For more than a decade, Kathryn Ellinger has been writing consistently compelling and richly diverse music. This double album from Sleepers only adds to her renown. Exploring the wide expanses of the human experience and the finer shades of our emotional landscape, Ellinger’s songs here are fogbound and melancholic while…
Founded in 1981 by Wax Trax Records owner Duane Davis, Local Anesthetic Records documented a scene that didn’t make much noise beyond Colorado’s borders but stirred up plenty of racket within them. Today, much of the material sounds blatantly imitative of artists who actually got out of their home state…
The first few bites of Golden Delicious are almost enough to make you throw away the whole apple. But get past the nasty bits — the first four tracks — and the rest of the disc lives up to its title, beginning with a new version of “27 Jennifers” that…
With Hüsker Dü and Sugar, Bob Mould blanketed bleak tales of relationship woes with layers of electric guitar and driving choruses. On later releases, he turned his attention to electronic music. Although remnants of that era linger on District Line, it mainly follows the playbook of his last CD, Body…
Bang Camaro originators Alex Necochea and Bryn Bennett weren’t thinking logistics when they settled on their “more is more” approach to building a better band. The first time this stadium-metal sensation from Boston hit the stage with twenty lead singers — yes, twenty! — the show was an instant hit…
A trio grows in Brooklyn — an aggressive, spacey and challenging trio. As its name suggests, Dub Trio finds its inspiration in the decades-old aesthetics of bass-heavy, reverb-soaked, sinsemilla-sucking Jamaican reggae, but from that cliff, the group leaps off into completely unexpected and brutal territory. Drummer Joe Tomino, bassist Stu…
Black Cobra was birthed from a cross-country collaboration between former Acid King and -16- bassist Rafael Martinez on drums and former Cavity guitarist Jason Landrian on vocals and guitar. Originally from Miami, Martinez and Landrian met while studying music at Miami Dade Community College, where they learned about a range…
Plenty of bands have used shtick to make a name for themselves, but only the good ones last after the novelty wears off — which explains why the Hives are still around six years after they broke out in the States. The players, led by Howlin’ Pelle Almqvist (the subject…
There’s nothing like a presidential election to make you lose faith in electoral politics. The corporate candidates begin to blur together, and the prospects for meaningful change get slimmer with each passing debate. Maybe it’s like the Minutemen once said: Perhaps some partying will help. That’s where Mahjongg comes in…
Fischerspooner The Best Revenge EP Kitsune 01:45-02:30 of “The Best Revenge” It appears that Fischerspooner is back on the dance train, trying to gain popularity back by releasing a single that is uninspired and sounds kind of like an electronic Peter Gabriel song. It’s hard to “update” a sound you…
INSANE CLOWN POSSE RED ROCKS AMPHITHEATRE SATURDAY, MAY 17 That’s the headline for a press release that just popped into my e-mail box a bit ago from the fine folks at Live Nation. Oh, man, this should be good! Remember back in the day, when the Phish Heads stirred the…
Here’s a selection of the best of last week’s music blogging from around the Village Voice chain: If you don’t believe that DJing can be a legitimate artform, this live review — covering DJ Shadow and Cut Chemist together on eight turntables, mashing up the theme to Gilligan’s Island with…
Ari Hoenig Punk Bop Trio Saturday, February 16 Dazzle Better than: Most jazz shows I’ve seen in the last six months. Ari Hoenig is intense. In his own right the drummer is a force to be reckoned with; so it’s no small compliment to acknowledge that the other two parts…
Locals Only: It’s been about a year since former executive director of the Colorado Hip-Hop Coalition, Apostle, aka Jeff Campbell, left Colorado to focus solely on his music career with his group Heavyweight Dub Champions. But the impact the Colorado Hip-Hop Coalition had in the late ’90’s and early 2000’s…
Slide Show…
Clubbers, beware! Something wicked this way comes — an alien hybrid built out of the DNA of hip-hop, electro, jungle and glitch, fused together via DSP wizardry and masterful laptop skills. With bowel-rupturing sub-bass, teeth-rattling beats and mind-bending cuts, edits and processing, it’s the aural equivalent of an industrial-strength cleanser:…
Apathetic Drive’s name may cause some to scratch their heads or tempt them to come up with a clever and slanderous nickname, but these guys have beat the wags to the punch on that score. If nothing else, the “Drive” portion of the moniker captures the forward trajectory of the…
When I check out a club for the first time, I like to keep a low profile. I’ll just slide into the place, grab a seat at the bar, order a beer and observe for a bit, getting a feel for the joint. But when I walked through the doors…
EXTREMELY FRAGILE. PLEASE BE GENTLE. Watching Gared O’Donnell retrieve his guitar, I can’t help but laugh a little as I catch sight of those words painted on the outside of his hard-shell case in bright, safety-orange-colored letters. Fragile? Really? Explosive, sure. But fragile? Imagine such a timid plea slapped on…
At the venerable age of sixty, bassist George Porter Jr., who provides the effortlessly funky heartbeat for Porter Batiste Stoltz, has become a hero to today’s jam-band aficionados. But this development isn’t as unlikely as it initially seems. Porter made his bones as the anchor of the Meters — a…
Last April, when jazz drummer Ari Hoenig returned to New York after playing a gig in Denver, he was greeted by an e-mail from a woman who wrote him a long, thoughtful note expressing how much she hated the music his trio played at Dazzle. He was a bit stunned…
Thriller 25 hit stores this week. For obvious reasons, the world’s best-selling album probably won’t get its proper due, so Chicago rapper Rhyme-fest (with the help of producer Mark Ronson) posted Man in the Mirror free at his online store (www.rhymefeststore.com, click on Mixtapes). On his MySpace blog, Rhyme writes,…
