TEA LEAF GREEN @ BLUEBIRD THEATER | 2/9/13 Tea Leaf Green is no stranger to jamming out. The act take its shit seriously, and when the San Francisco band took the stage at the Bluebird, it got right down to business. The only greeting was by way of the strum…
VELVET ACID CHRIST @ CASSELMAN’S BAR AND VENUE | 2/9/13 At one point or another during Velvet Acid Christ’s set, Bryan Erickson became winded, and he joked about how it was the altitude. He then said it was probably that he was out of shape because of too much eating,…
THE PHOTO ATLAS @ HI-DIVE | 2/8/13 The wide-ranging sounds of “Memory Like a Sinking Ship” was one of the high points of this set from the Photo Atlas. The way the band’s usual wiry energy was threaded together with colorful, incandescent moody passages and hanging melodies around confessional, self-effacing…
So, yeah, I’m watching the Grammys right now and dutifully monitoring the #GRAMMYs hash tag on Twitter (thanks for the helpful reminders, LL). Color me confused. I feel like I just walked into the middle of a movie: On the set, Miranda Lambert and Dierks Bentley are in the middle…
Chris Fogal’s studio has been around for three years, but this evening he and Dan Fox are celebrating Black In Bluhm’s first anniversary with a little gathering amongst friends at their studio. Three years ago, the pair became partners and moved the studio out of Fogal’s Park Hill basement and…
Jai Harris was a poet before she even knew it. Hmm…doesn’t sound as good in the past tense, but in Harris’s case, it really is true. She recalls going to a yard sale with her grandma when she was seven and buying a little book with a poem written on…
Velvet Acid Christ started as an offshoot of Toxic Coma, a project whose strange and unsettling recordings finally saw a wider release last year. Velvet Acid Christ was a decidedly more serious and musical effort rather than an attempt between friends to shock each other and make each other laugh…
We’re right in that lull between three-day weekends, and we almost can’t comprehend waiting until Washington’s birthday to have another Monday off. Thankfully, the weekends in this city always provide plenty of distraction, and this one is no different: On our Dance Card this time around, you’ll find whompy, dirty…
Welcome to the weekend! Another work week is almost in the books. Time to cut loose. If it’s live music you seek, you’ve come to the right place. Tons of great music on tap this weekend, a diverse array of options whatever your flavor, everything from jazz and jam to…
Reed Mathis talks about improvisation like it’s a mystical religion. The current bassist for the San Francisco-based quintet Tea Leaf Green and former frontman of the Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey sees a great deal of power in making music on the spot, and that passion will likely be front and…
Producing music since high school, Eliot Lipp found his own voice in hip-hop beats and instrumentals. One of the most recent additions to the Pretty Lights Music roster, Lipp has been notably prolific in cranking out new tracks and mixes. In advance of his three-night Colorado run, which kicks off…
Great art does not always move units. Case in point: The Stooges’ 1973 album, Raw Power, was a complete flop commercially. But, as with the story about the Velvet Underground, it seems that everyone who did buy it must have been inspired to start a band, because forty years after…
By now you’ve long since been grossed out/freaked out/mesmerized by the seemingly inexhaustible creative genius of Flaming Lips frontman Wayne Coyne, the latest example of which, of course, is an anatomically correct chocolate heart that comes signed by the band in custom packaging and complete with an embedded USB drive…
They fired everybody over Christmas break,” recalls Photo Atlas guitarist Bill Threlkeld III, talking about when he first found out that his band’s label, Stolen Transmission, had gone belly up a few years back. “We were on tour, and our manager called and said, ‘Uh, bad news. It looks like…
In 1990, Bryan Erickson started what would become Velvet Acid Christ with a few like-minded friends whose side and main projects had merged. Recalling early Death In June and Clan of Xymox, the act’s debut effort, Fate, came across as the work of people capable of rapid reinvention. 1995’s Neuralblastoma…
“Where’s Montbello at?” The imploring call echoes around the auditorium of Montbello High School. For the past half hour, the stage here has hosted a special performance by Idris Goodwin, a nationally recognized playwright and rapper, and students from his “Hip-hop Aesthetics” class at Colorado College, where Goodwin is a…
It is going to be pretty difficult for Ty Segall to top the year he had in 2012. The California native released three full length albums, a 7-inch and a tour split, appeared on a compilation, and toured as a member of bandmate/collaborator Mikal Cronin’s solo effort. Add in the…
Brooklyn’s Buke and Gase (formerly Buke and Gass), an outfit comprising Arone Dyer and Aron Sanchez, who played together in the post-punk band Hominid, took its name from two of the instruments the pair created and use to make their music: A buke is a baritone ukulele and a gase…
Winston Yellen, the Nashville-by-way-of-Colorado tunesmith who makes music under the Night Beds moniker, is immediately captivating, and his music bears a distinctive familiarity. With an absolutely gorgeous voice that’s a little bit Robin Pecknold of Fleet Foxes, a little bit Justin Vernon of Bon Iver and a little bit Ryan…
In 1964, drummer Keith Moon approached Roger Daltrey, Pete Townshend and John Entwistle about being in their band, the Who, which had been named the Detours until the outfit found out another band with that name already existed. The foursome went on to become one of the most beloved and…
Reed Mathis talks about improvisation like it’s a mystical religion. The bassist for the San Francisco-based quintet Tea Leaf Green and former frontman of the Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey sees a great deal of power in making music on the spot, and that passion will likely be front and center…
Although Carlo Lio has released a number of EPs and singles on various labels, it wasn’t until last May that his first commercial mix (the highly anticipated SCI+TEC back-catalog blowout Past, Present, Future — Vol. 2) saw the light of day. That might tell you something about the priorities of this…
