Taroug (aka Tarek Zarroug) releases his new album Chott on March 27, 2026 via Denovali Records and the single “Najet” further embodies the German-Tunisian producer’s brilliance at fusing modern experimental electronic dance music and traditional Tunisian sounds. The dub-like beats and the echo of wind instruments before the flute takes forefront in carrying melody while vocals interweave throughout the track while scintillating patterns spin around the edges gives and clearly organic hand drums come into the mix gives the song a distinctly futuristic feel but one that embraces elements of the past that give it a new context. One doesn’t often associate the creative products with a link to Tunisian or Islamic cultures generally as something futuristic and that’s just what Taroug has done with the song and the album linking cross-cultural musical influences to create something new. Fans of the more electronic end of Muslimgauze or the more experimental, production infused releases by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan will appreciate Taroug’s knack for depth of layers and immersive soundscaping. Listen to “Najet” on YouTube and follow Taroug at the links below.
The Playground Ensemble, Eight Songs For a Mad King, March 8, 2019, Mercury Cafe
The Playground Ensemble is a new music group based in Denver formed in 2006. Composed of professional musicians, composers, educators and members of the local community dedicated to presenting modern chamber music not purely as a vehicle for performing classical music of centuries past. The group cultivates local composers new, up-and-coming and more established as a means of showing how music based in classical modes can be a valid and vibrant mode of expression. Operating in a multi-disciplinary fashion often collaborating with dancers, poets, spoken word artists, visual/multi-media artists The Playground Ensemble has also brought noteworthy artists to town that might not otherwise find an avenue for live performance in Colorado. From the beginning one of the leading figures of the group has been Conrad Kehn who came to more classical composition as a regular thing later in life than some other musicians. From Gehring, Nebraska, Kehn had a bit of a background in classical music but like any young person in the late 80s and early 90s he got into alternative music and by late summer 1992 he had moved to Denver and attended Denver University.
As happens when you have an interest in music you end up meeting people and he moved in with a member of a band called Pieces of Lucy. He and the bass player moved on from the project and formed Skull Flux. The band was too Goth for the metal scene, too hard rock for the Goth scene but anyone listening in retrospect would recognize the band as death rock band ahead of its time. The group played shows with the likes of Twice Wilted, Body of Souls and 40th Day, noteworthy acts in the broad realm of alternative music. Guitarist Greg Stretton would go on to a stint in industrial dream pop downtempo band The Siren Project and bassist Steve Millin in progressive folk group The Reals. Kehn formed the short-lived more industrial group Kallisti before shifting more into avant-garde and modern classical music as an academic, a place he has contributed to greatly locally and connected to globally.
The Playground Ensemble is celebrating its 20 year anniversary with a 20 hour marathon on Saturday, March 21, 2026. In ambitious yet accessible fashion with community outreach and goals in mind the event will include a morning yoga session with music, afternoon and evening concerts feature new music (in the modern classical sense) as well as a later night experimental music event with after hours improv. Sprawling from MSU’s Kalamath Building to Stanley Marketplace to the Holiday Theater and Glob it is an event aimed at highlighting various aspects of The Playground Ensemble’s legacy and ongoing goals.
Full schedule and details below. For more information please visit www.playgroundensemble.org. Listen to our conversation with Conrad Kehn on Bandcamp.
Spontaneous Team Composition Workshop (all ages and levels welcome) Metropolitan State University of Denver’s Kalamath Building 800 Kalamath St, Denver, CO 80204
Join Denver’s The Playground Ensemble as we celebrate our 20th season with a 20-hour MARATHON of new music.
The day opens at 7:00 AM with a yoga session and gong bath, followed by the Sound Bites breakfast meet-and-greet.
After breakfast, participants will be divided into small groups and given 90 minutes to collaboratively create a new work to be shared at the end of the session. Each group will be facilitated by Playground Ensemble teaching artists who will guide participants through the music creation process using hand gesture composition, graphic notation, structured improvisation, digital audio workstations, and musical story-telling to name a few.
Bring your own instrument and we will also provide a variety of electronic and found sound instruments to help ‘orchestrate’ and inspire creativity. The teaching artists will demonstrate how these approaches are adaptable to a wide range of educational contexts and are accessible to learners of all ability levels and musical backgrounds. The session will conclude with a performance of each group’s composition.
Afternoon at The Stanley Marketplace 2501 N. Dallas St. Aurora, Colorado 80010
Join Denver’s The Playground Ensemble as we partner with Friends of Chamber Music to celebrate our 20th season with an afternoon of music creation and community at The Stanley Marketplace. Each session highlights a different part of what makes Playground Ensemble the innovative organization that it is.
Family/Community Music-Making 1-2:30 PM: We invite families (grown-ups too!) to create their own instruments and compositions. Create your own compositions using colors and shapes and hear them played on the spot! Record your own beats at our electronic music station. Make tongue depressor kazoos, and play our collection of strange found sound instruments.
At 2 PM, Sing With Us! Meet us in the Stanley commons for a community singing of Pauline Oliveros’ Tuning Meditation. Using any vowel sound, sing a tone that you hear in your imagination. Listen for someone else’s tone and tune to its pitch as exactly as possible. Introduce new tones at will and tune to as many different voices as are present. Sing warmly.
String Quartet Concert 2:30 PM: In keeping with the spirit of Stanley Marketplace, the Playground String Quartet provides an eclectic sample of works by Latino, Indigenous, and women composers. Including works by Gabriela Ortiz, Raven Chacon, and Caroline Shaw, this program contains the breadth of both Playground’s style and their mission.
Playground at 20! MCA Denver at the Holiday Theater 2644 W 32nd Ave, Denver, CO 80211
Hosted by MCA Denver at the Holiday Theater, this series of concerts is the heart of MARATHON.
The evening starts with Shane Courville (trumpet, electronics, composer) and Nathan Hall (piano, electronics, composer) presenting solo, duo, and improvised works on themes of freedom: freedom of nations and sovereignty, freedom to express our own identities, and the freedom of creative collaboration.
Up next join Leah and Josh for a 30-minute program of (mostly) contemporary art songs that recall childhood and gently remind us never to stop playing, even amidst the gloom and doom of life today. When you look through the kaleidoscope of your childhood, what do you see? Do the bright spots of hope, nature, and laughter stand out, or does darkness prevail?
After these two duo sets we gather for a celebratory toast to all that has been accomplished in the previous two decades while looking forward to the future.
At 8PM is the main event, The Playground @ 20!
This chamber concert features the first work we ever played, a new commission by Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez for bass flute and ‘ghost’ string quartet, and a new work by Playground Director Conrad Kehn for the entire ensemble.
The evening will also feature the Colorado premiere of Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate’s Ithánali, about a Chickasaw woman astronaut who is designated to be the first human to set foot on Mars, aware of the irony of her own action – colonizing Mars – and how it compares/contrasts to the historic colonization of her own tribe.
We will also highlight one of our favorite works commissioned with I’m Waiting for Your Crip Cadence, a collaborative composition by Nathan Hall and performance artist MG Bernard that creates an auditory and visual experience of what it is like to exist in a chronically sick bodymind exploring ideas of the disabled experience of non-linear time, and the doctor-patient relationship through a visceral display of how she is bound to the medical industrial complex, dependent on uncomfortable relationships of care, and indentured to pain.
Late Night GLOB
Close out MARATHON at Denver’s DIY citadel, GLOB.
This underground atmosphere set will intersperse avant DJ sets by former Playground board member DJ i.lind before our Music of The Shining, a show based on music from the Stanley Kubrick (and Stephen King) classic.
At midnight Playground composer and board member Silen Wellington will lead us in Haunting, a ritual performance. This is followed by Loretta Notareschi performing How All’s to One Thing Wrought! an improvisational work for a custom-designed virtual instrument that uses the electronic transformation of a single cello low C to express the spiritual idea of an interdependent web of all existence. Luke Wachter will perform …and we are a collection of memory for solo vibraphone and still photography which juxtaposes the impermanence of improvisation with the immutability of static images, examining how identity is constructed in the mind by collecting and reinterpreting memories and shared experiences. Ryan Fiegl winds us down with an electronic music set with reactive video as his musical alter ego Severed Shadow.
The evening closes with an open invite community-improvised drone session carrying us into the early morning.
“Monopolar” by Jakarta, Indonesia’s Strange Fruit eases into motion with hazy harmonics and swelling and resolving textures and tones. The mood is like a downtempo band that got deep into blissed out shoegaze psychedelia. Yes, there is guitar but the whole songwriting aesthetic is more like electronic music and fans of Seefeel, Black Moth Super Rainbow and the more experimental end of Verve will appreciate the most. It’s like a musical break from the overwhelming turmoil of world events which we could all use a little bit of now. It feels like what the late 90s did in the underground music world with a sense of mystery and an ambient hopefulness. Watch the entrancing video for “Monopolar” on YouTube and follow Strange Fruit at the links below. The group’s latest EP Drips, its first release after about a decade-long hiatus, drops April 3, 2026 via Gentle Tuesday Recordings.
“Boiling Up” has a palpable textural quality in the minimal guitar and rhythm and the way the vocals sit in the mix like something up close. The tone of the song is appropriately intimate and it conjures the ambient energy of another time when your brain wasn’t being tapped for attention from a constant flow of data like being advertised to in an attempt to monetize every moment of every day. Everyone knows somewhere in their heart this isn’t an authentic engagement and the song is a dive away from that whole dynamic in search of real experiences and feelings that haven’t been optimized for economic efficiency. The orchestral arrangements and the way the song utilizes melancholic chord progressions to swing into a mood of hope, genuine wonder and possibly even joy is something we don’t hear enough and it is a clear attempt to avoid gaming the algorithm, which is the point. Listen to “Boiling Up” on Spotify and follow New Wolves at the links provided.
King-Mob’s “Pendulum Days” sounds like a movie played in reverse. One imagines hearing hammered dulcimer creating tonal textural rhythms, steady and accented cymbal strikes and guitar squalling and sustaining urgent sounds while in the background vocals sound almost as if coming from a trance state. As the song progresses the band takes some chances in more conventional rhythms for a few moments rising in a run for volume before dropping back into what can be described as post-industrial noise jazz. What do you compare this to as a frame of reference? This Heat? Dazzling Killmen? The algorithm recommendations suggest Sightings and Morgan Garrett for more modern references which are apt enough. It’s not quite like that but if you’re into those bands you may find a lot to like in King-Mob’s uniquely creative and strange compositions. Listen to “Pendulum Days” on Spotify and follow King-Mob at the links below. The group’s new EP Arabesque is available now.
“Around me” finds Mark Weatherley seeming to tape into both the realm of electro-soul-tinged dance music and sound design. Layered rhythms guide the flow of smooth, atmospheric melodies and harmonic vocals that sound like conversations that happen all around you in a large public space until about halfway through the song when the impressionistic arrangement of voices like a tonal placement in a hip-hop beat have a moment of absolute clarity of intention and an expression of affection expressed by one person for another with the rush of rhythms and tone falling away except for a minimal forward momentum slice of minimal percussion. Then back to the mosaic of sounds that reflect the sense of the time and the constant stimuli we’re bombarded with daily. It’s as if Weatherley finds beauty in the seeming chaos and almost accidental intersections of rhythm and to remind us that if we take a chance to slow down and focus we can find a gem in everyday life if we have the will to not be distracted by everything potentially demanding our attention. Listen to “Around me” on Spotify and follow UK-based producer and songwriter Mark Weatherley at the links below.
This House is the full band version of music the had its roots in the collaboration between former The Ex frontman G.W. Sok and Ignacio Córdoba. Joined by drummer Søren Høj and synthesist Kristian Tangvik the full-fledged group will release its debut album Soft Rains Will Come on March 20, 2026 on vinyl, digital download and streaming via Pink Cotton Candy Records. The lead single “Burned House” pulses with nervous tension and clipped guitar keeping time with guitar in the beginning with Sok vocalizing about a modern set of anxieties and dread with the symbol of the burned house standing in for the unraveling of our current civilization while so many insist that things are just slightly uncomfortable like the frog in cooking pot with the heat on low and increasing. The guitars get more intense, distorted, menacing and fragmented, raw noise enters the field of sound, the rhythms are steady but splayed ever so slightly and Sok’s vocals break up a little too while flames appear on the screen to obscure the musicians. It’s a perfect depiction of the state of the world, one which is already in shambles and accelerating into the point of return but we’re all encouraged to dissociate while the world burns even more except so many people can’t ignore it and many more don’t have the luxury to pretend otherwise. Indubitably a song for today. Watch the video for “Burned House” on YouTube and follow This House on Instagram.
Eric Angelo Bessel will release Mirror at Night B-Sides on March 27, 2026 (7” vinyl, digital download, streaming), a companion EP to the fantastic 2025 full-length ambient record Mirror at Night. The lead single from the EP is “Double Helix.” The song shimmers and roils with bright tones suggestive of the image conjured by the title. It feels like a constantly shifting iteration of sounds like a cycle drawn from the mechanics of the life and the universe itself and expressed in sound. A deep listen reveals that Bessel has put into the track actual movements and shifts in tone that ensure it has a fresh resonance the next time the more amplified sound swirls back into the foreground. Fans of Robert Rich and Steven Roach will appreciate how Bessel imbues his tonal composition with a textural element that anchors the music in a tactile aspect of sound. Listen to “Double Helix” on YouTube and follow Eric Angelo Bessel at the links below.
RO layers mood and texture on “stranger.” The minimal, organic beat, the ever so slightly echoing guitar, the vocals shifting smoothly between a rap style and more soul voicings sound like an update of trip hop with modern sensibilities and production methods. A touch of dub in the drums and quivering harmonic backdrops like electronic strings in the middle of the song shifts up the song’s already core appeal while not breaking style. It sounds like something new but with a resonance with something familiar and classic. The songwriting thus suits a song about the complexity of feeling inherent to feeling like one took a chance with one’s heart and being vulnerable with someone who feels promising only to end up feeling like you betrayed yourself by trusting your emotions with someone who doesn’t feel the same way and certainly not with a similar level of commitment. Yet knowing it’s not a failing, just something you have to let yourself feel without shame and let go of the hurt and let go of the associations that anchor you to the memory of disappointing and even painful experiences because with any luck your life is going to go on a lot longer than a temporary relationship. Fans of P.M. Dawn and early Massive Attack will find a lot to like in the emotional and sonic chords RO strikes on this song. Listen to “stranger” on Spotify and follow RO at the links provided.
Lindsay Kay’s luminously delicate “Don’t Tease Me” spent a lot of time in perhaps unintentional development before taking its current form. The song had existed in numerous nascent forms across more than a decade and now has an English and a French version both with spare and elegant guitar work from Benjamin Longman. The intimate production allows the vocals to carry the melody with its finely nuanced emotional resonances. The song aches with the yearning for a loved one whose affections feel elusive. Kay seems to sing from the perspective of someone who loves very much and capable of a great deal but who doesn’t want her own emotions to be treated as something casual. Kay’s words lend those feelings a tactile immediacy and you hope with her too to not have her heart trifled with by someone whose intentions lack seriousness. Listen to “Don’t Tease Me” on Spotify and follow Linday Kay at the links below.
Queen City Sounds and Art 
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