While trumpeter Joshua Trinidad is a deft jazz player and performs with his own quintet and quartet, he also plays with Wheelchair Sports Camp and Poets Row. As evidenced with some of his previous efforts, Trinidad, who sometimes runs his trumpet through guitar effects, is well versed in electronic and…
Gramatik (aka Denis Jasarevic) had played master of ceremonies for a long night of music. It started at 6 p.m. and included some of his friends and heroes: BRANX and Gibbz and Exmag were there, and legendary funk band Lettuce dropped a bravura performance in the middle of the show…
In his song “CTW (Change the World),” from the just-released Force of Nature Vol. 1, local rapper Plat Maravich questions the stereotypical rapping paradigm. “Got money, got girls, but can you change the world?” he raps. It’s a lofty goal for any artist, but one that Maravich hopes to work…
Guitar wiz Nels Cline says he used to envy people who could stick to one genre, like musicians who’d say, “All I do is play swing, or all I do is play bluegrass, or all I do is play prepared guitar.” But for Cline, due tonight at Dazzle, focusing on…
Although frontman Chris Anderson moved to Boston last year, indie-rock outfit Fierce Bad Rabbit, originally from Fort Collins, hasn’t broken up. On the contrary, the quartet is busy making music and playing gigs across the country. Even so, distance has affected the dynamic of the band and its members in…
The Blasters, due at the Lion’s Lair tonight, May 6, and tomorrow, May 7, were founded in 35 years ago in Downey, California, by brothers Phil and Dave Alvin along with drummer Bill Bateman and bassist John Bazz. Steeped in American music traditions, the band easily traverses through blues, rockabilly,…
TaunTaun is a band of unusual provenance. Its members are all luminaries of the Denver music scene, but their other bands don’t sound much like each other, and they sound even less like TaunTaun. It was the musicians’ shared teenage love for ’80s metal that initially informed the group’s music,…
Between 2006 and 2011, jazz guitarist Matt Fuller endured the loss of his grandfather, his father, his grandmother and his mother. During that period, Fuller wrote a number of songs that helped him through the healing process. Those songs appear on his debut album, Waiting for Violet, which he will…
Wayne Shorter, who headlines the UNC/Greeley Jazz Festival on Friday, April 25, doesn’t have typical days. The 80-year-old saxophone legend, who was a member of the Miles Davis Quintet and Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, says it’s all an adventure. The day we speak with him, Shorter tells us he is…
Lola, the frontwoman for Lola Black, has been carrying brass knuckles since she was a teenager. So far, she hasn’t had to use them. “Sometimes coming out of a bar, I’ll put them in my back pocket, just in case,” she says. “You never know…” Since the band’s 2008 inception,…
Mark Hosler is Denver Noise Fest’s headliner for Saturday, April 25th at Rhinoceropolis. Hosler is best known as one of the founding and continuous members of legendary experimental band Negativland. That project earned a lifetime of notoriety for the 1991 release of its U2 EP. That art prank proved especially…
The Glitch Mob’s new stage setup is called the Blade, and it consists of three structures that resemble turbines. “We collaborated with Martin Phillips. He took a liking to us early on,” says bandmember Josh “Ooah” Mayer. Known for co-creating Daft Punk’s famed Pyramid for the Alive tour in 2006…
Record Store Day is once again upon us, with its candy-colored vinyl and improbably in-store performances and endless lines. Like anything that becomes popular, the holiday is starting to develop detractors among music fans who see it as everything from a pain in the ass to a gimmicky, patronizing tourist…
Magic Cyclops returns from the rumors of his premature 2011 death to perform at Wax Trax Records this Saturday, April 19th for Record Store Day. For the occasion he is also releasing a limited edition of his “Captain Badass” single on square vinyl. That night he will reprise his performance…
The Knife (due Monday, April 21, at The Fillmore Auditorium) from Stockholm, Sweden, is an experimental synth pop duo comprised of Karin Dreijer Andersson and her brother Olof Dreijer. Since the project’s founding in 1999, it has explored unusual rhythmic ideas. Its 2003 album Deep Cuts garnered the group an…
OFF! (due Saturday, April 19, at The Marquis Theatre) is a bit of a hardcore supergroup, founded by Keith Morris formerly of Black Flag and Circle Jerks and Dimitri Coats who was best known as a member of heavy rock band Burning Brides. The two became friends not long after…
As the previous infrastructure of the music industry collapses around us, individual artists and small groups are charged with an array of roles they never held before. Every band or artist must also find a way to either be her own manager, publicist, engineer, filmmaker, etc. or find a close…
“Skypin’ with Jesus on the Eagle Hotline. Flyin’ so high, looking for a good time? Dial 8-1-3, EAGLE 69.” The Bald Eagles Hotline is real. If you dial 813-EAGLE-69 and Arthur Jimenez, a.k.a. Pimp Eagle, and Dominic Esparza, a.k.a. Sun-Ray Eagle Boi happen to be in the same room, they…
Laurent Garnier has been producing music longer than most of the electronic music fans have been alive. Growing up in the European scene, Garnier has proven that staying true to yourself as a musician is still one way to ensure career longevity. In advance of his appearances at Beta next…
Colorado Governor John Hicknlooper has long been invested in the culture of the state. As Denver’s Mayor, Hickenlooper was a common sight at things like art gallery openings and concerts, and his roots in the community include co-founding Wynkoop Brewing Company in LoDo. He has spent the past three and…
The members of Residual Kid (due Friday and Saturday, April 4 and 5, at the Hi-Dive) from Austin, Texas are all fifteen-years-old or younger. Despite their youth, it is impossible to ignore their sheer power of the songs — they’re something more than you’d expect out of three guys who…
Gary Numan (due Friday, April 4, at The Gothic Theatre) is most widely remembered for his 1980 hit song “Cars.” That song was merely the most popular in an influential career that had a direct impact on artists as diverse as Prince, Beck, Lady Gaga and, of course, Nine Inch…
