Concerts

Since 1980, the Legendary Pink Dots have been creating some of the most inventive, darkly imaginative and emotionally stirring music around. Based originally in London, the Pink Dots relocated to the Netherlands in the mid-’80s, and its lineup has long included both English and Dutch membership. Last year, longtime members…

THE LEGENDARY PINK DOTS Munly & The Lupercalians 10.19.10 | Gothic Theatre, Denver, CO Even if you’ve seen Munly play anytime within the past two decades, nothing really prepares you for this whole Lupercalians thing. For one, it takes some chutzpah to name yourself after a now-obscure ancient Roman rite…

The French government has revealed a plan to combat piracy that could either be the most brilliant gesture ever or the most monumental waste of government resources of all time (okay, maybe not all time, but close). The proposal: French residents can buy a 50-euro gift card with which they…

THE NATIONAL 10.18.10 | Fillmore Auditorium, Denver, CO In a New York Times piece written on the National last April, R.E.M. frontman Michael Stipe explained how he took his bandmate Mike Mills to see the group in London. It took half a song for Mills to say it was the…

ANTHRAX Cephalic Carnage • Havok 10.18.10 | Summit Music Hall, Denver Cephalic Carnage talks a lot about its love for THC-related products on stage. “Lucid Interval,” for example, is evidently about being totally stoned and sober at the same time. Just the same, most of the songs written by the…

As monikers go, Overcasters is a magnificent name for a rock-and-roll band, especially one as noisy, tempestuous and imposing as the outfit that Kurt Ottaway leads. It also happens to be an apt metaphor for the ominous pall that’s hung over the musician’s endeavors from the very beginning. Every significant…

The management of the Oriental Theater (4335 West 44th Avenue) has changed hands. The owners of 3 Kings Tavern, who’d operated the historic 700-person venue for the past year, signed a deal last week with Absolutely Huge Entertainment, which will take over the place. Headed by Anna Muniz, who has…

Ralph Gean’s storied life can best be read about on his eponymous website. Before that site existed, most people who knew about him probably either saw him at warehouse spaces like Monkey Mania or learned of him through those affiliated with the DIY underground. Often seen wearing a thin mask…

Pilot Talk, the latest album from the New Orleans-based rapper known as Curren$y (Shante Anthony Franklin), is a guaranteed smoker’s delight, taking the listener for a trip down the sonic rabbit hole with the help of his Island Def Jam labelmate Ski Beatz, the producer largely known for his production…

Avi Buffalo’s Avigdor Zahner-Isenberg looks and sings like the bastard son of Wayne Coyne and Kevin Drew. Nevertheless, it’s more than just an excess of cute faces that makes his Long Beach-based band so powerful. The group’s self-titled 2009 Sub Pop debut warms up any room it’s played in with…

Like labelmates MSTRKRFT, Bloody Beetroots have a penchant for performing live in costume. Instead of looking like psychotic ax murderers, though, Bloody Beetroots prefer that their “Death Crew 77” looks like Spider-Man villain Venom. Although joined on stage by a variety of musicians, including a live drummer, producer Bob Rifo…

If the term “industrial” wasn’t already fairly synonymous with the heavy, dark electronic music made popular in the late ’80s and early ’90s, it would certainly apply here. It’s as though Ethan Ward, while living in big cities across the country, heard the clashing ambience of construction and factory production…

Ft. Collins-based reedsman Andrew Vogt keeps his chops sharp by playing out three or four nights a week, whether it’s with ZARO, which he co-leads, the Subterranean Quartet, or a number of other groups he performs with. On Cats Afoot, Vogt shows he obviously knows his way around both alto…

Young Cities, formerly Hearts Like Lions, took a trip to Los Angeles last year to visit friend and One Republic guitarist Drew Brown. Brown used his clout to open the doors of the legendary East West Studios, the place where Pet Sounds was recorded and where Brown ultimately produced the…

As a genre, metal has made an incredible amount of progress over the past decade. Denver County Death March couldn’t give a fuck. Not that the band needs to: Packing meat-hook riffs and more misanthropy than a serial-killer convention, the foursome uses its self-titled full-length as a blistering tirade against…

Among the most popular and successful of the bands associated with the Elephant 6 collective, Of Montreal started off as a sort of indie pop band with an experimental edge. Instead of sticking to a strict formula, however, the band evolved dramatically across several records, fearlessly exploring lyrical themes of…

Trip-hop producer and live PA artist Emancipator (known day-to-day as Doug Appling) got his start producing electronic music in 2002 at age fifteen when he procured a copy of ACID Pro software. After dabbling as a drummer, Emancipator moved into producing trance and electro-pop before settling on his current sound…

Adept at both production and turntablism, Gaslamp Killer — known for many years as the Motherfucking Gaslamp Killer (he’s since dropped the Oedipal reference) — is as new-school as it gets. A frequent guest on L.A.’s Low End Theory monthly podcast, the Killer’s hip-hop stylings are all over the place:…

Woodsman and Gauntlet Hair have joined psychedelic forces for a two-week West Coast tour, starting November 5. While the former act has already made a few trips to the closest coast, aligning with its fellow ambient wave-crashers in Gauntlet Hair will offer a nice taste of what Colorado has been…