This week in local hip-hop, we have a bunch of new tracks from a fresh new face, Kid Plat, as well as some others we’re already familiar with, including a food-heavy cut from Turner Jackson, a nostalgia-tinged track from the Roadside Profits, and a very grown-up collaboration featuring Haven, Surgon…
Lollapalooza turns twenty years old this year. Can you believe it? We can’t. Doesn’t seem like it was two decades ago when Perry Farrell introduced America to his roving festival in 1991. The inaugural version, which made a stop at Fiddler’s Green, featured Farrell’s band Jane Addiction, along with Nine…
Beat-man Tomas Fec (aka Tobacco, who performs tonight with Beans and Shapers at the Larimer Lounge) is not only a sound manipulator, but has the warped visuals to match. Tobacco’s musical creations are best experienced live for this reason, as he projects pop- and consumer-culture collages while creating his live…
Former Sony Corporation president Norio Ohga, the man widely attributed for pushing Sony into a new generation that led to the standardization of the Compact Disc format, passed away on Saturday from multiple organ failure. He was 81. While Ohga left Sony in 2000 to focus on music — namely…
Here’s what’s good in the Mile High City this week: On the concert front, we’ve received word that Kings of Leon is slated for a two-night stand at Red Rocks with Band of Horses, Tony Bennett is due at Ellie Caulkins and Symphony on the Rocks will feature Sarah McLachlan,…
“I remember hopping out the car and just praying to God to please help me,” says Innerstate Ike, recounting a fateful night almost six years ago when he was shot while sitting at a stoplight in Capitol Hill. “I looked on the other side, and Cac was on the ground…
You can trace the history of Hart’s Corner Bar & Restaurant through the black-and-white photos hanging on one wall of the building at 5201 West Mississippi Avenue. Hailed as the oldest business in Lakewood, it got its start as a root-beer stand during Prohibition, then became a small barbecue joint/gas…
The music of Slakjaw sounds like the members of the band took Eddy Joe Cotton’s book Hobo to heart, hopped a train and then stumbled off the rails near the 20th Street viaduct somewhere around 1992 and spent the intervening years crawling their way through all the bars, collecting and…
As the primary songwriter for Dinosaur Jr., J Mascis influenced a generation of guitarists by bridging the gap between hardcore, experimental guitar rock and psychedelia. Mascis’s songs perfectly balance sonic aggression with fluidity, and his lyrics speak deeply to a generation of people who came to realize that they will…
It’s hard to imagine that Coheed and Cambria is celebrating its tenth anniversary as a band this year. During a decade-long stint as one of rock’s only trans-media bands, Coheed and Cambria has managed to release not just a crop of solid albums, but comics and novels as well. While…
Mogwai’s evocative, largely instrumental rock adventure first gained notice in the mid-’90s with a promising debut album, Young Team. Since then, the Scottish act has produced some of the most breathtakingly cinematic compositions of recent years. The group’s textured melodies induce moments of claustrophobic anxiety, transcendent peacefulness and catharsis —…
Opposites, as Paula Abdul once noted, attract. In Abdul’s case, the opposite was Skat Cat, a rapping, cigarette-smoking cartoon feline whose straight-up making out with the live-action Paula lent the whole video a vaguely disturbing sexual undertone. In the case of M.I.A., the opposite is apparently Chris Brown — and…
This self-titled EP from Bare Bones feels a lot like fall, which could be a generic seasonal connotation that comes along with the sawing and shuffling sounds typical of Western Americana and alt-country. But the sense of an inevitable autumn isn’t a bad thing at all: The quartet’s founders, Blake…
In the liner notes to 12 Preludes and Fugues, Michael Pagán writes about how, as a jazz musician, he’s always had a fascination with the saxophone, and, as a composer, with counterpoint. So on a whim, he wrote a fugue for four voices, and he immediately heard it for saxophones…
Reverb and the Verse isn’t the first act to bring together hip-hop with experimental electronic music. The lyrics that flow across this release aren’t just rapped, though; they’re delivered like a soul song. “Split” sounds like what might have happened if Trent Reznor had tried his hand at hip-hop a…
Last year’s mixtape from Acezi was all about defecting samurai and the need to create a new system of style and art. In what is designed to be an album update of sorts, Ronin 1.1 Enter the Villain uses very dense subject matter to paint a picture of preserving individuality…
While the Swedish trio Junip got its start nearly a dozen years ago, the band took about five years off while frontman José González’s solo career took off — thanks in large part to González’s cover of the Knife’s “Heartbeats,” which was used in a Sony Bravia commercial and in…
The aptly named DJ ESP (aka Woody McBride) has a long and illustrious resumé — and not just in the electronica world. In 1988, McBride moved to Minneapolis and immediately became involved in community service, coaching basketball, tribal and Celtic-style dance, and spinning what he refers to as “spiritually oriented…
Update, 5/2: Congratulations to Gary Peck and Gina Lux, this week’s VIP upgrade winners. Didn’t win? No worries. We’ll be rolling out another contest tomorrow. Got your tickets for Showcase yet? What are you waiting for? Now’s the time. In case you haven’t heard, this is the last week you’ll…
Scottish-born singer KT Tunstall (who plays the Bluebird Theater tonight with Robert Francis and Miggs) is, essentially, a one-woman band. Utilizing her own voice and a looping pedal, Tunstall creates layers of sound and faux-instrumentation to back her powerful crooning…
Way back in 2007, a company called Amie Street introduced variable pricing for MP3 sales. The premise was simple: The more copies sold, the higher the price. The concept didn’t work out so well. Amie Street was purchased and subsequently shuttered by Amazon in 2010. That hasn’t stopped Ticketmaster from…
SHPONGLETRON EXPERIENCE with Random Rab and Hallucinogen 04.23.11 | Boulder Theater If the preview for this colossal structure wasn’t enough to get your eyes thirsting for the real thing, then get off your ass and go see the Shpongletron for yourself. With much help from Random Rab, the Shpongletron Experience…
