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…
Since first opening its doors in 2008, Beta Nightclub has been at the top of numerous “best of” lists, and it currently holds the top spot for clubs in North America. In commemoration of the club’s fifth anniversary, being celebrated this week, we caught up with the folks behind Beta…
John Digweed is a twenty-year veteran of the international DJ scene. As such, his story is punctuated by numerous high points. Among them: pioneering the art of the mix album with longtime DJ partner Sasha on Renaissance: The Mix Collection; refining it with the classic Northern Exposure chill-out trilogy; and…
Geeks love metal more than the computers on which they listen to it. They yearn for heavy metal that was forged by Orcs in the mountains of Mordor, smuggled halfway across the universe on Serenity and then discovered by Silver Surfer while scouting for delicious planets. These bands aren’t necessarily…
Soundgarden formed in 1984 as a three-piece with Chris Cornell on drums on vocals, Kim Thayil on guitar and Hiro Yamamoto on bass. Though noisier in the beginning, the band would go on to be one of the main purveyors of a slow, sludgy, intense, punk-rooted rock that was dubbed…
ZZ Ward released her debut album, Til The Casket Drops, in 2012. Growing up, she honed a talent for writing bluesy R&B songs. Her knack for that can be heard prominently on that disc, and well as her proclivity for hip-hop, which is even more prevalent on her Criminal EP…
Kev Kash is a rising talent from the local scene who has songs with the likes of Innerstate Ike, Myrical and Mr. Midas. Kash says 2Pac is his biggest influence, but he says his style is comparable to Lupe or Kendrick Lamar. We recently caught up with the rapper, who…
A lifetime of music fandom and a voracious appetite for new things has given me a wide-ranging (if sometimes shallow) knowledge of musical styles, forms and history. Despite that, there are holes. Big holes. And some of those holes are, well, embarrassing. I’ve decided the time has come to fill…
There are many different versions of DJ Babyshoe running around Denver, depending on who you ask and when they last saw him. On any given weekend, Babyshoe (aka Eric Talledo) is crisscrossing the city spinning forgotten hits at the Lost Lake, playing a party hosted by TheHundred or unleashing late…
This week’s crop of new local hip-hop jams is particularly eclectic, ranging from boom-bap to electronic to jazzy to funk. We’ve got tracks from Wheelchair Sports Camp, Bullhead*ded, Molina Speaks and PIKE. Keep reading to see what’s good. See also: – Fresh local hip-hop from Atak One, Planes!, Foodchain and…
Kylesa got its start in 2001 when former members of sludge-metal band Damad teamed up with guitarist and visual artist Laura Pleasants. From the beginning, this Savannah, Georgia-based band has shown no loyalty to a specific genre; as a result, the outfit’s discography has been fascinatingly varied. See also: -…
