strangers to being let down by the business. Over the course of the band’s nearly six year existence, its members have gone through the label dance enough to know what a downer it is. Waiting in limbo, the band…
In our series of coveted Colorado music-industry jobs, so far we’ve covered a range of jobs, from being a guitar tech and handling publicity to being tasked with overseeing digital music delivery from a vast electronic music catatlog to band management. Today, we bring you five more coveted gigs. Keep…
About two decades ago, I heard Kind of Blue by Miles Davis, and it floored me. It’s the best selling jazz album of all time, and if there’s one album that truly started an obsession with jazz, it was that one. As a kid, I’d gotten to see cats like…
Hip-hop and it still don’t stop. This afternoon at 1 p.m., the inaugural Hip-Hop Legacy Literacy Conference kicks off with a screening of Ice-T’s Something from Nothing: The Art of Rap documentary in the St. Cajetan’s building on Auraria, and, tomorrow, the Sankofa Lecture Series welcomes its fall keynote speaker,…
Tomorrow night, the Twins of Evil Tour pulls into Colorado for a show at 1STBANK Center featuring co-headliners Rob Zombie and Marilyn Manson, two of the more diabolical, intelligent and entertaining figures in mainstream music. Tom Murphy, our resident interviewer extraordinaire, recently spoke with both Zombie and Manson and had…
By B. Caplan Unless Genghis Khan comes back to life in the next 48 hours, the most badass dude in Denver this weekend is going to be Cody ChesnuTT. No bones about it. That’s Mr. ChesnuTT in the picture above. And he’s cooler than you. Sorry. He wears an army…
Chris Brokaw has had a career in underground music that sounds like it can’t possibly be true: He went to Oberlin College in the ’80s, where he met Sooyoung Park, Liz Phair, John McEntire and Stephen Immerwahr. After graduation he played drums briefly with GG Allin, and from there he…
Formed in 1996, Nightwish gained instant popularity in its native Finland with the 1997 release of its first album, Angels Fall First. Eventually, Nightwish achieved international success with album sales in excess of over eight million worldwide, yet the group has struggled to achieve popularity and recognition here in the…
Marilyn Manson, even more than one of his inspirations, Alice Cooper, has become a lightning rod of controversy for his provocative lyrics and visual style. The guy had an album called Antichrist Superstar, after all, and he’s been fairly open about his drug use, what more conservative members of society…
Rob Zombie originally came to prominence with his first band, White Zombie. With a penchant for campy horror imagery and music that was the perfect mutant blend of an industrial aesthetic with trashy metal and punk, White Zombie was one in a handful of bands that crossed the alternative-rock world…
Xiu Xiu got its start in 2002 when Jamie Stewart and his friend and longtime musical collaborator Cory McCulloch started writing songs in a more experimental vein, making extensive use of non-Western percussion and tones. The group’s debut album, 2002’s Knife Play, anticipated more widespread use of non-western instruments in…
Dragonette has been hot on the underground pop music scene for years, but only last year did they come charging out of the gate onto mainstream radio with “Hello,” a global party-starter that saw Dragonette collaborate with French DJ-producer Martin Solveig. Almost overnight, Dragonette went from pop’s consistently great, best-kept…
Update 9/20/12: Local string quartet Per Vita is slated to back Amanda Palmer this Friday at the Gothic Theater. The group reached out to Palmer immediately when she put out the initial call, knowing full well that it was volunteer only. “We didn’t care at all,” says Laena McDonald. “We…
Quote/Unquote is our periodic feature in which we hunt down noteworthy lyrics, examine the best lines and then get the story behind the song. This week, we got some insight from Logistixx of the rap-fusion group Drop Switch to find out what he had in mind while he was crafting…
My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult began as a film idea that Frankie Nardiello and Marsten Daley had that never fully came to fruition. The two met while touring with Ministry, and in 1987, inspired in part by disco, exploitation films, the industrial scene happening around them in Chicago…
Taking a Dylan-esque route of abandoning acoustic folk for mod rock, Britt Rodemich teamed up with local favorites Casey Banker — fresh from the now-defunct Don’ts and Be Carefuls — Miles Eichner of Tulip Wars, and Marlon Chance of Spires to form Shady Elders, an indie-rock supergroup of sorts. “Everyone…
