Music

Denver rapper/producer and former radio personality Lenny Lenn and his Kintenders imprint are offering their entire catalog for free download.The catalog features three compilation albums, solo projects from Lenny Lenn, James Ray, Joe D, and Mr. H, as well as collaborative projects with DJ Psycho and Q-Burse. When asked why…

Did you see this yet? We just caught a link to this on Twitter (thanks, MyBodySings), a list of artists whose music was used “during the detention and interrogation of” to torture “prisoners at Guantanamo and other US facilities”? The list, published by the National Security Archive and reportedly culled…

Hey Guys, So, your last show is this Saturday, October 24 at the Bluebird. I understand that circumstance dictates it, but it makes me sad. You guys have been one of my favorite bands over the past three years since I first saw you live at the Donnybrook Bastille Day…

Editor’s note: Whitney the Intern is in New York for CMJ, the annual music festival and conference. She filed this dispatch. An upstanding establishment serving beer in Solo cups on tables lit by candles in bar glasses, Wicked Willy’s was precisely the venue one would hope to see an act…

Great Lake Swimmers, Wooden Birds, Brothers O’Hair Larimer Lounge October 21, 2009 Better Than: Bird watching in the snow. Brothers O’Hair were clearly the least seasoned and the least purely talented of the three band bill. They were also by far the best live act, engaging the crowd of friends…

Let’s live hard together!” So declares the MySpace bio of Ault-based singer-songwriter Chad Price, a man known to pack more heartache and drunkenness into a single song than some do in their entire careers. No one who’s been following Price’s alt-country band Drag the River up close over the past…

After launching the anticon. label with Pedestrian in 1998, Sole (due at the hi-dive on Sunday, October 25) has become one of the world’s most influential underground hip-hop artists. With a dense stream-of-consciousness lyrical delivery and emotionally charged beats and music to accompany the weighty content, Sole established himself early…

Unlike their sonic brethren the Animal Collective on the East Coast, San Francisco’s the Dodos keep it simple — but hardly stupid. Steeped in psychedelic folk and classic pop, leader Meric Long and crew focus on tattered guitars, huge yet warm drums and the kinds of melodies and harmonies that…

Formed in 1980, Youth Brigade played shows with hardcore bands, but its music didn’t focus on speed or brutality. Instead, the Stern brothers wrote songs that addressed the concerns of conscious young men of the day, like existential angst and criticizing a power-mad government vastly streamlining society in favor of…

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Tommy Ramone knows a thing or two about sheer volume: As a founder and producer of the Ramones, the drummer helped pioneer the sound of rock as we know it. Now in his sixties, Ramone spends his time apart from the drum kit…

Although there’s video of the Damned titled Final Damnation, which includes footage of a 1988 reunion show in London, it was hardly the last straw for an act that got its start during London’s burgeoning punk movement in the late ’70s. Just the same, there were a few rough patches…

Eric Paul and Craig Kureck both inspired and confounded audiences as members of the influential noise-rock combo Arab on Radar. After that act disbanded in 2002, Paul and Kureck formed the Chinese Stars and continued in a similar vein, still making deranged, outré music but incorporating danceable rhythms that would…

It’s not often that you encounter an instantly satisfying record that also rewards repeated listens. Hello Kavita’s sophomore effort blows in like a lost 1972 Flying Burrito Brothers record, tumbling across the California desert. The seductively spare ten-song collection has the polish and professionalism you’d expect from such seasoned players…

On the Bottesini Project’s outstanding self-titled debut, leader and saxophonist Paul Riola recruited high-caliber musicians like Tortoise guitarist Jeff Parker and drummer Scott Amendola to play on tunes that were largely improvised. For its followup, Naima’s Grass Pajamas, Riola assembled a new cast of players, among them Wilco guitarist Nels…

Mirror Universe isn’t a subsidiary of Siltbreeze, but the ultra-lo-fi production on this album’s nine tracks makes it sound like it is. From the beginning, it’s a bit like what you might get using an old reel-to-reel machine you picked up at a garage sale to listen to some unmarked…

Nimble-fingered Leftover Salmonite Drew Emmitt teams with String Cheese Incident strummer Bill Nershi for a soul-warming platter of acoustic fare. The shimmeringly clear recording enables a rootsy blend of strings to ring through on everything from the Gypsy jazz-inspired instrumental cut “Surfing the Red Sea” to the Latin-infused track “Mango…

For the past fifteen years, Matthew Kelly has been entrenched in the local hip-hop scene. Although his stage name has changed over the years, Kelly, now known as Babah Fly, has been one of the most consistent artists in that scene. Whether he’s putting in work as a solo artist…

Few, if any, living guitarists can match Adrian Belew’s impressive resumé in terms of depth and range of accomplishment over the course of his four-decades-long career. Belew first came to prominence as a player on Frank Zappa’s 1979 album Sheik Yerbouti, which led to his long-term role in King Crimson…