Chicago-based trio Black Duck teamed up with Basque vocalist Elena Setién for their new album Black Duck with Elena Setién (out August 28, 2026 via Thrill Jockey). The final single before the album release was “Funeral in my Brain.” With Setién singing like someone in a post-techno-apocalypse cabaret and hushed synth and percussion accompaniment and hovering drones floating through in cycling resonances the song takes on the character of late 60s Peggy Lee doing a song for a David Lynch film. There is something elegan and mysterious about the song and in the end it takes on the warmth of a modern jazz pop song with what sounds like a Wurlitzer electric piano adding a lightly psychedelic touch to the outro so that the strangeness of the first part of the song gives way to a comforting almost gospel denouement. Listen to “Funeral in my Brain” on Spotify and follow Black Duck on Instagram.
Tuesday | 09.01 What:Anja Huwe w/Plague Garden and Weathered Statues When: 7pm Where: HQ Why: Anja Huwe was the singer for the influential German post-punk band Xmal Deutschland. The latter were pioneers of Neue Deutschland Welle (the German New Wave) but with a darkly dramatic and moody music that seemed to be in a similar vein to UK bands Siouxsie and the Banshees and The Pop Group. After a handful of albums the group split in 1990. Following that breakup, Huwe focused on her visual art pursuits with great success until being convinced by her friend Mona Mur to revisit music and in 2024 she released her first solo album Codes via the Sacred Bones imprint and to her credit that album is like an electronic post-punk album that borders on industrial but without the seeming connection to that style of music since the early 90s and with more in common with dance music. Opening the show are two of Denver’s greatest post-punk bands of recent years with the New Wave adjacent Plague Garden and its ferocious energy and Weathered Statues whose minimal, deathrock-inspired version of post-punk has a clear line of inspiration to Huwe’s old band.
Soft Palms, photo from Bandcamp
Wednesday | 09.02 What: Soft Palms w/babybaby4ever and Smear When: 7pm Where: Hi-Dive Why: Soft Palms is Julia Kugel-Montoya (of The Coathangers) and Scott Montoya (of The Growlers). With this new project it draws on the edge of garage punk and the moodiness and cinematic qualities of post-punk to create something new. Gloomy pop with some urgency. Along with the new record In Echo the duo published a book called How To Be Self-Reliant In The Music Business of which both musicians know more than a little. Opening is synth pop superstar babybaby4ever with better synth tone than most people you’ll see this year.
Bellhead, photo from Bandcamp
Thursday | 09.03 What: Bellhead w/eHpH and Hypersomnia When: 7 Where: The Crypt, $12 Why: Bellhead is a post-punk band from Chicago whose style is darker and more caustic than the trendy post-punk with spindly guitar tone. It has more in common with industrial post-punk of the 90s and in some ways is reminiscent in sound of the more rock end of My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult. Its 2025 EP Threats includes remixes from Stabbing Westward, Clubdrugs and Frontal Boundary. EhpH is an electro-industrial duo from Denver whose own politically-charged songs are rooted in classic EBM and not the Future Pop strain, thankfully, with a theatrical live performance fronted by Fernando Altonaga of post-punk band Plague Garden.
Deux Visages, photo by Juliette Boulay
Thursday | 09.03 What: Sweet Pill w/Deux Visages and Bike Routes When: 7 Where: The Oriental Theater Why: Sweet Pill is an emo band from Philadelphia whose sound incorporates elements of math rock that fans of Wednesday and Speedy Ortiz may appreciate for the eclectic guitar style that isn’t trapped in genre tropes and seemingly more keyed into strong hooks. Deux Visages were once based in Miami but now out Philadelphia where their sound of fuzzed out shoegaze pop seems a good fit for a music scene that has given us the likes of the headliner for this show but also Her New Knife and They Are Gutting a Body of Water. The trio recently released a new single “Always You” and further established its knack for blending melancholic vocal melodies with sonic edge and grit, vulnerability with bombast and threading discordant sounds with the sublime.
The Playground Ensemble in 2018, photo by Tom Murphy
Friday | 09.04 What:The Playground Ensemble: Unchambered 4.0 When: 7/7:30-9 Where: Leon Gallery Why: This is the fourth edition of the Ensemble’s Unchambered event in which for an evening experimental and improvised electronic music created by the group’s composers can be experienced featuring home made instruments, interactive electronics, processed voice and other avant-musical weirdness and innovation.
Have a Nice Life in 2019, photo by Tom Murphy
Friday | 09.04 What: Have a Nice Life w/Drowse and Allison Lorenzen When: 7 Where: Gothic Theatre Why: Allison Lorenzen is a Colorado-based ambient art folk artist whose pop songcraft is high but so is her highly emotional and the quality of her stylized performance. Drowse has been releasing some of the most experimental and engrossing post-punk bordering on ambient and field-recording infused pastoral tape music folk since the project’s inception. For this show the project will push those aesthetics further with a unique and boundary pushing performance. Have a Nice Life is one of the great cult post-punk bands from America that almost never plays live and even more rarely tours much less comes to Colorado. The band was last here in 2019 where it performed at the Hi-Dive cementing its reputation for exploding boundaries between emo, post-punk, industrial and ambient music.
The Serfs, photo from Bandcamp
Saturday | 09.05 What: The Serfs w/Pink Lady Monster, The Clue, Plastik Mystik and Kill You Club DJs When: 7 Where: Hi-Dive Why: Plastik Mystik fuses grunge, Wipers-esque punk and post-punk into a garage rock inflected set of music that has searing social commentary. The Clue is sort of a hardcore band but its sound is weirder and doesn’t really adhere to the aesthetics of that style of music yet its energy is very much in that vein. Pink Lady Monster and its No Wave funk art post-punk and poetry is arguably one of the best bands in Denver and America with live performances that are somehow both theater and a masterclass in musical technique. The Serfs from Cincinnati are a post-punk snobs favorite post-punk band with consistently fascinating records that blur the line between post-apocalyptic, bleak synth infused and arch political commentary the way Wire or Gang of Four would burn fascist impulses with creative lyrics. The Serfs sound like they read a lot of Ursula K. Le Guin’s more political novels, were inspired by the mood of Tarkovksy’s 1970s science fiction epics Solaris and Stalker and the crumbling post-industrial, late capitalist empire of America. There is no best place to start with The Serfs, just select a record and listen to their entire oeuvre.
Black Tapestry, photo from Bandcamp
Sunday | 09.06 What: Black Tapestry w/The Picture Tour, The Futons and Demi God Tezus When: 7 Where: D3 Arts Why: Black Tapestry is a synth punk duo from Sedona, Arizona who released their newest full-length Compartmental Illness in November 2025. Think like Youth Code but more rooted in The Yeah Yeah Yeahs than hardcore. The Picture Tour is a dark post-punk band from Denver with a clear command of atmospheric guitar tone and the aesthetics of night driving in the sprawl of American urban decay once banished in the wake of overdevelopment by private equity firms but on the horizon again due to the tech and real estate bubble collapse. The Picture Tour both embraces that nostalgia and seem to have seen into a dark future but romantic future. The Futons are a Denver band somewhere between garage psych and shoegaze. Demi God Tezus is a hip-hop artist in the more underground/alternative lane.
greek, photo by Angel Orozco
Tuesday | 09.08 What:greek w/Humble the Great When: 7 Where: Moon Room at Summit Music Hall Why: Michael Davie performing and releasing music as greek released his genre eclectic EP DANCE BREAK in August 2026. Coming up as a fledgling musician and making beats and writing songs through the use of production software that any teen might access, Davie found his voice as a talented purveyor of a kind of pop R&B benefiting greatly from his soulful and smooth vocal style. The music video for “HOLD ME” reveals a performer comfortable with the physical expression of the music and a playful sense of humor. The new EP builds on previous greek releases like the “THERE FOR YOU” single from 2024 that was in a more indie pop vein. The production on the new EP is more lush and immersive and the signal of a sophisticated talent in modern pop music.
Unsane, photo courtesy southernlord.com
Friday | 09.11 What:Unsane w/Season to Risk and Arson Charge When: 8 Where: HQ Why: Unsane is one of the foundational noise rock bands beginning with its formation in 1988. Bleeding together metallic post-hardcore aggression with the influence of industrial music, Unsane’s sound didn’t come off like it was too steeped into existing rock subgenre. It was caustic and heady and unrelenting yet heavier than most metal. In 2026 the group’s 1998 album Occupational Hazard was remastered and reissued by Lamb Unlimited as a bracing reminder of Unsane at one of its creative peaks. Season to Risk from Kansas City has established its own legacy as purveyors of arty yet visceral noise rock as one of the best of the modern bands operating in a similar vein as Unsane and having started just a year later as the latter in 1989. Its own 1995 album In a Perfect World got a vinyl reissue in 2026.
Dominique Fils-Aimé, photo by Vladim Vilain
Friday | 09.11 What: Dominique Fils-Aimé When:6:30 and 9 Where: Dazzle Why: Dominique Fils-Aimé is an acclaimed singer from Quebec who released her latest album My World Is The Sun in February 2026. The record is filled with field recordings and other contextual sounds that help set the mood to come. Fils-Aimé’s soulful singing is of course versatile and deeply evocative and resonates like a classic Neo Soul or R&B artist but there is something far more experimental in her songwriting like she is tapping into the kind of cosmic/spiritual jazz psychedelia as Alice Coltrane. You’re not just getting one extended flavor with the record and it is a showcase for a broad range of Fils-Aimé’s songwriting skills and vocal talent with a kind of epic journey through deep inner space.
F-Th| 09.11-09.17 What: Gypsy 83: Director’s Cut Where: Sie Film Center When: Varies by date Why: The dirctor’s cut of cult film Gypsy 83 is screening for its 25th anniversary. The film is about two young goths Gypsy and Clive living in in Sandusky, Ohio who travel to NYC for a festival celebrating Stevie Nicks, an unlikely yet in retrospect fitting idol for goths in the 1980s with her witchy persona, fashion sense of dramatic music. Written and directed by Todd Stephens the film stars Sara Rue as Gypsy Vale and Clive Webb played by Kett Turton with John Doe of X fame as Gypsy’s dad and Marlene Wallace as her mom. Gypsy and Clive learn of an event called Night of a Thousand Stevies and make their way to the Big Apple to participate with revelatory adventures along the way. The soundtrack includes bands like The Cure, Claire Voyant, Velvet Acid Christ (from Denver metro), Switchblade Symphony and Apoptygma Berzerk and visually and thematically fans of the films of Gregg Araki. The late, great Karen Black appears as retired singer, and Gypsy’s mother’s best friend, Bambi LeBleau. For showtimes in Denver during its run at the Sie Film Center visit the link above.
Sara Rue as Gypse Vale in Gypsy 83Pond, photo by Matsu
Saturday | 09.12 What: Pond When: 7 Where: The Gothic Theatre Why: Australian psychedelic rock band Pond took a turn in a fascinating direction for its latest album Terrestrials (2026). Rather than the mind-altering, sculpted fuzz atmospheric psychedelic rock they set parameters to focus on more solid lines in the rhythms and guitar sound taking inspiration from late 70s and 80s post-punk and Gothic rock. The band didn’t drop its knack for memorable hooks and creative melodic framing but the resulting sound is less throwback than reinvention often sounding more like the art rock end of Magazine which drew some inspiration from the likes of Roxy Music and Brian Eno. And Pond this time out has employed its synths in a fashion that is stripped of modern affectations and overproduction for a record that is possibly the most creatively realized of its career.
Brandon Flowers, photo by Chris Phelps
Saturday | 09.12 What: Brandon Flowers When: 7:30 doors, 9 show Where: The Ogden Theatre Why: Brandon Flowers is perhaps rightly known more for his career as the frontman of massively popular post-punk pop band The Killers. But this year he released his latest solo record ccalled Thrasher. And whatever one’s opinion of The Killers might be, without a doubt the songcraft of the band is respectable and on mainstream radio and playlists stands out in ways that can catch you unexpected. Thrasher proves that Flowers’ songwriting gifts translate well to a record of all honky tonk style pop country. With contributions from the likes of Jonathan Rado and Margo Price as well as country veterans like Bruce Bouton and Charlie McCoy there’s no doubt Flowers put in the time to bring some authentic sound to the songs.
Sleater-Kinney, photo by Chris Hornbecker
Monday | 09.14 What: Liz Phair w/Sleater-Kinney and Snail Mail When: 7 Where: The Fillmore Auditorium Why: Liz Phair and Sleater-Kinney both helped to influence and shape the sound of a certain subset of underground rock in the 1990s. Phair spent a bit of time enjoying mainstream success with the release of her 1994 album Whipsmart but had already garnered praise as a talented songwriter for the more experimental and lo-fi masterpiece Exile in Guyville (1993). Even through subsequent records, all not nearly as critically well-received as Phair’s first two albums, Phair’s wit and personal insight shined through and as a performer she had undeniable, unvarnished charisma and presence. Sleater-Kinney emerged in 1994 out of Olympia, Washington with its first handful of albums on the great underground label Kill Rock Stars and earning a cult following for its superior songwriting and unique take on punk attitude and spirit with subject matter that seemed to resonate with what Phair was doing as an artist in Chicago while also aiming to perhaps establish themselves as artists encouraging other women to make whatever music they wanted to on whatever terms they wanted while being utterly themselves, which they have obviously succeeded in doing. Snail Mail is one of the great guitar rock songwriters of a younger generation whose shoegaze-adjacent pop with unabashedly, radically vulnerable lyrics.
Sleep, photo by Travis Shinn
Wednesday | 09.16 What:Sleep w/Pink Mountaintops When: 7 Where: The Ogden Theatre Why: Sleep without Matt Pike seems like an impossibility because the guitarist’s iconic psychedelic sludge style is one of the most influential sounds in heavy music of the last 35+ years. But when the group announced Pike was no longer part of the band and a new lineup that consists of Dale Crover (of the Melvins who saw the early version of Sleep in the early 90s who were clearly influenced by Melvins’ own artful crushing early doom metal) and Bubba Dupree of hardcore legends Void alongside, of course, founding member Al Cisneros on bass. The trio released a new album Hemispheres that reveals that while not trying to imitate Pike’s guitar tone and sound kept the heaviness and otherworldly quality of Sleep intact. The album released digitally on September 3, 2026 with a vinyl version out late October. Paired with the album is a new Sleep Comic Book including a flexi with a shortened version of “Have Spacesuit Will Travel.”
Everlast, photo by Lisa Franchot
Saturday | 09.19 What: Atmosphere & Friends: Colorado – w/3OH!3, Everlast, Slick Rick, Z-Trip, Ra the Rugged Man and DJ Lala When: 5 Where: Red Rocks Amphitheater Why: Everlast is one of the featured artists on this now seemingly annual run with hip-hop stars Atmoshere headlining. Most may know him from his time as the frontman for hip-hop group House of Pain but by the late 90s he had established a solo career in which he fused rock and hip-hop in a way that didn’t seem cringe mainly because his lyrics were thoughtful and the songwriting not in some trope-y lane. In 2026 Everlast released his new album Embers to Ashes with some tender yet gritty vocal delivery and sparkling, late night atmospheric tones and well crafted moods. If you’re going to this extravaganza get there in time to catch his brand of blues American and its existential themes.
The Tear Garden, photo courtesy Randall Frazier
Monday | 09.21 What: The Tear Garden w/DJ Cosmos Mudwulf and Nathaniel Jamiel When: 8 Where: Summit Music Hall Why: The Tear Garden have long been a missing link in the experimental psychedelic world of the 1980s and creative production of EBM with the 1992 album, its second, The Last Man To Fly a classic in the Goth scene possible due to its membership being Edward Ka-Spel of the Legendary Pink Dots and cEvin Key of Skinny Puppy. The band has famously never played a live show until this past week and the first leg of its North American tour. The group is now expanded to several live members including Randall Frazier who is also a member of LPD and Orbit Service. In 2025 the group released its first album in 8 years with Astral Elevator. Expect the enigmatic and cosmic, psychedelic poetry and enveloping atmospheres with richly tones melodies and rhythms. It’ll be basically a once in a lifetime chance to see them unless you go to other cities.
Chanel Beads, photo by Moni Haworth
Monday | 09.21 What:Chanel Beads w/Horse Vision and Anastasia Coope When: 7 Where: Marquis Theater Why: Chanel Beads released the second self-titled album in 2026 as a send up of music industry expectations but on its own merit is a fine fusion of delicate indie pop and highly electronic dream pop so that it is simultaneously Iand intimate, a rarity in music. Think something like Just Mustard but even more ethereal. Overall it sounds like a bit of a throwback to late 2000s underground indie rock but without borrowing too heavily from the sounds and ideas, just the mood that maybe all hope isn’t stripped out of the world while also giving us songs that address current streams of anxiety.
Aldous Harding, photo by Kate Meakin
Monday | 09.21 What:Aldous Harding w/Sam Burton When: 7 Where: The Bluebird Theater Why: Once again Aldous Harding offers an inventive and emotionally vibrant yet idiosyncratic experimental pop with 2026’s Train on the Island. It sounds like Harding was diving further into integrating keyboards into layers of vocals and dissonant drones to give the record the sound of something that isn’t fully smoothed over yet not lacking in any production. It’s just real and has an immediacy to the sensitive listener with Harding’s typically enigmatic but resonant lyrics. Harding’s life performance style is similarly unorthodox and she seems well familiar with performance art and the avant-garde while incorporating that strangeness into ambitious pop songs.
American Football, photo by Alexa Viscius
Tuesday | 09.22 What:American Football w/Circling Girl When: 7 Where: Boulder Theater Why: American Football came out of the 90s as one of the most influential of the then crop of emo math rock bands before splitting in 2000. Singer and bassist Mike Kinsella had already left his mark on music with the legendary early emo band Cap’n Jazz and later with Joan of Arc. But American Football’s sound bordered at times on slowcore but with more unconventional and precise rhythms to give the sometimes pastoral, post-rock-esque instrumental side of the music a more solid if informal framing. The music has an impressionistic quality that allows for its often weighty material to have a more emotionally gentle initial impact. The group’s 1999 debut album is a classic of its realm of music and when American Football returned in 2014 it has put out a few albums of a quietly incandescent beauty including the newly released LP4 (all the albums being essentially self-titled) which expands on the sound palette and ambition of soundscaping without losing the intimate quality of the band’s earlier releases. The show opens with a set from Denver dream pop group Circling Girl. American Football also opens for Bleachers at Red Rocks the following night 9.23.26.
The Linda Lindas, photo by Jaxon Whittington
Wednesday | 09.23 What:The Linda Lindas w/VIAL and Capture This When: 7 Where: Summit Music Hall Why: The Linda Lindas seemingly propelled into viral fame with the release of its single “Racist, Sexist Boy” in 2021. But the band had already been developing and by 2022 released the debut album Growing Up tackling themes of coming of age and the anxieties of youth. The album demonstrated that the band wasn’t a gimmick and it had a knack for memorable melodies and hooks. In 2026 The Linda Lindas released a new album called Gotta Get Out that shows the quartet expanding its range of expression with songs that don’t skimp on the spirited energy of the first two records but reveal even more emotional nuance and musical sophistication. Yet, honestly, the group was more than a narrow conception of punk in sound and attitude from the beginning and now have evolved into one of the most compelling live acts running.
Bleachers, photo courtesy the artists
Wednesday | 09.23 What: Bleachers w/American Football When: 6:30 Where: Red Rocks Amphitheater Why: Bleachers is an indie pop band lead by celebrity producer and musician/songwriter Jack Antonoff. Formed in 2013 while Antonoff was still a member of Fun., Bleachers became his main concern around 2014 when the project started releasing its early singles. Antonoff is perhaps rightfully known for working with the likes of Taylor Swift, Lana Del Rey, Kendrick Lamar and St. Vincent among others but his production and songwriting for his own band are easily as praiseworthy. Antonoff seems to have a talent for tapping into nostalgic moods and sounds without being trapped by the era or the aesthetic. This is especially evident on the new album Everyone for Ten Minutes in which he weaves together elements of power pop and orchestral sophistipop with modern production and sensibilities with lyrics that appear to examine different moments in a relationship and the conversations that should happen or should have. All of them couched in dramatic flourishes and uplifting energy so that even the most difficult of those conversations has the energy of hopefulness.
Denver’s premier left field music festival spanning weirdo heavy music to ambient, noise rock to post-hardcore and avant-pop among others runs Thursday August 26, 2026 through Sunday August 30, 2026 in various venues. Below is a brief description of the artists with links. For more information and to buy tickets please visit: ghostcanyonfest.com.
Holy Sons in 2011, photo by Tom Murphy
Th 08.27 at HQ doors 7pm Wax Trax Music Panel: DIY In the Age of Slop: A Discussion Sponsored by Smashed Plastic: Local music heads discuss the perilous future in the age of tech bro oligarch vampires. 7pm
Ryan Wong & Sunswept:A fusion of improvisational impulses weave together guitar and cosmic flute soundscapes. 8:45pm
The Gotobeds: Like a 90s K Records band fueled by a punk interpretation of C86. 8:30pm
Steve Von Till:Apocalyptic drone psych Americana from one of the founders of Neurosis. 10:30pm
claire rousay, photo by Katherine Squier
S 08.29 Bug Theate doors 12:30pm doors Nora Mal: Pastoral shoegaze from Salt Lake City joined by Chaz Prymek of Lake Mary and Mike Fuchs of Passive Tourist. 1pm
Shane Parish Plays Autechre Guitar: Improvisational guitar wizard interprets the electronic music and tonal detail of Autechre for acoustic instrumentation. 1:45pm
Daniel Higgs: Poet, mystic, visual artist and legendary singer/lyricist for Lungfish. Keen crafter of transcendent ambient psychedelia. 2:45pm
claire rousay: Masterful musique concrète ambient collage pop. 3:45pm
Moor Mother, photo by Ebru Yildiz
S 08.29 Hi-Dive 6pm doors Watch Yourself Die: Borderline terrifying confrontational performance art post-punk prog. 7pm
Blacks’ Myths: Free-associating free jazz and drone collage commentary on cultural historical moments. 7:45pm
ABANDONS: The sound of civilization collapsing and evolving into more exciting forms. 8:30pm
Water Damage:Organic motorik Neu!-esque drone rock featuring noteworthy members of Austin’s experimental scene including Thor Harris. 9:15pm
Moor Mother:Avant-garde free jazz noise and the poetry of cultural heritage. 10pm
Su 08.30 Wax Trax Broadway Bazaar free in-store, show 1:15pm Burn Barrel: Kansas City-based crushing post-hardcore noise rock including members of Canyons. 1:30pm
Arson Charge: Thrashcore scorchings of the baked in abuse of human culture. 3pm
Dead Rider, photo from Bandcamp
Su 08.30 The Skylark Lounge 4pm doors Blööd Ôath:Demented and thrillingly abrasive metallic post-punk like a collision of Oblivians and The Cramps. 5pm
Infinite Ohm: Hypnotic drones and other mind-altering sounds courtesy Justin Lemons (and the name of his studio, label and this project). 5:45pm
Violenteer: Brooding, menacing and caustic industrialized noise rock for fans of Unsane and Shellac. 6:30pm
Great Falls: Relentless and unhinged mathcore. 7:15pm
Dead Rider: Left field noise rock and experimental electronic strangeness with connection to avant-guitar rock band U.S. Maple. 8pm
Midwife:Cathartically heartbreaking ambient folk heavenmetal. 9pm
Sarah Christiansen has been a fixture of Denver’s experimental music and improvisational scene since 2022. Her solo project Sunswept which finds her playing flute and synthesizer with live production and processing is a high point of any show with a unique style of ambient. The duo she’s in Snowswept with Derrick Bozich (aka Snowflyer) combines her skills for soundscaping and Bozich’s gift for spontaneous synth composition and left field electronic dance music. Her trio Field Theory is like a New Music ambient jazz combo that expands notions of what that music can look and sound like. Christiansen also organizes a monthly event called Emergent Forms that brings together musicians in the local improvisational music world and puts them into combinations to explore the possibilities of the art form. She is also a volunteer with Creative Music Works having been an early booster of the group’s activities and shows.
Originally from Saint Louis, Missouri, Christiansen moved to Colorado in 2016 and wasn’t initially involved in the music scene. But she caught some shows of local artists notably R A R E B Y R D $, the experimental hip-hop group that incorporates jazz, Latin music, ambient and neo soul. In 2022 Christiansen witnessed the early Avant Garden events hosted at Mutiny Information Cafe and run by noteworthy experimental musicians Meca’Ayo Cole, Victoria Lundy and Jennifer Bobola eventually working with Bobola in the short-lived band Fireball Rose. In December 2024, Texas-based label Aural Canyon released the debut and only Sunswept album Germinations. You can regularly see the musician/composer live at DIY spots and an occasional club show in Denver and the Colorado Front Range and her latest endeavor outside her regular efforts is a collaborative duo with singer-songwriter Ryan Wong (Supreme Joy etc.) for the first night of Ghost Canyon Fest 2026.
Listen to our interview with Sarah Christiansen on Bandcamp and follow her exploits at the links below and see Sunswept and Ryan Wong in a collaborative performance for the opening night of Ghost Canyon Fest on Thursday, August 26, 2026.
Kathryn Mohr is a songwriter, composer and visual artist based in Oakland, California. She is a relative late-comer to making music first experimenting with drawing and painting. She acquired her first guitar at age 20. Sigur Ros was the band that got her into more experimental music in her teens and the first concert she witnessed at an Outside Lands festival appearance. Mohr became aware that a guitar could be used like a synthesizer when used unconventionally as she had heard in Sigur Ros and later in Grouper. In 2018/2019 Mohr started recording on her phone but in 2020 she felt the strong urge to make an album resulting in As If. That tape opened up opportunities for her in various ways including having label backing. Around the same time the songwriter got her first synth to help realize her sonic imagination. She didn’t play her first live show until 2022 playing a local Zen center before playing the DIY venues in Oakland. That same year Mohr got connected with Madeline Johnston aka Midwife through their mutual label The Flenser. Johnston engineered the then new album Holly. The record shared a similar gentle spirit and emotional depth and delicacy that one hears from a Midwife album and like a particularly sophisticated ambient folk tape one might find randomly at a consignment shelf at a DIY space and the music sticking with you.
For Mohr’s third album, 2025’s Waiting Room, she undertook an artist residency in a small town in Iceland where she wrote and recorded the music free from the distractions of a highly mediated modern world coaxing out authentic emotions and thoughts expressed in music that is at once highly personal and otherworldly, perhaps innerworldly, in tone and mood. It’s like a lo-fi folk album but blending the aesthetics of ambient music into the songwriting for an expression style uniquely Mohr’s own. A little over a year later Mohr issued her latest album Carve. Once again the artist took herself to an environment relatively lacking in regular contact with any kind of social media, advertising, popular culture or anything like that living for awhile in a single wide in the Mojave Desert. The album has a distinctly cinematic quality and capturing the alien tranquility of such an environment but this time some of the guitar songs are grittier at times reminiscent of early PJ Harvey but more informed by her own style of psychedelic, noisy folk bordering on a left field garage rock. The album references Wallace Stenger’s classic 1971 novel of the American West, Angle of Repose and a node to the influence of literature on Mohr’s music. The album’s contrasts are some of the widest of Mohr’s output and it is at turns and often at once pastoral and contemplative, menacing and caustic, delicately gentle and tense. The layers of field recordings, synth, processed vocals in parts of the record convey a deep sense of place, psychological and physical as there is a tactile aspect to Mohr’s songwriting in every song so the album comes across as something felt and experienced and not merely heard. Written over a period of five years and recorded in a few weeks it nonetheless feels of a piece like an expertly edited film. It is Mohr’s most creatively realized work.
Listen to our interview with Kathryn Mohr on Bandcamp and follow her music and performances at the links below. You can see Mohr perform the first night of Ghost Canyon Fest 2026 on Thursday, August 27.
Ghost Canyon Fest organizers Brian Dooley, Sean Dove, Jeremy Brashaw, photo by Tom Murphy
Ghost Canyon Fest presents its fourth edition in 2026 from Thursday, August 26, 2026 through Sunday, August 30, 2026. The festival has from the beginning has showcased some of the most fascinating bands and artists operating in the broad realm of left field rock and experimental music. Noise rock, art punk, ambient, avant-folk, post-metal, art pop, psychedelic folk and more. It has been an extremely well curated festival and on a scale that intentionally makes it easy to catch all of the acts for festival goers if they have the fortitude to make it to all the performances as it isn’t multi-venue at the same time and the final night doesn’t run too late for work the next day. As usual the festival is a mix of acclaimed national acts and some of the most creatively daring bands from Colorado in the realms of music that is at the core of the festival’s curation. This year you can see Holy Sons, Kathryn Mohr Ryan Wong & Sunswept, a Wax Trax Music Panel called DIY In the Age of Slop: A Discussion, Six Organs of Admittance, Prairiewolf, Steve Von Till, Silkworm, The Gotobeds, Dust Congress, Supreme Joy, claire rousay, Daniel Higgs, Shane Parish Plays Autechre Guitar, Nora Mal, Kowloon Walled City, Moor Mother, Water Damage, ABANDONS, Blacks’ Myths, Watch Yourself Die, Arson Charge, Circling Over, Burn Barrel, Midwife, Dead Rider, Great Falls, Violenteer, Infinite Ohm and Blööd Ôath. The festival takes place at HQ, Wax Trax Broadway Bazaar, Hi-Dive, The Bug Theatre and The Skylark Lounge. For more information and the full schedule please visit ghostcanyonfest.com.
Listen to our interview with Ghost Canyon Fest organizers Sean Dove, Brian Dooley and Jeremy Brashaw on Bandcamp.
The music video for Koen Holtkamp’s “Slow Fox Run” is like a visual representation of the rhythm and tonal vectors of a song slowly developing from percussive tones later joined by minimal, brushed drums and introspective saxophone. The complexity of the sounds slowly develops along with the streaking motes of colored lights in the video at times bursting as the dynamics of the song do. It’s a seamless blend of visuals and sound and musical ideas that complement each other perfectly like the fusion of jazz, post-rock and electronic composition aesthetics that seem to underpin the song itself. Fans of Chicago post-rock groups like Tortoise and Sea and The Sea and Cake will appreciate the creative detail and flow of sounds present here. Watch the video for “Slow Fox Run” on YouTube and follow Koen Holtkamp at the links below. His new album Nightlife is out October 9, 2026 via Western Vinyl.
Jules Reidy imbued “Clerestory Windows V” with a unique intricacy of tone utilizing a hex electric guitar. The Euclidean sequencing with some pitch shifting on single notes and tones lends the piece the quality of something that sounds like it was composed and then programmed into an electronic device. But in fact it is guitar technique and that sound that gives this mathematically precise song a feel like something that had to come from the expression of an analog creature especially evident later in the song when the sustains linger and the pauses feel less calculated and more intuitive. To the point where the feedback oscillates slowly as not a singular note so much as a pulsing frequency that is opposite of the rich tapestry of guitar work and sounds performed with great energy. If the beginning of the song could be said to be the analog of a star being born, the end of the song is like the pulsar at the end of that stars life. It’s a fascinating piece that may initially have you thinking it’s a weird math rock song but the built in deconstruction happening in real time disabuses those notions before the halfway point as the song shifts from maximalism to utter minimalism. Listen to “Clerestory Windows V” on Spotify and follow Jules Reidy on Instagram.
The distorted streaming sounds echoing throughout “FRISSON” by 1201770 are like the voices of a forgotten subway bemoaning the neglect and seething in its accumulated environmental memory. Or the soundtrack to a near future urban exploration video in which intrepid urbexers travel through the tunnels and streets of cities abandoned in the wake of humanity’s folly and abuse of the environment resulting in mass depopulation of parts of the world once teeming with activity that can only be speculated about from accounts gleaned from still extant media artifacts. The industrial ambient sounds of the song have a melancholic menace and urgency that suggest a warning against the kinds of civilizational habits that lead to tragic widespread collapse. It’s a thought-provoking track that embodies a full expression though less than two minutes in length. Listen to “FRISSON” on Spotify and follow 1201770 on Instagram.
Paul Riola is a saxophonist and composer who has long been a fixture of the Denver improvisational music and ambient scene. His prolific collaborations have graced various stages throughout the city and beyond and his command of cinematic soundscaping is honed from years of working within the realm of experimental music for over 30 years. He grew up in the Denver Metro area before moving to Portland, Oregon in the early 90s for around a decade where he came into contact with Nels Cline and recorded with him as well as Jeff Parker of Tortoise. If you’ve been to a sufficient number of improvisational music shows in the Denver underground in the past 20 years and more it seems unlikely that you haven’t had a chance to witness Riola’s skill in blending in with various other instruments and specific styles to create something that while improvisational always sounds composed to strike a deep mood. His latest project is Shadow and Light, an immersive collaboration that involves music, installation art and video collage. Taking place at the Fox Theater in Aurora, Colorado on August 20, 2026 the event brings together Riola with guitarist Colin Bricker, guitarist Emmanuel Alexander, drummer Sam Kok, visual collage artist and videography Elicia James, set designer Brandon Case, Olivia Kirkpatrick for live VJ performance and video sampling along with Wesley Schwarz also with live VJ and video sampling and lighting. The unique concert experience will blur the line between various disciplines of visual art, overlapping aesthetics and methods of sound and composition to evoke an emotional resonance with all involved.
Listen to our interview with Paul Riola on Bandcamp and follow Riola at the links below. For tickets to Shadow and Light please visit the Aurora Fox Theater website.
Queen City Sounds and Art 
You must be logged in to post a comment.