There are few spin doctors capable of melding the soaring, often poignant melodies of deep house with the mechanical, syncopated beats of pure techno, but Yooj (the stage name of tech-house impresario Eugene Albert) is one of them. And Yooj’s career has taken one or two ironic turns. A native of…
Ah, yes, with Denver looking like the inside of a snow globe right now, it seems only fitting for the folks at SnowBall Music Festival to reveal the first part of the lineup for the third edition of their annual mountain music festival. EDM and hip-hop heads will be stoked…
With the exception of the almighty Clutch (pictured above), the entirety of this week’s enticing options are all homegrown, including the Foodchain’s first headlining show at the Bluebird with 9th Wonder behind the decks and a slate of Mile High heavyweights; OneRepublic’s second annual Denver Acoustic Christmas; Born in the…
As pretty much anybody here can attest, DeVotchKa’s music is already plenty bewitching and enthralling on its own. So you can only imagine how amazing it sounds with the accompaniment of the Colorado Symphony Orchestra. If you caught the act with the CSO at its pair of performances this past…
AIR DUBAI @ OGDEN THEATRE | 12/15/12 Within minutes of Air Dubai taking the stage at the Ogden this past Saturday, it became apparent that this Colorado band is beloved by its familiar fans. Maybe it was because some of them used to live down the street, or maybe it…
On Friday, Ryan Tedder from OneRepublic was sitting a hotel room in San Francisco, struggling with some powerful emotions. It was anger at first, anger at the inexplicable deaths of more than two dozen first graders and their teachers in Newtown, Connecticut. But like the rest of us, that fury…
ZAPPA PLAYS ZAPPA @ FOX THEATRE | 12/15/12 “Still, nothing sounds like that,” Dweezil Zappa marveled after his band had made its way through “Who Are the Brain Police?” the feedback-laden, surreal anthem from the 1966 Mothers of Invention album Freak Out!. Dweezil and the rest of the Zappa Plays…
T.I. / KS-107.5 JINGLE JAM @ 1STBANK CENTER | 12/15/12 After a bit of a wait, the lights dimmed. Screams of delight filled the 1STBANK Center, fighting for preeminence in a veritable bass-made earthquake. A booming, overpowering voice delivered a fiery sermon as the man of the evening finally took…
DIVINE FITS @ BLUEBIRD THEATER |12/14/12 Picking a high point of a show as thoroughly enjoyable as this one would be tough, but when Alex Fischel started playing the synth intro to “You Got Lucky” by Tom Petty — which could have gone either way, kitschy or funny — and…
It feels like we say this every week, and we probably do, but we’re continually astounded by how good we have it here music-wise. If you haven’t noticed, this time of year, the number of touring acts decreases dramatically, generally in line with the music industry itself, which pretty much…
For the past few weeks or so, Air Dubai has been teasing a big announcement. We had a pretty good idea what it was (for as big as it is, Denver’s still a pretty small town when it comes to some things, especially juicy gossip), and last night at KTCL’s…
Hallelujah! It’s finally Friday. Feel like cutting loose this weekend, having a few cocktails and then cutting a rug like nobody’s watching? You’ve come to exactly the right place. As with every week around this time, we’ve put together a full rundown of the best EDM options available to you,…
FUN. @ 1STBANK CENTER | 12/13/12 If you came to KTCL’s Not So Silent Night at the 1STBANK Center last night expecting to hear “We Are Young”-like songs for the duration of fun.’s almost two-hour set, you were disappointed. That’s not to say that the rest of the songs paled…
Once again it’s on. The finalists have been announced for KTCL’s annual Hometown for the Holidays promotion. Although some are understandably loathsome of such battle of the bands types of gigs, Hometown for the Holidays is a great gift to the scene. Is there any other city in the country…
Brent Loveday had a moment of clarity on the road. It came one night in Oklahoma City, while he and his band, Reno Divorce, were on tour, and it happened somewhere in the midst of kicking out the side window of their new tour van, then horsing around and hanging…
Most people these days probably know Nathaniel Rateliff best as an acclaimed singer-songwriter with an album out on Rounder Records who’s toured and shared bills locally with Mumford & Sons. Before he embarked on a successful solo career, though, he used to front a band called Born in the Flood,…
Even though Divine Fits got started earlier this year, its members are hardly unknown figures: Britt Daniel started the experimental pop group Spoon in Austin in the early ’90s; Dan Boeckner played guitar and sang in the like-minded and popular Wolf Parade; and drummer Sam Brown came to this project…
The word “Americana” comes up a lot in Of Monsters and Men’s press coverage, despite the fact the band hails from Iceland. Apparently, “Icelandicana” is not a thing. In any case, that lazily applied label is shorthand for the kind of indie-pop-meets-folk sound that’s been all the rage over the…
Bob Weir is a restless soul. Already fully engaged with Furthur (his latest and perhaps most true-to-form post-Grateful Dead venture), his solo band Ratdog, assorted musical projects at his TRI Studios, activity in various political and environmental organizations, and the occasional mountain-bike foray, this founding member of the Dead comes…
Although in the minds of many, Dethklok represents the unlikely foray of death metal into the mainstream, it was pioneers like Maryland’s Dying Fetus that did the legwork in establishing and refining the art form. Beginning in 1991, Dying Fetus fused technical death metal with grindcore, and co-founder and singer/guitarist…
In the vein of the influential Switched On series pioneered by Wendy Carlos, Mike Buckley of Nightshark recorded this timely album. Much as Carlos famously did with Bach, using only a Micromoog and a vocoder, Buckley performs synthesizer interpretations of classic Christmas songs that almost have to be heard to…
Although Fred Hess has released a number of excellent small-ensemble recordings, the saxophonist’s big-band recordings are equally captivating. As with his previous two big-band outings, Speak borrows from big bands of the past while also looking toward the future. Some of the area’s finest musicians are on board here, like…
