Emerald Siam has been running for nearly a decade in the Denvoid. The band was been lead by vocalist and guitarist Kurt Ottaway from the beginning but reflects a lifetime of influences and inspirations drawn from its collective membership. So the sound has a deep mood and melodies that are woven in with emotional expressions cast in poetic expressions in the lyrics and songwriting. To call it post-punk gives a potential listener a touchstone for what they’re in for with swarming and swimming atmospheres, fluid musical structures that burst in cathartic release orchestrated to dramatic effect minus pretense. Since the late 80s Ottaway has been part of some of Denver’s most vital rock bands beginning with Twice Wilted who were steeped in the creative energies of Killing Joke, Joy Division and the Jesus and Mary Chain as well as 60s psychedelic garage rock. Its colossal sounds and DIY ethos garnered a large following and the band had a brush with being signed to a major label before establishing its own Gift Records imprint with which it released the 1993 classic Ice Hex Fix. And the way of many of Denver’s best bands at the time, Twice Wilted split in 1996 with Ottaway headed to the Bay Area only to discover he didn’t quite belong there and he returned to the Denver area and founded Tarmints, a band stylistically drastically different from Twice Wilted but not in terms of intention to put together something of quality and originality. If you were fortunate enough to see Tarmints during its eleven years of existence you saw a band that defied easy classification and which demanded being taken on its own terms. Yes, blues, sure mutant punk Birthday Party and Gun Club sounds and attitude with some of the grizzled Laughing Hyenas-esque intensity and immediately enthralling songwriting with shows that lasted exactly as long as they needed to be meaning no drawn-out, self-indulgent sets. Tarmints hit the stage hard with incredibly energy and focus and left before you could ever be weary of being sonically grabbed by the throat and brought along for an irresistible emotional ride that felt like a mutual purge of the dark corners of the psyche where the anxiety and nightmare fuel of your mind dwell. During most of this musical journey Ottaway ran a number of DIY spaces going back to the 1980s in Upper Larimer, RINO, what is now the Santa Fe Arts District, downtown and Lower Colfax and encouraging people in the local scene to make something that could be mutually inspiring. In this interview we do not talk about Emerald Siam much at all but rather the early days from his youth in the 1970s up through about the early 90s when Twice Wilted was in high gear. Perhaps in future conversations to be shared in this podcast we will get into other stories of which Ottaway has hundreds and thousands.
Listen to our interview with Kurt Ottaway of Emerald Siam on Bandcamp linked below and go see the band at Down in Denver Fest on Sunday, 8/21/22 at 6:30 pm on the Further Stage. For more information on the festival and on Emerald Siam visit the links beneath the interview.
Queen City Sounds and Art 
You must be logged in to post a comment.