Z-Trip January 15, 2008 Sutra Better Than: Going to bed early on a school night. Without a doubt, Z-Trip is still the unequivocal master of the mash-up, as evidenced by his energetic set last night at Sutra, where he threw down at a private party sponsored by Red Bull. From…
Here’s a selection of the best of last week’s music blogging from around the Village Voice chain: There are good ways to promote your band, and then there are very bad ways, like this sticker, and many more like it…
The Knew, Light Travels Faster, The Get Down January 12, 2008 Lion’s Lair Better Than: Watching the false pageantry of another Patriots win. Popping into the Lion’s Lair on Saturday night, I marveled at how much the bar has changed since I first started making my way in there with…
Eric Bachmann w/ Ian Cooke, Elin and Freida Saturday, January 12 Better than: The hangover the next morning The swell of people at the Hi-Dive Saturday night seemed like a perfect fit for Denver transplant Eric Bachmann. Any one of the many there may have been a random character from…
On the Brotherhood of Dae Han’s MySpace page, there’s a picture of the guys standing on the front lawn of a mammoth house with cans of gasoline in their hands and their backs to the camera. The house is engulfed in flames, and the fellas are just watching it burn…
Over the holidays, when Jon Solomon spoke with Ingrid Michaelson, she said she was looking forward to finally getting some rest. The singer has been caught up in whirlwind of activity ever since her song “Breakable” was used on an episode of Grey’s Anatomy. Three more of her songs were…
Red Orange Yellow, Harvey Knuckles, Magic Cyclops Thursday, January 10, 2008 hi-dive Better than: Watching BBC America Last night was an evening of triumphant returns at the hi-dive. While Red Orange Yellow existed and played a few gigs years ago, the project disbanded and disappeared when drummer Devon Shirley went…
LOCALS ONLY Spoke In Wordz is one of the best emcees out of Denver and his album Word Play was one of the hottest local releases of the year. But just so you can familiarize yourself with how Spoke gets down, here’s a taste from the album Take a Breather…
Intersections are messy, dangerous places. This thought flashed through my head as I was driving across town on Colfax recently. To deal with the danger inherent in intersections, we are forced to put our faith in the rules of the road, in the competency and alertness of other drivers and,…
The Afters Never Going Back to OK EP INO Records 01:10-01:55 of “Never Going Back to OK” Wow, the chorus is actually “Never Going Back to OK,” I figured it was just going to be one of those titles that didn’t really have any relation to the actual song (there…
The productions and remixes of John Graham, who’s best known as Quivver, have been a staple of the world’s top DJs for more than a decade. His work has been featured in the sets and mixed albums of some of the world’s top progressive DJs, including Sasha, Paul Oakenfold and…
Bear in Heaven, Red Bloom of the Boom (Hometapes). Any one of these songs might’ve worked brilliantly on the soundtrack to the film Morvern Callar, especially between the cuts by Can and Holger Czukay. Drawing from those artists, as well as Brian Eno, Bear in Heaven creates some damn fine…
On a cold Sunday night, five teenagers are hanging out on the sidewalk in front of the club at 1531 Champa Street. Inside, on the stage near the front window, I can see a few guys breaking down their equipment. A dozen or so kids are scattered in front of…
For generations, musicians have moved to Los Angeles because they want to get famous, and they hope that being in close proximity to industry power brokers will expedite the process. But the goals motivating Alex Church, the multi-instrumentalist behind the brainy future-folk ensemble dubbed Sea Wolf, are more modest. Church,…
With every re-lease, Joe Thunder and Selector Sam move further away from simple mixtapes and closer to creating compilation albums featuring original rhymes and beats from homegrown rappers and producers. For their latest project, the two headed to east Denver to connect with F.O.E. and B Blacc and showcase the…
Charly “The City Mouse” Fasano has become an underground icon thanks to So You Think You Can Reab, the self-produced CD zines containing his funny and often bitter verses. But rocket ship to obscurity, his debut full-length, may just be his best work to date. Recorded with the help of…
Though some believe Lupe Fiasco is too smart for mainstream rap, that’s not exactly true. Most of the lyrics on his second release are trite, right down to the CD’s opening monologue: “They thought it was cool to tear down the projects and put up million-dollar condos, gentrification. They think…
Too many movie tie-in collections put profits before cohesion. Tunes by widely disparate performers, most of whom just happen to record for companies affiliated with the film studio, wind up being tossed together willy-nilly in the hope that one of them will stick, thereby inducing fans to purchase all the…
Plenty of people outside the country-music industry think the genre pretty much begins and ends with big stars — the Keiths, the Faiths and so on. But just beneath the glitzy surface, a gaggle of lesser-knowns are slugging it out in hopes of reaching the next level, and only the…
Yeah, yeah, we all know that everyone can’t be an original. Still, understanding this truism doesn’t make blatantly imitative acts like Wilmington, California’s Left Alone any more admirable. The Elvis Cortez-led band, which shares tonight’s bill with the Black Rose Phantoms, has been around since 1996 — long enough to…
Brad Paisley is one of country music’s greatest living guitar players. On his latest album, 5th Gear, the reigning CMA Male Vocalist of the Year blends his masterful chicken pickin’ with just the right amount of the clever humor that has helped establish him as one of the most entertaining…
Ingrid Michaelson hasn’t been getting much sleep lately. The singer has been caught up in a whirlwind of activity that all started over a year ago, when her song “Breakable” was used on an episode of Grey’s Anatomy. The show then placed her endearing tune “The Way I Am,” which…
