Combining hip-hop and heavy music can prove disastrous (Limp Bizkit, anyone?). Minneapolis rapper P.O.S. (aka Stefon Alexander), however, proves that when a punk discovers hip-hop, the results can be amazing. Combining four-on-the-floor-style house beats with the exuberance of his punk-rock past, P.O.S. exists in a world where it’s okay to…
Named after a Siberian cryptid cognate of Bigfoot, Tjutjuna emerged from the band Mothership when guitarist Brendon Schulze left to pursue a professional career in television. Rather than continue with vividly imagined, Michael Moorcock-esque tales of science fantasy, however, Tjutjuna focused on the instrumental aspect of the band’s overall sound…
The songs on Video Games & Popsicle Sticks recall a time before non-mainstream music was splintered off into increasingly hermetic subgenres. Fuzzed-out melodic guitar over insistent rhythms and dark undertones grace each track like cuts from a secret collaboration between Throwing Muses and Band of Susans. A hint of garage…
What About Pluto? sounds ridiculously polished for a band one EP into its existence. Part of that is the production, from the Hook Factory. But this is also a sure-handed group, confident in each bass groove, drum kick and vowel wail. For all its technical proficiency, however, What About Pluto?…
Everything ain’t for everybody — and Naeem Oba and brikAbrak’s You Are Not One of Us bolsters this notion. Brazen and controversial, it is offensive and meant to incite. On “Go Hard,” Oba announces himself as “The General,” with an eloquently contentious testimony, calling Barack Obama a puppet amid conspiracy…
While Chris Daniels has a 25-year history in these parts of horn-based, good-time blues rock/R&B, he gets over to Holland occasionally to team up with the like-minded Dutch R&B/soul act the BMaster. We’ll Meet Again is a collaboration of the two playing live at the Q-Bus in Leiden, Holland. Early…
When not performing as a member of the Glitch Mob, Ooah (Josh Mayer) sometimes collaborates with Martin Folb in Panty Raid. Not firmly entrenched in a specific style of electronic music, this project seems to freely associate and appropriate sound ideas and techniques from a wide variety of sources, including…
Coming on like Brian Wilson clad in the leathery hide of Captain Beefheart, the five young men of Hermit Thrushes have no problem gutting indie rock and playing gleefully with its innards. On the Philly group’s two full-lengths, Slight Fountain and Benaki, it uses a mostly conventional batch of instruments…
A telepath is a creature that can communicate directly with the mind of another sentient being without the need for vocalization. This fact appears to inform the core of what the band Telepath attempts in its music. Because music transcends language and can communicate ideas and emotions directly, Telepath largely…
There’s nothing remotely new about Girls, the brainchild of San Francisco-based songwriter Christopher Owens. But what the band brings is in short supply today: tender but not affected pop music with strong overtones of classic songcraft — Elvis Costello and Jarvis Cocker surely rank highly in Owens’s personal pantheon —…
Although golf is a big sport in Colorado, there are few opportunities to play in the dead of winter. Enter Swingers, an upscale sports lounge that just opened next to the Robusto Room at 9535 Park Meadows Drive in Lone Tree. The bar has state-of-the-art golf simulators that allow you…
Inspired by the legendary field recordings of Alan Lomax, James Minchin and our pal Rod Blackhurst have been traversing the country recording various musicians, including one of our personal favorite songwriters, Franky Perez, in a completely stark, unaffected environment. (Watch Perez’s clip here.) Early on as the two embarked on…
Gotta give it up to brother Tres for turning us on to Broken Bells a few weeks ago. Finally got around to checking out the video for “The High Road,” one of the first songs to from Broken Bells, the name given to the collaboration between James Mercer (the Shins)…
Earlier this morning, The Commercial Appeal in Memphis, Jay Reatard’s hometown newspaper, reported that the cause of his death last month has now been determined. As suspected and widely feared, Reteard’s life was evidently cut short by his hard-living lifestyle. Waiting For Something – a short documentary about Jay Reatard…
If M.C. Escher was into doing collage, we think he might come up with something a lot like this week’s flier of the week. The bizarre, impossible geometry and wash of colors of the main image is eye catching, as a good flier should be. But it’s the weird little…
Holy hell! As if any of us needed yet another workplace distraction. At least when we’re listening to the BS Report we can get some stuff done. This one here, though, killed at least a half hour for us just now. Ever wonder what the 3OH!3 guys would look like…
Speaking of festivals: Road trip, anybody? Who’s up for making the trek out to Bonnaroo this summer? We’ve always wanted to go but the date always conflicted with the Westword Music Showcase and even if it didn’t, there just didn’t seem to be a compelling enough reason to jump in…
Maybe it’s the post-Grammy slump, or perhaps it’s an entire nation enthralled with something called Lost, but we’ve wandered off into the internet to find something a little different today. That something is something called Devil’s Tuning Fork which made us smile from ear to ear and think of strange…
Playing like a vivid dream sequence in which the members of A Shoreline Dream gently lull you to sleep, the act’s new video for “Manhattan Beach” looks precisely what you’d expect it to look like just based upon hearing the band’s dreamy compositions. Extreme close-ups of the members faces and…
Gonna guess that post-Idol chatter across the nation this morning is centered around Bikini Boy, aka Ty Hemmerling, the 26-year-old doofus that auditioned last night in a bikini. Novel, dude. Way to earn notoriety. Yawn. Even the judges were nonplussed (see their reaction after the jump). Around here, though, we’re…
Steve Earle, Hayes Carll Tuesday, February 2 Boulder Theater Steve Earle is going to pretend he’s playing a Tom Waits cover, but we all know he’s doing the theme from The Wire. That out-of-his mind guy in the back with the shockingly loud voice tells him he was great in…
Here what the area’s local-centric specialty radio shows were spinning this week. We’re currently tracking the playlists a number of different shows including, Radio 1190’s Local Shakedown*, KTCL’s Locals Only, the Colorado Sound, which originates at KRFC and is re-broadcast all over Colorado, 99.5 the Mountain’s Homegrown Show, KBCO’s Local…
