Suffice it to say that Mystic’s career as a hip-hop artist got off to a difficult start. On the day the young, Oakland-based rapper signed with Goodvibe Records in 1999, her excitement was quickly tempered by some tragic news. “The day that I got my record deal was the day…
At first blush, DJ Swamp holds all the intrigue of a nicely edited movie preview. The man smashes records during his sets and rubs the shards on his chest! He sometimes scratches his tongue with a stylus! He even sets himself on fire when he’s really into it! How much…
Pulsing out of an invisible electro-chemical reaction, a thought originates deep inside the skull and flutters through a seemingly chaotic labyrinth of synapses. Then there is the innate tendency to impose structure on this boiling, gurgling randomness — to refine a thought and cast it into the tangible constructs put…
Some items from the what-ever-happened-to? file: When Skull Flux, the visceral and heady Denver-based combo that trudged along for more than six years (and along the way snagged three nominations in various Westword Music Showcases), finally splintered for good two years ago, some suspected frontman Conrad Kehn couldn’t stay quiet…
You can peg British DJ Paul Oakenfold five ways: as record producer, remixer, A&R man, label head and gas bag. He might even be an honorary local, given the number of times he’s spun in Colorado this year. His upcoming appearance at the Fillmore Auditorium on Tuesday, November 27, however,…
Not only does Armando Zuppa have the distinction of being one of Denver’s first and only Italian-born and -bred banjo players, he is also the neo-grass world’s first bona fide superhero: On Wednesday, November 28, at the Soiled Dove, the leader of recent European transplants New Country Kitchen will release…
In some parts of Mexico, Jaguares frontman Saul Hernandez is more popular than President Vicente Fox, political muralist Diego Rivera and his iconic artist wife, Frida Kahlo, and revolutionary Emiliano Zapata. At least that was the suggestion last year, when a Mexican Web site asked citizens to vote for their…
Many performers haven’t a clue about the inner workings of their own hype machines — but Kelly Hogan is a big exception. From 1997 to 1999, a few years before Chicago’s Bloodshot Records released her latest album, the wonderfully evocative Because It Feels Good, this indie-music veteran worked for the…
There’s a great story behind Roots Volume 1, Merle Haggard’s delightful new disc, his second for the Anti- label. By chance, Haggard discovered that Norman Stephens, who played lead guitar on some of Lefty Frizzell’s 1950s recordings, lived just fifty miles from Haggard’s Northern California home. Frizzell, one of country…
It’s a Scottish supah-group, y’all, and the only thing you should really be scared about is whether anyone will ever be able to top this record. Gary Lightbody of twee-poppers Snow Patrol birthed the idea of a giant Scottish musical collaboration while drinking at a Lou Barlow show in Glasgow…
One of New York City’s premiere contemporary voices, Laurie Anderson has returned to recording with Life on a String, her first studio release in seven years. The twelve-track album — which Anderson released through Nonesuch after two decades with Warner Bros. — continues the dark, existential musings of 1994’s Brian…
Once upon a time, in a land not all that far away, the notion that sample or mix-driven music could reach the level of art was viewed as logical, even inevitable. But money and popularity breeds conservatism, which helps explain why the majority of today’s hip-hop producers are more interested…
The Pepsi Center is actually an okay place to pass an evening, no matter what’s going on inside, if you stick to the outer edges and avoid the actual event altogether. The club level has a couple of bars and a nice patio with a view of downtown. In the…
What happened to rock music? Not the sagging, moldering corpses of Stevie Ray and Jimi, still propped up and sucked off on classic-rock radio. Just straightahead rock music like the Replacements or the Ramones, played with a certain fearlessness about trying new things. Answer: Carlos (Wednesday, November 21, at the…
Mary Flower is a hero of American acoustic-guitar music — and proof that the most moving art is often found in one’s own back yard. Ladyfingers, which sees release on Friday, November 16, at Swallow Hill, is the Denver native’s finest recording yet. Flower’s seasoned singing and acoustic playing dig…
When the world changed on September 11, so did Boots Riley’s career. About a week after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the leader of the Oakland-based rap group the Coup found himself folded into the news of the day, amid images of debris-covered firefighters and…
Sex and housecleaning aside, electronic dance music is best appreciated in the thick of a sweaty, pulsating, late-night throng with all the usual club-culture accoutrements. And because an essential element of any DJ’s mojo is the symbiotic transfer of energy from the booth to the dance floor and back, the…
First, some background: The Langley Schools Music Project is a relic, a lost recording originally produced sometime in 1976 or 1977. It stars an untrained mass of sixty elementary-school students from the farmland community of Langley, British Columbia, conducted by a guitarist and music teacher named Hans Fenger. In the…
If anyone deserves a tribute album, it’s Hank Williams, who died on January 1, 1953, in the back of his chauffeured Cadillac touring car, on the way to a one-nighter in Canton, Ohio. He was just 29 years old, yet he had created a body of work that set the…
Twenty-two-year-old Bilal’s promising debut bolsters the argument that Philadelphia may once again be the center of soul. With the help of fellow Philly soulquarians ?uestlove from the Roots and producer/musician James Poyser (Common, D’Angelo), Bilal suggests the energy and inspiration of the city’s most exciting musical era — when producers…
All too many performers working under the new-age rubric feel their primary job is to put people to sleep, or at least to relax a listener’s brain until it’s as vital and reactive as a strand of vermicelli. But that doesn’t mean the style lacks possibilities: Not all music needs…
The great dot.com crash proved that the Internet is not the pot of entrepreneurial gold that start-up types had hoped. But for some of us, the evaporation of so many e-commerce sites is a welcome development, as it leaves more time for discovering the Web’s true gems — like biblical…
