The primary artist on the Aurora-based Mobstyle label is self-styled gangsta Don Blas, whose latest platter, The Modus, is one of the best-sounding rap CDs to come out of the Denver area in forever. As Don goes, so goes Mobstyle, and the quality of the company’s first effort, which has…
Since the late ’70s, London-based Recommended Records, founded by eccentric musician Chris Cutler, has been the place that true connoisseurs of progressive rock turn for the latest and weirdest examples of this willfully edgy form. Prog continues to survive on the distant fringes of the music industry, and drummer Dave…
At first Sci-Fidelity’s website was principally a venue for the String Cheese Incident, Colorado’s most extravagant gift to the neo-hippie crowd. No more. The success of the band has allowed the label to expand its roster to include Incident-related acts such as Comotion (a side project) and DJ Harry, as…
Boulder’s Tom Steenland has been putting out challenging avant-garde sounds on his Starkland imprint for over ten years now, and by keeping his product list modest in size, he’s able to maintain high-quality music and packaging. Take Mystery Dances, by Robert Een, who uses voice and cello to create striking…
Headquartered in Bailey, the Capri and Tapestry imprints are the brain-children of Tom Burns, a jazz lover who’s devoted himself to getting some of Colorado’s finest musicians heard beyond the state’s borders. His catalogue features material by saxophonist Fred Hess and trumpeter Ron Miles, both of whom appear on a…
Produced and distributed monthly by “your favorite muthafuckin’ white boys,” this CD, available free with a purchase at Independent Records, is the hottest mix disc available anywhere in Mootown. DJ Petey and Bedz — both KS-107.5 mixmasters and members of the DJ collective Radio Bumz — oversee nights at Bash,…
For more than a decade, etown, taped each week at the Boulder Theater, has been a staple of better National Public Radio affiliates and commercial stations from coast to coast. (In these parts, it’s heard Sunday evenings on KGNU, KBCO and KUNC.) The show, hosted by Nick Forster, of Hot…
That Blusom even exists is something of a fluke. Vocalist Mike Behrenhausen (who also drums with Maraco 5-0) and electronic specialist Jme (aka Jamie White, formerly of the late, lamented Acrobat Down) recorded the material that makes up their debut CD more as a creative exercise than a commercial venture…
A lot of groups both lousy and laudable have made their presence felt this year, but none has seared its image onto this town’s collective retina like Bright Channel. Formed from the remnants of the overlooked acts Volplane and Pteranodon, the trio coalesced in February 2001. Since then, it’s been…
Reason, the Fray’s second EP, is a fitting introduction to an outfit that came out of nowhere and quickly rose to prominence. Though technically founded in 2002, the quintet didn’t hit its stride — or gig much, for that matter — until around the time Reason was released, late last…
What’s in a name? In the world of rock and roll, a lot. Remember Ned’s Atomic Dustbin? What about Nuclear Valdez? Uh-huh, that’s what we thought. Some may be inclined to avoid an outfit with a goofy name like Rubber Planet just on principle, but think of the tasty fruit…
Brandy in the greenhouse? Fetch it yourself, Thurston Howell III. Domestic drudgery finally takes its rightful place behind swingin’ on chandeliers and flingin’ poo…
With everyone getting in on the Atkins craze — we hear that the U.S. Postal Service is ready to issue low-carb stamps — it’s about time for the backlash. Cue the Affairs. This quartet cranks out high-energy power pop that pays glorious homage to the aggressive yet sugary sounds of…
After wiring a primitive microphone from a rusty Falstaff beer can, resourceful bellower Reverend DeadEye discovered a new way to speak in tongues. The Oklahoma-bred Bible-thumper creates an unholy noise with his mike and homemade slide guitar (with a resonator fashioned from a discarded wok), transforming the dirty Delta blues…
Magic Cyclops (born Scott Fuller) has been inciting head-scratching and bootie-bumping ever since he began mixing on-stage aerobics with cheesy ’80s music a couple of years ago. And just as the mythological Cyclops had to make do with just one eye, so does Magic Cyclops: He deejays entire sets with…
While Outkast stole this year’s Grammys with its cut-and-paste opus Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, George & Caplin, a much more modest duo, were employing a similar pop-exhuming technique. But instead of funk and hip-hop, the humble twosome of Jason Iselin and Jeffrey Stevens blends vintage synth pop and modern technology to…
Loud and brazen, Jet Black Joy is not trying to change the world. But as practitioners of a rousing, bombastic sound that frontman Jimmy Jet lovingly refers to as “wet-panty rock,” the four-piece might make some members of the audience need to change their frillies. Meow!…
The Frantix were the precursors to the Fluid, who helped popularize the grunge movement that shook the galaxy last decade. For that reason, the music on this disc (issued by Afterburn Records, an indie imprint out of Australia) is of historical importance — but it’s about as academic as a…
In no short order, the localpalooza called the Rock In’ Freak Fest landed one of the organizers in the pokey, left another with a shiner and a splitting headache, garnered an assault charge for one local radio personality, bankrupted a local zine and left more than thirty local acts high…
Known for performing marathon-length shows to rival Bruce Springsteen or the Grateful Dead, Ween played an abbreviated but remarkable set last fall to a standing-room-only crowd — one that showered New Hope, Pennsylvania’s finest with giddy praise, hand-made cards and a liter of Jack Daniels. The intimate, daytime setting found…
Denver is crammed with every far-fetched country-music spinoff imaginable (Pentecostal Goth country?), but Out on Bail sticks out like a stubborn weed among all the hayseed wannabes. This wet-behind-the-ears quartet takes the bleak grace of Johnny Cash and crams it into the guttural sloppiness of old Bay Area punk like…
When Willie Houston sings the blues, he draws from a deep reservoir of personal experience, including heartache, poverty and years of backbreaking labor in the Louisiana swamps. Still an engaging and soulful performer at 76, the Junkman adheres to a timeworn sound that grabs listeners with honesty and conviction…
