Dead Meadow at Teotihuacan, photo by Jessica Senteno
Dead Meadow is currently touring in support of its new record, The Nothing They Need. When the band began in 1998, its members had come up through the vibrant punk and hardcore scene in Washington, DC and had even played in bands in that vein but by the late 90s, playing that kind of music had lost some of its appeal and the initial trio of guitarist/singer Jason Simon, bassist Steve Kille and former drummer Mark Laughlin (Juan Londono now drums in the band) were looking to sounds that had long gone out of style but which held a newfound fascination for the musicians.
“We got excited watching old Jimi Hendrix videos all the time,” says Simon. “We lived with Corey [Shane] who played on Feathers and the three of us would sit around watching Black Sabbath videos, Led Zeppelin videos and Hendrix videos and it was like, ‘Let’s get back and do something like this.’ That’s why we picked up our instruments in the first place. When I was thirteen I wanted to play like Jimmy Page and sound like Black Sabbath. It was just trying to do something different. Actually, it’s funny a lot of those [DC post-hardcore] bands helped us out and in particular Fugazi helped us out a lot just because they were as excited as anyone to hear something different coming out of DC. Now there’s a psych rock scene but back then we were playing a punk rock show or a metal show and either way we didn’t quite fit in. We’ve seen a scene grow up since then that has fit Dead Meadow a little better.”
Dead Meadow’s 2000 self-titled debut, in fact, was released on Fugazi bassist Joe Lally’s Tolotta Records imprint as did the sophomore record, 2001’s Howls from the Hills. But in those early days, there wasn’t a new psychedelic rock scene, per se. Dead Meadow toured and found like-minded musicians who were embracing music from the 60s and 70s on the West Coast like The Brian Jonestown Massacre and The Warlocks. After signing with Matador before the release of 2003’s Shivering King And Others the group played shows with labelmates Bardo Pond. But the mixture of psychedelia and heavy music around the turn of the century was largely the purview of “stoner rock.” While Dead Meadow had similar roots in 60s psychedelic rock and Black Sabbath, it was never really a metal band.
“In the beginning we really enjoyed it because we wanted to do the punkest thing possible,” comments Simon. “Which was like, ‘Okay, cool, we’re opening for Fugazi, man? We’re going to do a ten minute guitar solo.’ And the punk kids were like ‘What is this?’ Which I thought was awesome. Some of the punk kids weren’t into it. Is this metal? It was something against the grain at the time which was something we all dug doing.”
Twenty years since Dead Meadow’s inception, the music world has caught up a bit with its fuzzy, hypnotic, heavy, bluesy, psychedelic rock songs. Yet the band’s specific aesthetic and sensibility transcends the specific wizards, demons and occult tropes of stoner rock and psychedelic doom. The song and album titles, the artwork and the textures and structures of the songs suggest a familiarity with the language of mythology and mysticism as well as that of the literature of the weird and a recreation of the feelings flowing forth from such readings.
“I like a lot of different symbolism and drawing from different roads of symbolism and making it your own,” says Simon. “I’ve always been a fan of the weird tale whether it’s Clark Ashton Smith or H.P. Lovecraft and stuff like that using all this vivid, far out imagery. Or Hindu mythology and its painting these crazy pictures the mind is almost stretching to even envision. In our move away from what was going on in the late 90s we wanted to do something more far out in that sense that expands the imagination.”
Specific references can be found sprinkled throughout Dead Meadow’s discography from Lord Dunsany in “Beyond the Fields We Know,” obvious nods to Lovecraft and perhaps an oblique hint of the occult novels of J.K. Huysmans. Blending all of that with natural imagery has given Dead Meadow both a mysterious and intimate quality.
“I like to stick things in there for the heads to pick up on,” says Simon regarding the literary allusions. “I find [nature] more inspiring. I guess that’s the symbolic nature of how the natural world relates to the inner world as well. I don’t do that intentionally, it just feels right or just cool.”
The Nothing They Need seems a step away from the evoking the imagery of weird literature while remaining songs about personal struggles, existential musings and a non-topical social commentary. The title of the album stems from a double meaning in its origins and conceptualization.
“It’s something Steve orignally said,” says Simon. “He also works in quality control in TV shows for digital content. He’s great at catching audio issues and so forth. He was talking about how there’s an insane stream of content coming out these days. Meaningless show after show. What is all this stuff? Who’s watching it? He said, ‘It’s giving people the nothing they need.’ So it’s a commentary on our times in that way. I also found it true in the opposite sense in that what people need is a step away from this crazy amount of distraction. We’re being bombarded by information all the time. Anyhthing to get your head out of it and get your piece of stillness, the grand nothing.”
“With these times and how crazy things are, I don’t think we’d try to write something overtly political but I feel like how those things can’t help but slip in,” continues Simon. “Not just how crazy it is but how to live and deal with how crazy it is and still be a creative, productive individual and feel some sense of hope.”
In the annals of weirdo, psychedelic, noisy rock Chrome (performing tonight, March 31 at Larimer Lounge) stands out as one of the true originals. Innovators of an art/acid damaged sound that fully blended synthesizers and rock music, Chrome is often considered one of the progenitors of industrial music. Butthole Surfers freely admit the influence, so did Stereolab. One has to assume Arab On Radar drew on Chrome’s proto-sampling, recontextualizing, deconstructionist impulses as well. When Chrome released its debut album The Visitation in 1976 it must have seemed as alien as its closest musical cousin in the early solo albums of Brian Eno. Ned Raggett Allmusic Guide described it as “Brian Eno meets Santana.” The latter probably because of the fluttery, bluesy leads that are the hallmark of part of the guitar sound on the record alongside the fuzzy, spidery melodies. The band might have continued to develop along that path if bassist Gary Spain hadn’t been playing violin in a band prior to The Visitation’s release with future Chrome guitarist Helios Creed, mentioning he was in a band called Chrome.
“I asked if I could hear it when it was done,” says Creed. “He gave me a copy and I liked the record, The Visitation, but I guess the record wasn’t selling at all and everybody quit. Then I auditioned and me and Damon [Edge] got along really well. It ended up just being me and him after a while. I played the bass on the first three records [after I was in Chrome]. When I heard that [first] record I [told them I] felt like they needed me and I was right.”
Creed had grown up in the 50s, 60s and 70s listening to, among other bands, Black Sabbath, Iron Butterfly, The Doors and Blue Cheer. “I went to go see Black Sabbath on acid and I sort of felt like I knew what I wanted to do, in a way,” says Creed. To Chrome, Creed brought another dimension to the band’s spirit of experimentation and a guitar sound that was as energetic as it was corrosive and both jagged and serpentine.
Starting with Alien Soundtracks, originally titled Ultra Soundtrack when it was a soundtrack project for what might be called an avant-garde strip show in San Francisco. But the music was considered too weird even for an endeavor like that in a city where strange art had long been embraced. From the opening track, “Chromosome Damage” to the last, “Magnetic Dwarf Reptile,” it is obvious that Chrome had absorbed obvious influences like Blue Cheer, Black Sabbath, Hendrix, Stooges and Hawkwind and allowed that to mutate and stew into something that sounded like what cyberpunk authors like William Gibson, John Shirley and Bruce Sterling were trying to capture when they took the spirit of J.G. Ballard’s visionary, dystopian science fiction and its influence on punk in brilliant new directions. Chrome albums have consistently seemed like science fiction novels and movies no one has yet written or made. “Yeah, we got sci-fi ideas and integrated it with the feel of the music,” says Creed. “Or a sterile, dehumanizing, robotic society. We had a lot of different kinds of inspirations. That movie Carrie? Alien, the first one. Blade Runner and A Clockwork Orange–the feel of those movies really inspired us.”
Although based in the Bay Area, Chrome didn’t exactly play live shows in a city where the avant-garde or any kind of strange, eccentric art seemed to find a home. The band had garnered critical acclaim abroad with Alien Soundtracks and its follow-up, 1979’s Half Machine Lip Moves but it wasn’t until 1981 that the group performed live for the first time.
“We didn’t play until Blood on the Moon came out,” says Creed. “That was our first show and we played in Italy at a music festival in Bologna. We played all new songs but they dug it. We played the whole Blood on the Moon album. There’s a live record of that show somewhere.”
The lineup with both Edge and Creed produced some of the most interesting and unusual music of the era including 1980’s more synth-infused Red Exposure, the aforementioned 1981 album Blood on the Moon and 1982’s 3rd From the Sun. With more electronic elements including drum machines, those records, dark and clearly taking cues from no one beyond the dictates of active and restless imaginations, Chrome’s sinister psychedelia was not destined to fit in with the fake positivism of the 1980s mainstream culture. Thank goodness. However, the Edge/Creed era of Chrome ended by the mid-80s and Edge moved to Paris with his wife and collaborator, Fabienne Shine. Edge released albums as Chrome into the 90s before he died of heart failure in 1995. Around that time he had reconnected with Creed with notions of doing Chrome together again.
After Chrome, Creed continued as a solo artist and collaborator with current synth and guitar player Tommy Grenas (from bands Farflung and Pressurehead) who connected Creed with former Hawkwind member Nik Turner with whom Creed and Grenas worked on a 1993 re-recording of Turner’s 1978 solo album Sphynx and the 1994 Nik Turner record Prophets of Time. Creed and Turner now have a band with Jay Tausig called Chromium Hawk Machine that put out an album called Annunaki in 2017 on Massimo Gasperini’s Black Widow Records imprint. “Massimo is into the whole Zecharia Sitchin theory about Nibiru so we made a record about it.”
Chrome circa 2008, photo by Tom Murphy
Rumor had it that Grenas was able to get a hold of Edge’s original synth rig after the musician passed. Turns out the rumors were true.
“I met Damon before I met Helios,” reveals Grenas. “When Damon passed away I had the opportunity to buy his stuff when [his sister] Sharon put it up for sale and I bought it before anyone else did. I bought Damon’s [Moog] Liberation and the [Electro-Harmonix] Micro Synth and something else. I used it on the first tour but a lot of that stuff is too fragile to take on the road.”
Grenas used some of the older gear for the Chrome records that have come out since the turn of the century. Right now the band is touring in support of 2014’s Feel It Like a Scientist and 2017’s Techromancy. While the methods and means of making sound have changed, Chrome still seems off the frequency of mundane normalcy with songs about an ominous, dystopian future society.
“It seems like we’re on the brink of going right into that with machines and robots taking over,” says Creed. “So maybe they’ll just kill us, I guess. We’re going to be obsolete. ‘You must go to this room here and wait for destruction.’ We also have songs of hope.”
In spite of the overt sound of the band and the subject matter of the lyrics, Creed’s sharp and playful sense of humor is infused into the music as well and so is his willingness to explore the dark underbelly of American culture that is often simply dismissed as folklore. Although Creed grew up in Long Beach, California and lived in the San Francisco Bay area for much of his life, he did spend some years in the American Midwest where lurid stories of local figures and events are not in short supply.
“I was living in Manhattan, Kansas, twenty miles from Stull,” says Creed. “Supposedly it’s one of the gateways to Hell. That’s the scuttlebutt. Supposedly the Pope won’t fly over it when he comes to America. Every Halloween apparently the Goth people and witchy kind of people show up there thinking they’re talking to the dark ones. But really all it is is just a burned out church. [So the story goes,] a bunch of rednecks who hated blacks, and really everyone, put people in that church and burned it down and opened a vortex to hell. You know how the old west was. Where I was living in Kansas they used to cut the heads of slaves if they didn’t like them. All this stuff never gets written about but I know the history of Kansas is very dark. It ain’t no Wizard of Oz place, I’ll tell you that much.”
Colin Ward as Alphabets circa 2010. Raptor Jazz, a celebration of Ward and his legacy at The Black Box on Saturday, March 31. Photo by Tom Murphy
Thursday | March 29, 2018
The Milk Blossoms, photo by Tom Murphy
Who:The Milk Blossoms (album release) w/Joseph Lamar, Princess Dewclaw and Midwife When: Thursday, 03.29, 7 p.m. Where: Lost Lake Why:The Milk Blossoms release Dry Heave the Heavenly this night at Lost Lake. The trio basically found a way to take fairly idiosyncratic musical tastes and skill sets and a blend of natural talents to make imaginative, cathartic pop music that couldn’t really be made by anyone else. The bands songs are accessible yet demanding your taking it on its own terms. Calling the group “experimental pop” doesn’t quite do justice to the power of the live band and its recordings. Two talented singers whose styles are quite different but complementary, soul and hip-hop undertones without the hackneyed quality one often finds in artists that are trying too hard to appeal to too many people. The members of The Milk Blossoms are definitely not trying to appeal to people in that way, but, rather, expressing poignant life moments in an achingly resonant way making their music poetic and heartbreaking yet comforting. Naturally for the occasion of the album release, The Milk Blossoms brought together a few of the best Denver bands to round out the bill. Joseph Lamar isn’t trying to put his music in hip-hop, soul, indie rock, electronic pop boxes but there’s bits of all of that and more in his songwriting. Princess Dewclaw combines synth pop and a seething socially critical punk sensibility that seems elemental in the live setting. With her almost abstract and ethereal vocals and spidery guitar work, Midwife channels the ghost of the soul level pain that lingers in the hearts of most people that have lived life enough to know the regret and melancholy that bring loss into stark focus.
Who:DRUNE, Equine, Tyler Jared Cantrell When: Thursday, 03.29, 9 p.m. Where: The Skylark Lounge Why: This is the second edition of Musical Mayhem at The Skylark for March. DRUNE describes itself as “Denver Desert Doom Metal.” Probably means these guys listened to a lot of Kyuss and/or Queens of the Stone Age, maybe Dopesmoker-era Sleep above the rest of that band’s catalog and Ennio Morricone’s movie soundtrack discography. If their practice space recordings are any indication anyway. Equine is the latest project from Kevin Richards who some may know from his time bringing weird jazz chords into the mix with post-hardcore band Motheater and ambient noise project Epileptinomicon or even his own post-rock-esque solo effort Temples (before some okay psych band made the name famous-ish). At any rate, Equine picks up where Temples left off in experimenting with the structure and format of even experimental guitar based music and adding in electronic elements to create a truly hypnotic and immersive soundscape.
Who:Matt and Kim w/CRUISR and Twinkids When: Thursday, 03.29, 7 p.m. Where: The Ogden Theatre Why: Matt Johnson and Kim Schifino met at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and became a couple who were encouraged to take up music by the guys in Japanther. Neither had any real training but plenty of creativity and, it turns out, a knack for writing hook-laden pop songs that were upbeat and positivistic without seeming hokey. As the duo’s songwriting developed, its audience quickly outpaced the capacity of the DIY spaces it played early in its career. Matt and Kim have played many of the big festivals and had experiences most bands would love to have and yet their presentation of the music never seems jaded—it seems as exuberant as it was a decade ago.2018’s Almost Everyday, written while Schifino was recovering from an injury strikes an unusually melancholy note now and then suggesting an acknowledgement of mortality to go along with the shift from the exuberant punk attitude of earlier releases to a focus on the electronic side of the band’s sound. Honestly, a welcome change of pace but even if you’re not a fan of the band’s newer sound it’s not like they’re going to only play from the new record and you can go expecting the hijinks that have made Matt and Kim shows more fun than those of most other bands.
Friday | March 30, 2018
It’s Just Bugs, photo by Tom Murphy
Who:Monocle Band & The Dress Downs When: Friday, 03.30, 6 p.m. doors, 7 p.m. show Where: Absolute Vinyl, Boulder Why: Absolute Vinyl ends its more than 9-year run as an institution that offered friendly service, fair prices on vinyl and a place to see a wide variety of live music from the avant-garde improvisational stylings of Animal / object to folk/Americana acts like Monocle Band and The Dress Downs, the two bands that will likely be the last live acts to be hosted by the store. Advocates for the local tape label showcase and other events focused on local culture, Absolute Vinyl was more than just a record store. Absolute Vinyl closes its doors for good tomorrow, Saturday, March 31 so if you’re so inclined pay it one last visit.
Who:Fathers vinyl release w/SPELLS, It’s Just Bugs, Cheap Perfume When: Friday, 03.30, 8:30 p.m. Where: Hi-Dive Why: At this show you can pick up the vinyl version of the self-titled Fathers album, which came out digitally in October 2017. The group is a bit of an all-star lineup of local heavy music including Oscar Ross and Ryan DeWitt from Lords of Fuzz, Eddie Maestas from Native Daughters and Mhyk Monroe from Cult of the Lost Cause. Fathers is more akin to metallic post-hardcore acts like Converge, Coalesce and Cave-In (whose singer/bassist Caleb Scofield died in a car accident earlier this week). Including the amplified intensity, the clear influence (directly or otherwise) of grindcore and gritty-screamy vocals. Fortunately the group thought to bring in likeminded but sonically quite different bands to round out the bill. SPELLS’ motto is 80% is good enough. But you can’t really tell anyone’s holding back on the energy and performance in the show. Sorta like pop-punk but more refined yet still simple and straight forward. Maybe frontman Ben Roy will do something transgressive but not abusive at the show and it’ll all be worth that beyond Chuck Coffey’s elegant and thoughtful songwriting disguised as dumb-but-fun punk. It’s Just Bugs is the perfect, even inevitable, blend of noise, electro-industrial music and hip-hop. Cheap Perfume writes catchy, fun songs but doesn’t dumb down or dulls its sharp takedown of patriarchal culture to comfort people who think art and politics should be separate.
Who:Strange Goo – KGNU presents An Evening of Perplexing Rhythm: Mux Mool and RUMTUM collaborative set, Ea$$side Lupita, CURTA and Norty When: Friday, 03.30, 8 p.m. Where: Fort Greene Bar Why: For fifth Fridays for the rest of the year, KGNU is presenting An Evening of Perplexing Rhythm, seems to be a showcase for forward thinking hip-hop and electronic music. This edition includes: Mux Mool and RUMTUM doing a set together likely combining their gifts for electronic dance music production and RUMTUM’s use of guitar loops and soundscapes – Ea$$side Lupita, the solo project of the incomparable KoKo La of R A R E B Y R D $ fame and if her production and lushly evocative and emotionally articulate vocals in the latter is any indication, this will be worth paying attention to as well – and CURTA, Denver’s premiere noise rap/experimental hip-hop group who recently released the excellent End of Future Park, a unique and almost surreal take on how the current state of late capitalist economic systems and the pervasiveness of technology in culture is impacting our daily lives in ways we tend not to examine closely enough.
Who:Suppression w/Herse, Berated and Flesh Buzzard When: Monday, 04.02, 7 p.m. Where: Mutiny Information Café Why: Suppression are an early noisegrind band from Virginia. When the band began in Roanoke in 1992 it probably seemed pretty extreme and brutal to most people that weren’t already into grindcore. The beyond-screamed vocals, savage sonic gyrations and doomy soundscaping of its 1993, self-titled debut likely didn’t endear itself to purist grind fans either. But 26 years hence and Suppression, now a two-piece, are considered legends of extreme music even though that means they’re probably playing the same kind of underground, DIY and otherwise unglamourous types of venues they did back near the beginning. That said, it would be so odd and not appropriate to witness this music at a theater or even a big club. Fortunately, Mutiny is a perfect place to catch Suppression as well as like-minded locals like the two-piece Herse whose own brand of grind waxes into the realm of experimental music with its own subverting grindcore tropes of song dynamics and tone.
Tuesday | April 3, 2018
Pale Waves, photo by Danny North
Who:Pale Waves w/Inheaven When: Tuesday, 04.03, 7 p.m. Where: Larimer Lounge Why: Pale Waves released All The Things I Never Said, its debut EP, in February 2018. While the band began in 2014, it’s obvious from the songwriting that the Manchester, UK-based group took some time incubating as a band before releasing a song much less a small body of work like a four-song EP. The band’s sound and image is an interesting mix of ideas and creative impulses. Overtly the music is modern synth pop but the band looks like they might be giving us a vintage post-punk/Goth sound as lead singer/guitarist Heather Baron-Gracie and drummer Ciara Doran look like they wouldn’t have been out of place in Siouxsie & The Banshees or Switchblade Symphony. Which makes the contrast interesting because the band sets you up to be surprised and not expect a particular style. Sure, an early single, “There’s Honey,” comes off like late-era Cocteau Twins meets Chvrches but later singles like “Heavenly” mix bright vintage dream pop guitar work with melodic hooks reminiscent of Alvvays. Whatever ingredients went into Pale Waves’ music, what it is now is one of the better pop groups to have come across the Atlantic in a few years.
Who:A Deer A Horse w/Quits and Product Lust When: Tuesday, 04.03, 8:30 p.m. Where: Hi-Dive Why: Brooklyn’s A Deer A Horse sounds like a cathartic blend of Carla Bozulich circa Evangelista and early Live Skull. That spooky and intense energy of Bozulich and a willingness to let cutting, noisy guitar find its place in jagged rhythms without being limited by them nor vice versa. All while somehow writing accessible songs with hooks. Also on the bill are Product Lust, the post-punk band that blasts through conventional notions of what that has to sound like. There is the spirit of hardcore in the songwriting and presentation partly because Kat Salvaggio is a confrontational frontwoman but the souunds and rhythms sonically color outside hardcore’s tendency for stark contrasts. Quits could loosely be called noise rock because the members of the band have all been in some of the most interesting groups of that ilk for a couple of decades. Doug Mioducki and Luke Fairchild were both in the sometimes shockingly forceful and unhinged noisy post-hardcore band Sparkles. Mioducki went on to play in art-noise-punk-jazz band Witch Doctor and, more recently, CP-208. Fairchild has been in several noteworthy sludgy, noisy punk/metal bands over the years but maybe you’re familiar with Git Some and Kingdom of Magic. Drummer Darren Kulback and bassist Tiana Bernard were also both in CP-208 but before that they were in noise rock trio Hot White who made some waves in the underground before splitting in 2011. And thus Quits brings together a bit of Denver noise rock history in one band. But is it any good? If its 2017 EP is any indication, that’s affirmative, Captain.
Wednesday | April 4, 2018
Boy Harsher, photo by Tom Murphy
Who:The Soft Moon w/Boy Harsher and Voight When: Wednesday, 04.04, 7 p.m. Where: Larimer Lounge Why: When The Soft Moon released its 2010 debut album its harsh yet hypnotic industrial post-punk sound didn’t seem connected to much else going on at the time. Unless you were listening to dark noise rockers like Pop. 1280 and Yoga. As stark and as urgent as Suicide, as bass driven with cutting guitar tone reminiscent of A Place to Bury Strangers, The Soft Moon likely also had some roots in Chrome’s blend of mind-altering guitar sound and experiments in electronic soundscaping. On the project’s 2018 record, Criminal, Luis Vasquez has made the dance element stronger while pushing his songwriter in stranger directions and thus escaped a potential trajectory of merely reinventing the sound of his earlier records. Whereas 2012’s Zeros sounded like a transitional record, Criminal sounds like a new chapter in Vasquez’s evolution as an artist. Sharing the bill is Denver’-based industrial post-punk duo Voight who are in the process of transforming their sound in a more electronic direction so you may get to see more than a hint of that for this show. Also, Boy Harsher, originally from Savannah, Georgia, will bring an immersive darkwave dance sound that doesn’t draw easy comparison to much unless you’ve been able to catch New Order or Adult in the last decade. Brilliantly sculpted, driving low end and ghostly vocals that suggest large spaces even when the blanket of fog obscures one’s sense of place at the show. Disorienting yet comforting. Boy Harsher releases Pain IIon May 11 but you may be able to pick up a copy at this show.
Twin Peaks performs Monday, March 26, 2018 at The Bluebird Theater. Photo by Daniel Topete
Thursday | March 22, 2018
Nnamdi Ogbonnaya, photo by Jess Myers
Who:Moaning and Nnamdi Ogbonnaya w/Curta When: Thursday, 03.22, 7 p.m. Where: Lost Lake Why: Listening to Nnamdi Ogbonnaya’s 2017 album Drool on Father/Daughter Records it should come as no surprise that the multi-instrumentalist is no stranger to how to employ sounds to their full effect and with a striking level of creativity. Is the music on the album hip-hop? Yes, but in the same sense that one might say the same of Thundercat, Serengeti or even Flying Lotus. It is hip-hop while transcending simple genre. It’s like brightly toned, experimental pop music without trying to be “experimental.” Ogbonnaya’s deft wordplay in the context of the music, each informing the other, gives the songs and their tales of everyday life and its struggles a heightened focus, a high contrast emotional experience to the point where it has a quality of otherworldliness like a Rudy Rucker or Pat Cadigan novel as both writers write about serious subjects in vivid detail but not without a sense of play and natural humor. That Ogbonnaya is sharing the stage with Denver’s dystopian sci-fi hip-hop act Curta and Los Angeles-based post-punk band Moaning and its gritty yet lush melodies just triples the appeal of the bill.
Sunday | March 25, 2018
Distance Research circa 2012, photo by Tom Murphy
Who:Textures: Distance Research, Offthesky and Paw Paw When: Sunday, 03.25, 7 p.m. Where: Mutiny Information Café Why: This month’s edition of the Textures Ambient Showcase includes some of Colorado’s most interesting sound sculptors. Distance Research is visual artist Sean Faling’s ambient/modular synth project of several years. Seeing as Faling is a bit of a synth collector and connoisseur, he brings something different and intentional in its composition to every performance. Offthesky combines the free flowing aesthetic of ambient and the programmed beats methodology of modern electronic dance music to create the kind of engulfing, atmospheric music that sounds like what it might be like to visit some future, technological society that has managed to develop beyond the sort of mass environmentally destructive industrial society we live in today. Paw Paw blends organic guitar loops and streams with hypnotic electronic beats.
Monday | March 26, 2018
Panther Martin, photo by Tom Murphy
Who:Twin Peaks and The Districts w/Panther Martin When: Monday, 03.26, 7 p.m. Where: The Bluebird Theater Why: Twin Peaks came up through Chicago’s DIY music scene at a time when the recent garage rock and garage punk revival reinvigorated that circuilt of music with energy and immediately relatable music. Twin Peaks crested that wave by, well, being better songwriters than many of the neo-garage rock bands. Even its debut full-length, 2013’s Sunken, seemed unusually developed and imaginative for a band that many critics described as, let’s face it, yet another modern band copping a 60s vibe in the 2010s. Twin Peaks’ synthesis of Rolling Stones, 70s power pop, T. Rex and The Reatards has so far at least yielded songs that brim with life and attitude of its own rather than merely mimicking an already successful style. The group’s new record Sweet ’17 Singles Series is less raw than, say, 2014’s Wild Onion, but the injection of a little soulfulness into the sound has just given the band’s songwriting a bit of depth to match its aims to write solid rock songs at a time when rock has gotten a little stale all over again.
The Districts from Pennsylvania are more on a folk-rooted end of modern rock music. Which in 2018 could, and often is, so played out. But the contrast between the band’s expansive dynamics and bright tonality is a fascinating contrast with lyrics that dig deep into places in the psyche one would rather forget only to come up with some strikingly wise insights about the complicated emotions we have to tangle with as we age beyond merely becoming an adult. The Districts’ 2017 album Popular Manipulations is brimming with unusually thoughtful songs in that vein.
Panther Martin is a Denver band that sounded initially like it came from similar roots to The Districts and Twin Peaks and like both of those bands found its footing and its own voice in challenging itself to evolve beyond its early influences. On the 2017 EP Drats the group displays more than a post-Strokes aesthetic and certainly many of Panther Martin’s recent live videos point in fascinating directions one might not suspect from listening to its earlier output. A perfect local opener for a bill like this.
Who:Secret Drum Band, Poppet and Sam Humans When: Monday, 03.26, 8 p.m. Where: Syntax Physic Opera Why: Secret Drum Band is a collaborative project between composers Lisa Schonberg, Allan Wilson and Heather Treadway and a variety of musicians attempting to create textured soundscapes with a quality that mimics aspects of the natural world. Its 2017 debut album Dynamics is like an avant-garde, tribal ritual captured for posterity. Pretty different for people like Wilson who was once in Chk Chk Chk, Treadway who was in Explode into Colors and Sara Lund, former drummer of Unwound. Definitely for fans of the more experimental end of prog like Magma and Faust.
Tuesday | March 27, 2018
Mobley, photo by KUTX Staff
Who:Dark Rooms w/Mobley When: Tuesday, 03.27, 7 p.m. Where: Lost Lake Why: Dark Rooms and its soul-infused downtempo is noteworthy on its own as is the group’s latest record, 2017’s Distraction Sickness. But Daniel Hart may be better known behind the scenes as a musician who has scored several films for director David Lowery whose 2017 movie A Ghost Story garnered no small amount of critical praise in addition to becoming a bit of a cult movie already since its release. The Dark Rooms song “I Get Overwhelmed” appeared in A Ghost Story so here’s a rare chance to see it live. Also on the bill is Austin-based one-man band Mobley. A filmmaker and multi-media artist in his own right, Mobley plays various instruments throughout his set. Mobley refers to his music as “post-genre pop” meaning he conceptualizes his music in the form of pop but utilizing various sounds and strategies to suit the song. On April 27 his new album, Fresh Lies, Vol. 1 drops and its the beginning of a kind of song cycle that explores the complexities of his relationship with America. Soon we will be publishing an interview with Mobley conducted during Treefort Music Fest where more of the story behind what inspired the new album and forthcoming volumes from this imaginative and thoughtful artist.
Who:A Light Among Many (tour finale), Giardia, Church Fire, Feigning When: Tuesday, 03.27, 7 p.m.
Where: Mutiny Information Café
Why: A Light Among Many is based out of Lyons, Colorado, a town a little off the beaten path but close enough to bigger cities to have access to a place to perform his brand of constructed environment ambient music. Constructed may be the wrong term as it sounds like stuff Franklin Binder imagined walking in forests and canyons well away from human civilizations, the product of taking in the un-orange-hazed midnight sky, raw emotions flowing free unpenned in by interference from the immediate presence of other humans and their urban constructs. Of course there is the aspect of curation in capturing the recordings and putting them out in a coherent manner but it feels like something primal and coming direct from the psyche. Giardia might cross over into the realm of metal but its 2017 album Structure Fire sounds like some kind of cross between black metal, Frank Zappa and jazzy psychedelia. Church Fire may be a little occult for some people with a name like that, but it’s also one of the most interesting bands today with its vital blend of pop, industrial, noise and performance art minus any pretension.
In addition to featuring an excellent cross section of indie and underground music Treefort Music Fest 2018 is bringing some of the more noteworthy newer bands (Magic Sword, Zola Jesus), classic underground and counterculture artists (George Clinton, Karl Blau, Dear Nora, Andrew W.K., Selector Dub Narcotic, Cindy Wilson, Tad Doyle and Brett Netson and Built to Spill) as well as the kinds of reunion shows (H-Hour, Treepeople and Dirt Fishermen) that you’re not likely to see happen at another music festival. Also, this may be one of the few times you will be able to catch Pussy Riot, the band sentenced to prison in 2012 for “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred” in Russia. The performance art/punk band performs at El Korah Shrine at 11:25 p.m. on Saturday, March 24. What follows a list of the musicians that should be on your must-see list for the weekend with the links to more information on those artists.
Ever since the founding of Treefort Music Fest, Colorado bands have been a staple of the event as Treefort was inspired by The UMS in Denver. This year is, Colorado based bands are on the bill virtually every night of the Fest and what follows is a rundown of those bands and the time and place where you can catch them. Esmé Patterson is being included because, well, she became a significant artist before she moved from Denver. The organizers of Treefort Music Fest have done a great job of providing links and photos so click on the links for each band to find out more information and in most cases give the artists a listen.
Mint Field performs Saturday, March 24, at 6:30 p.m. at Boise All-ages Movement. Photo by Maria Fernanda Molins
Treefort Music Fest kicks off tonight in Boise, Idaho. As usual, the festival offers a broad spectrum of indie music with a well-curated selection of headlining acts. Here are some highlights on each night, although you can’t really go wrong with where you end up for the night. Hopefully this listing can serve as a guide to what are some of the most interesting acts each night that maybe not everyone has heard of without bombarding you with too many options. Hopefully you’ll want to explore those other options as you check out various performances. We will also include a guide to the reunion shows and other must-see/legendary stuff you’ll want to catch should you be so inclined as well as a rundown of all the Colorado acts performing throughout the weekend.
Mint Field performs at Lost Lake on March 21. Photo by Maria Fernanda Molins
Who:Protomartyr w/Ned Garthe Explosion When: Thursday, 03.15, 7 p.m. Where: Globe Hall Why: Protomartyr apparently didn’t get the memo on what post-punk bands in the current era are supposed to sound like. The vocal delivery hits at weird angles to the fluid rhythms and jagged yet expressive and atmospheric guitar work like Nick Cave singing for a hybrid of The Fall and Sleaford Mods. Its latest record is 2017’s Relatives in Descent. It’s a bit moodier than the group’s earlier albums yet has a headlong quality as though the band is embracing the chaos and disorientation of the world now to see where the broken machine ultimately lands. Ned Garthe Explosion is more of a psychedelic rock band but one of the most gloriously ragged around the edges and one for which you never quite know where the show will go in a way we need to see more often.
Who:Alonerly, R A R E B Y R D $, Claudzilla When: Thursday, 03.15, 10 p.m. Where: Mutiny Information Café Why: Alonerly is the solo project of Antonia Montoya from Albuquerque. Using upright bass, soulful vocals and beats, Montoya creates the kind of spacious yet intimate music that probably gets lumped, and not unjustifiably so, with jazz and hip-hop but is in the end its own thing, a rarity in a time when many musical artists are trying to tap a little too much into an established musical genre. She won’t be alone in bringing something not quite like anything else with keytar weirdo Claudzilla and hypnotic and highly evocative hip-hop/noise crew R A R E B Y R D $.
Friday | March 16, 2018
Bad Licks, photo by Tom Murphy
Who:Bad Licks 7 inch release w/Vic ‘n’ the Narwhals, The Corner Girls and Soulfax DJs
When: Friday, 03.16, 8:30 p.m.
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Bad Licks includes former members of The Blue Rider so there’s plenty of the subtle weirdness to the undertones of its psychedelic garage rock. The group is celebrating the release of its latest seven inch of its excellent Lies EP. Because people in the band are very much into genuinely experimental music, the record is worth listening to beyond obvious genre trappings. Joined this night by pastel/surf punks The Corner Girls and surf/blues punk band Vic ‘n’ the Narwhals. All around a post-garage rock genre-bending extravaganza because all of these bands put on an energetic performance.
Who:Clan of Xymox w/Voicecoil and Radio Scarlet w/DJ Svipal When: Friday, 03.16, 7 p.m. Where: Bluebird Theater Why: Clan of Xymox formed in Amsterdam near the height of the first wave of post-punk in 1981. The band’s sound including more extensive use of synths was more in line with groups like Comsat Angels, The Sound, Killing Joke and The Chameleons. Clan of Xymox’s first three albums are considered foundational for what has come to be known as “darkwave” – the blending of early synth pop aesthetics with post-punk. Xymox and contemporaries like Anne Clark, Fad Gadget and Depeche Mode made what might have been considered weird and avant-garde accessible to a broad audience. By the early 90s, however, the band splintered and Ronnie Moorings continued in a direction inspired by the acid house music popular in dance clubs in the late 80s and early 90s. But apparently the project’s fanbase wasn’t into that sound and it didn’t translate well to the rave crowd. And yet Xymox hadn’t completely lost its darkwave cachet and throughout the 90s Moorings experimented with a return to that sort of sound while absorbing the industrial music of bands he had in part influenced. Over the past decade darkwave, industrial and gothic rock has been enjoying the most extensive genuine revival since the first time around and Xymox has enjoyed a little of its own renaissance being invited to festivals catering to the aforementioned genres and with its last eight albums, including 2017’s Days of Black, released or re-issued on Metropolis. Why did the music matter? As someone once said about Joy Division, despite and because of its sometimes gloomy, brooding, emotionally urgent and intense sounds, Xymox and its contemporaries had to come along to articulate complex and sometimes conflicting emotions with a clarity, power and poignancy that wasn’t happening with a lot of rock and roll.
Monday | March 19, 2018
Yardsss, photo by Tom Murphy
Who:Screwtape, Wander, Young Lovers, Ridgeway, Yardsss, Brother Saturn When: Monday, 03.19, 6:30 p.m. Where: Seventh Circle Music Collective Why: One of the great things about shows at Seventh Circle is that even if it’s all supposed to be all one thing it never really is. Tonight proves that as local hardcore heroes Screwtape are performing alongside mostly post-rock/shoegaze bands. Brother Saturn’s collage of guitar sounds tracing the outsides of daydreams made up of soothingly hypnotic layers of atmosphere is a good fit with California based post-rock bands Wander, Young Lovers and Ridgeway to send them back home from SXSW in a welcoming show halfway through that journey. Yardsss from Portland, Oregon has a diverse sonic palette but broadly speaking, the band’s core sounds are rooted in droning atmospheres, noise and improvisational electronic composition. Fans of more experimental industrial music will find much to like in Yardsss’ darkly evocative aesthetic.
Who:Mimicking Birds, The Raven and the Writing Desk and Haley Heynderickx When: Monday, 03.19, 7 p.m. Where: Globe Hall Why: Indie rock band Mimicking Birds are making a stop in Denver on their way to Treefort Music Fest (we’ll be featuring some advance coverage in the next few days as well as post-fest coverage in the following weeks). The group recently released its new album, the gorgeously lush and pastoral Layers of Us. If you’re not making it out to Treefort for the 7:40 p.m. set at El Korah Shrine, catch the Portland, Oregon-based band tonight with the like-minded The Raven and the Writing Desk. The latter is one of Denver’s best kept secrets in music as a band that has really pushed itself to explore new vistas in its own sound and breaking with its own musical past in order to make something interesting and fresh. A rarity.
Tuesday | March 20, 2018
GGOOLLDD, photo by Kelly Bolter
Who:OMD w/GGOOLLDD When: Tuesday, 03.20, 7 p.m. Where: The Ogden Theatre Why: Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, often referred to as OMD, were, like fellow UK artists Gary Numan and Human League as well as Berlin in the USA, instrumental in establishing what became synth pop. After seeing an mid-70s Kraftwerk concert, bassist and vocalist Andy McCluskey started OMD with some friends and from early on the band separated itself from many other bands of the era in having no guitars and but a visceral live show. OMD enjoyed its share of commercial popularity in the UK and the US at various points in its career but artistically it’s arguably greatest achievement was the 1983 album Dazzle Ships. But the mainstream audience didn’t seem to be much into the truly boundary pushing pop compositions. Today the album is considered by many fans to be its best alongside its 1981 predecessor, Architecture & Morality. Now recognized as innovators as well talented masters of pop songcraft, OMD will be headlining a show at The Ogden Theatre with the Milwaukee, Wisconsin-based GGOOLLDD. The latter, fronted by the dynamic and talented Margaret Butler, recently released the TEETH EP in December 2017. Part synth pop, part theatrical glam band, GGOOLLDD has always put on a large theater show in small, even intimate venues, so catch a great, newer band opening for a group in a similar lineage of imaginative yet sincere music.
What:Faster Than Light Fest: Obtuse (1st), Blue Lane Frontier, Old Sport, Granddad (AK/MN), Closer is a Band (Brooklyn), Alien Boy (Portland), Runaway Brother (Cleveland) When: Tuesday, 03.20, 5 p.m. Where: Seventh Circle Music Collective Why: This is a festival put together for bands on their way from SXSW or going through and happening to converge in Denver for one date. It’s also a good cross section of the modern punk/emo/math rock underground in America and naturally it’s at Seventh Circle where a lot of touring if that stripe often plays in Denver these days. Locals Obtuse, Old Sport and Blue Lane Frontier represent a rebirth for the kind of punk that both embraces pop punk, screamo, indie rock and math rock but also advances where that music could have gone had it converged and evolved. Portland’s Alien Boy gets points for naming itself after a Wipers song but also for embodying the kind of moody punk with thoughtful, sometimes wryly humorous, lyrics and the kind of darkness and intensity, not to say anger, that a lot of punk frankly lacks.
Wednesday | March 21, 2018
Kelly Lee Owens, photo by Kim Hiorthøy
Who:Kelly Lee Owens When: Wednesday, 03.21, 9 p.m. Where: Bar Standard Why: With her 2017 self-titled full-length, Kelly Lee Owens displayed a keen ear for electronic composition and a knack for translating that into accessible dance tracks. Her mastery of mixing hypnotic and deep low end with melodic drones interweaving with her ethereal vocals across the record was stunning. Fans of IDM, dub techno and deep house, do yourself a favor and at a minimum pick up the album. Also, fans of dream pop/shoegaze acts unafraid of jumping straight into abstract atmospheres such as Slowdive, Seefeel and Sound of Ceres will find much to like with Owens’ output as well. Owens performs tonight at Bar Standard before setting off for Treefort Music Fest in Boise, Idaho where she performs Thursday night 3.22 at 12:30 a.m. at Neurolux
Who:Mint Field w/Neighbor Lady and American Grandma When: Wednesday, 03.21, 7 p.m. Where: Lost Lake Why: Mint Field’s 2018 debut album Pasar De Las Luces is being touted as a great modern shoegaze album. And it is, but it is one that isn’t particularly beholden to an older sound. The minimalist aesthetic of the music bears a stronger resemblance to ambient and downtempo dance music than to rock. At its most “rock” the band comes off as more post-punk and Krautrock like Neu! or Faust than worshippers of Lush or My Bloody Valentine. Although the band is from Tijuana its gauzy layers and swirling melodies are a far cry from that city’s reputation as one of the party capitals of the world. Mint Field also performs at Treefort Music Fest in Boise, Idaho on Saturday, March 24 at 6:30 p.m. at Boise All Ages Movement.
Who:U.S. Girls w/Rubedo and Michael Rault When: Wednesday, 03.21, 7 p.m. Where: Larimer Lounge Why: Meghan Remy’s U.S. Girls has thankfully been pretty much impossible to chalk up to a single genre of music since the project’s inception. It’s always pop songs whether those have a leg in noise, punk, garage rock or whatever. Her latest album, 2018’s In a Poem Unlimited, sounds, interestingly enough, like a reinvention of 90s hip-hop as a funk and soul record. It has that lush production with grit and a melancholic undertone. “Pearly Gates” in particular is reminiscent of Warren G’s 1994 hit “Regulate.” Which, considering the themes of the album, is an interesting allusion. But whatever ideas and sounds informed the record, it is a literate and insightful exploration the various manifestations of toxic masculinity, its effects throughout culture and society and what life might be like without it’s wearying, destructive influence.
Who:Ed Schrader’s Music Beat w/Naked Giants and Hairclub When: Wednesday, 03.21, 8 p.m. Where: Hi-Dive Why: If you listened to Ed Schrader’s Music Beat’s albums and other recorded releases prior to 2018 and didn’t see live, the appeal can be a bit of a head scratcher. A floor tom, scream-ish vocals and bass? Live it all made sense and the records relatable. But the band put out its most accessible album to date with Riddles. Having worked with Dan Deacon didn’t hurt and as the band’s producer, Deacon helped to shape a sound that took the duo’s avant-garde urban tribal contradictions and into the level of recorded coherence the project has always warranted. Ed Schrader’s Music Beat also performs at Treefort Music Fest in Boise, Idaho at 10:30 p.m. at Boise All-ages Movement Project.
Kikagaku Moyo, performs at the Hi-Dive on Saturday, March 10, 2018. Photo by Jamie Wdziekonski.
Thursday | March 8, 2018
Universal Devils, photo by Tom Murphy
Who:Musical Mayhem: Jim Davies (GA), Universal Devils and Enji When: Thursday, 03.08, 9 p.m. Where: The Skylark Lounge Why: This half of March’s programme for Musical Mayhem at the Skylark includes Georgia-based weirdo songwriter Jim Davies, solo videogram soundtrack-esque multi-instrumental looper Enji and Universal Devils. The latter is Tricky Dick Wicket, the drummer for Little Fyodor & Babushka band for over a decade. Universal Devils is his solo project in which he plays guitar, drums and other instruments in a kind of truly unique mix of metal and country and blues. Calling it “avant-garde” doesn’t quite do it justice because it’s accessible with pretty conventional songwriting even if the sounds used in the way they’re used are far from mundane.
Who:Elettrodomestico (Jane Wiedlin and Pietro Straccia) When: Thursday, 03.08, 8:30 p.m. Where: BarFly Why: Jane Wiedlin is doing a Q&A before this performance for the screening of Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure. Afterward, her band Elettrodomestico will perform in BarFly, the bar/venue attached to Alamo Drafthouse on West Colfax. The band formed in December 2016 following The Go-Go’s’ “Farewell Tour” (the great new wave band will perform again in 2018) when Wiedlin and Italian musician Pietro Straccia bonded over their mutual love the then recently passed David Bowie. The band the duo started is pretty different from The Go-Go’s and Bowie except for a knack for writing energetic pop songs with a little grit and thoughtfulness and mood to give the music some depth thematically and musically. To the credit of both artists Elettrodomestico is in no way riding anyone’s legacy or coattails. Rather, like Cindy Wilson formerly of the B-52s, it’s a reinvention and one worth listening to separate from any past associations.
Friday | March 9, 2018
Gort Vs. Goom, photo by Tom Murphy
Who:Terminals, Gort Vs. Goom, New Standards Men, Pygmy Grizzly, Frank Bell When: Friday, 03.09, 9 p.m. Where: Bar Bar Why: This appears to be a bill of instrumental-focused, experimental music rooted in rock sounds and aesthetics bands. Terminals is sort of an improv post-rock/post-industrial band with guitars, synths, drums, bass. No set is ever the same but the group is more than capable of generating deep atmospheric magic. Gort Vs. Goom is a drums and electric bass duo who make the kind of music that could be described as what might happen if the Melvins set out to make a surf band dedicated to Minutemen. Sure the guys in GVG have vocals but it’s almost like surreal slam poetry. New Standards Men are probably a post-punk band but their sound sounds like it drew heavy influence from some of the more experimental bands on the Thrill Jockey imprint. Like Tortoise or A Minor Forest but with some expansive noise tones in the mix.
Who:Larians (Noah Simons solo), Houseplants, Jumanjihad When: Friday, 03.09, 9 p.m. Where: Denver Bicycle Café Beer Hall Why: Noah Simons is perhaps best known for being the charismatic singer of post-punk band Male Blonding. But his musical interests range pretty far and his solo project Larians, which hasn’t performed live since maybe an RTD (Ready To Dance) event at Rhinoceropolis in 2014, is more in an experimental electronic music and dubtechno vein. Think something like Plaid’s tranquil melodics and use of synth strings alongside Burial-esque bass sculpting and persistent yet dissolving and reconfiguring atmospheres as an element of the beat. How will this all sound at Denver Bicycle Café rather than the main room at The Black Box? You’ll have to show up to find out. But for a taste of what Larians is about, Simons released the excellent “Dwell Led” single in February 2018.
Saturday | March 10, 2018
King Eddie, photo by Tom Murphy
Who:Kikagaku Moyo w/Tjutjuna and DJ Rett Rogers When: Saturday, 03.10, 8 p.m. Where: Hi-Dive Why: Kikagaku Moyo is a Tokyo-based psychedelic rock/avant-garde band. With its roots in a project between Go Kurosawa and Tomo Katsurada busking the streets of Japan’s most populous metropolis, Kikagaku Moyo has, to some extent, gone against the grain of Japanese culture in the way Ghost did when it started up in the 80s similarly playing music on the streets, subways and ruins of ancient temples in and around Tokyo. Kikagaku Moyo got its proper start as a band when Go’s brother Ryu returned from learning sitar from one of the world’s masters, Manilal Nag in India. Incorporating elements of noise and ambient music, Kikagaku Moyo’s songs express a broad range of sonic experimentation from extended psych freakout jams to tranquil yet haunted folk songs. Unlike many bands that have dipped into the realm of psychedelia and prog, this Japanese quintet doesn’t get stuck in a single or predictable mode. Sharing the stage this night is Denver-based experimental psych band Tjutjuna. Also with musical inspirations traceable to the more out 70s prog and Japanese psych/noise bands like Acid Mothers Temple, Tjutjuna’s hypnotic oeuvre set itself apart from the trendy psych stuff that seemed to hover at the edges of all popular rock music from 2008 onward.
Who:Daikaiju w/TripLip, Dr. Zilog and Smellephant
When: Saturday, 03.10, 7 p.m.
Where: 7th Circle Music Collective
Why: Daikaij is to surf rock what Crash Worship was to noise and post-punk—as experienced, as much an exuberant collective cult ritual as music. Catch the band tonight at 7th Circle or Sunday at the Triple Nickel in Colorado Springs.
Who:King Eddie (video release) w/déCollage When: Saturday, 03.10, 10 p.m. Where: BarFly Why: Tonight King Eddie releases the video for “Enter the Man” from its 2017 boundary pushing psychedelic rock album Holographic Universe. Both that band and the playfully surrealistic psychedelic pop band déCollage will perform before a screening of Renée Laloux’s 1973 animated science fiction classic Fantastic Planet. King Eddie sounds like maybe the music had its origins in writing what had become a trendy psych rock but Jay Mars and his bandmates injected heaps of imagination into the songwriting and arrangements to produce a body of work that synthesizes pop, psych and the avant-garde with the aesthetics of the virtual reality visuals that have become a bit of a specialty for Mars.
Who:Uppermost w/Snubluck and Zurc When: Wednesday, 03.14, 7 p.m. Where: Lost Lake Why: Behdad Nejatbakhshe, aka Uppermost, left his life trajectory into a career as a lawyer to pursue making music. Eight albums in, with the forthcoming Perseverance due out March 23, Uppermost has created a body of work that is a synthesis of pure electronic production and more analog musical elements. For instance on his 2017 album, the loosely space-themed Origins, the producer incorporated live guitar and orchestral arrangements in the recording process. The songs tend to have a bright, upbeat quality with a quality that suggests peaceful spring days and gentle breezes. That Uppermost is inspired by the likes of Burial, Flume and Bonobo should come as no surprise since his own compositions have a soothing yet energetic quality as well. With Perseverance, Uppermost has crafted a body of songs that have an expansive spaciousness with a daydream-y quality that first came back into vogue with the so-called chillwave artists—bright tones, hypnotic yet uplifting atmospheric swells and smooth but irresistible low end. The record feels built for summer nights at casual hangouts with friends and is arriving just in time.
Who:Cars & Trains and Curta album release w/Utajahs and Nighttimeschoolbus visuals by Skyrider When: Wednesday, 03.10, 8 p.m. Where: 7th Circle Music Collective Why: Curta’s new record, End of Future Park, sounds like the natural progression from its dystopian predecessor, 2015’s Replica. Curta’s music has always seemed to sit somewhere between the no-rules-use-of-sounds beatmaking of turn of the century alternative hip-hop, industrial, noise and collage sound composition. End of Future Park is no different but with that album, rapper Jake Danna captures the time between 2016 and 2017 (and, let’s be real, 2018 so far) when underground culture seemed to be under attack and the erosion of all civil institutions and of civility itself and the postmodern nihilism as expressed in a completely understandable cynicism that has blighted the public and personal discourse seemingly everywhere you go. Across the whole record, Danna confronts his own cynicism and there’s a bit of a different feel to this record than a lot of music coming out of late in a way more people probably need to hear—a tone of wanting to find and create a self and a society where that deep rooted cynicism isn’t entirely justified. The record comes out on March 19, 2018 but you can probably pick up a copy at this show where also on the bill is Nighttimeschoolbus, the duo that answers the question of what happens when an idiosyncratic indie pop artist teams up with a masterful alternative hip-hop producer.
Melkbelly performs with Bully on Monday, March 5, 2018. ,Photo by Lenny Gilmore
Thursday | March 1, 2018
Oryx, photo by Alvino Salcedo
Who:EyeHateGod w/Oryx, Tricoma and Blighter When: Thursday, 03.01, 7 p.m. Where: The Marquis Theater Why: Oryx was a nearly ubiquitous name you’d see on the heaviest bills around Denver for a while. But the band seems to have hunkered down to write, refine and record its new album, 2018’s Stolen Absolution. Maybe “refine” is the wrong word as the record is a raw blast of rage and disgust with the bleak state of the world from the impending collapse of the natural environment as we used to know it and the utter shabbiness in the ways too many of us humans treat one another. It doesn’t sound despairing, it sounds more like a cry for humanity to get its collective shit together before we make one mistake too many. The crust/grind/black metal duo is releasing the album at this show in which its sharing the bill with like-minded, New Orleans sludge legends EyeHateGod, Denver purveyors of death doom Tricoma and Blighter, Colorado Springs’ titans of bridging the gap between crust punk and the heaviest of metal.
Friday | March 2, 2018
Briffaut, photo by Kitty Colvin
Who:Briffaut album release w/Down Time and In/Planes When: Friday, 03.02, 8 p.m. Where: Syntax Physic Opera Why: Briffaut’s new album, Helsinki, has a hazy lushness and freeform yet structured songwriting style that suggests jazz underpinnings. But mostly its soft tones and beats, its Mellotron-tinged and drifty atmospheres and idiosyncratic storytelling evoke imagery both surreal and all-too-real in the offhand everyday detail style employed by director Mike Mills. Musically it’s reminiscent of early The Helio Sequence and Animal Collective or even mid-2000s of Montreal—gorgeous melodies intertwined with noise and sound experiments to create a kind of pop music that pushes boundaries and has more long term durability as something you can listen to twenty or more years from now and still get something out of it that isn’t tied purely to nostalgia for one’s youth. In/Planes is apparently rooted in classic American pop meaning the duo has researched songwriters and music that has long fallen out of style but which never lost a certain emotional resonance and sophistication of craft that transcends time. The band’s refreshingly uncluttered songs are warm and soulful while not seeming to have done more than borrowed touches of doo wop and Brill Building-era pop. All of this can be heard on the band’s excellent 2017 EP Everything. Down Time reinvented indie pop in its brilliantly idiosyncratic style as heard on its debut 2017 full-length Good Luck!. Live the group has a striking freshness and inventive soundscaping that’s undeniably compelling.
Who:Jane/Eyre – Grapefruit Lab and Teacup Gorilla w/Dameon Merkl on vocals When: Friday, 03.023, 7 p.m. Where: The Bakery Why: As we mentioned last week this is a queer adaptation of Charlotte Brontë’s classic 1847 coming-of-age novel. So it’ll be storytelling and songs provided by the Grapefruit Lab collective and Teacup Gorilla who are bringing in noted local frontman and raconteur extraordinaire, Dameon Merkl who some may know as one of the vocalists in Lost Walks as well as his turns in 90s punk band Random Victim and noir rock phenoms Bad Luck City. Because it’s Teacup Gorilla, a band that has long developed a relationship with theater and writing experimental rock music that can only loosely be defined as post-punk or glam rock because its imaginative songwriting and musicianship is much broader than a single genre. The run of this production concludes this weekend with shows on Friday evening March 2 ( and will include a performance from Ersatz Robots), Saturday evening March 3 with a surprise musical guest, and Sunday for a matinee performance at 2 p.m.
Catch this one before it ends because as far as adaptations of classic novels go it’s irreverence and faithfulness to the spirit of the book is rivaled by, if not in budget, sheer spectacle huge cast and production values, Peter Jackson’s Tolkien films and Game of Thrones. But none of the sword and sorcery though with plenty of high drama and the supernatural. The live soundtracking and Merkl as the sound of troubled and tortured spirits helps to enhance the brilliant three cast-member presentation.
Who:Velvet Acid Christ at Purgatory 3-2 w/Offerings to Odin, DJ Mudwulf, DJ Bloodline, DJ Julian Black When: Friday, 03.02, 9 p.m. Where: Bar Standard Why: Although in recent years Velvet Acid Christ has more than doubled the number of shows that he played in Denver in the first twenty years of the band’s existence, it’s not like he plays every week, every few months or even really every year. VAC began in the early 90s and became an influential and popular EBM act in its own right with a knack for surrealistic imagery and darkly humorous storytelling. It’s been a few years since we’ve seen any original releases from VAC so maybe in 2018 perhaps Bryan Erickson, the band’s sole full-time member, will put deliver a new set of dystopian future dance songs.
Who:R A R E B Y R D $, EVP, Bianca Mikahn, Giraft When: Friday, 03.02, 9 p.m. Where: Denver Bicycle Café Why: This is a Glasss Presents show three of the imprint’s best acts are on the bill. R A R E B Y R D $ is making the kind of hip-hop that is beyond conscious, beyond merely experimental but always human and thoughtful in its exploration of the impact of society and our own minds in how we navigate life. EVP is difficult to describe in simple genre terms. Part punk, part industrial, part pop, part noise. Bianca Mikahn…does she make hip-hop or super experimental, poetry driven R&B? Whatever it is, Mikahn’s insightful words weaves together her personal vision of a more loving and inclusive future. Giraft is Julianna Beckert and Chris White who make a kind of post-IDM downtempo. White some may remember for his masterful bass work in Alan Alda and Voices Underwater.
Who:Modern Leisure (album preview party) w/Kissing Party and Bark Wilson When: Friday, 03.02, 8 p.m. Where: Lost Lake Why: Modern Leisure is previewing its forthcoming debut full-length album (set for a summer release). Good thing the band is joined by another that brings some dignity to the term pop when applied to a modern indie rock band. That being Bark Wilson. Layered atmospheres and rhythms that you don’t often hear in a pop band are Bark Wilson’s noteworthy hallmark. Kissing Party has a whole catalog of heartbreaking/heartwarming songs about love and disappointment. Don’t let the band’s sometimes irreverent and sardonic stage persona fool you, they mean those songs and that’s what saves them from being quaintly romantic because despite any flaws, the group performs the songs with a sincerity to match the sentiments.
Who:Adult Swim Presents: Mr. Pickles’ Trash-tacular featuring Exodus, Municipal Waste and Call of the Void When: Friday, 03.02, 7 p.m. Where: Summit Music Hall Why: The nerd and metalhead world has a lot of overlap. Did Mr. Pickles exert his demonic powers to influence the choice of line-up? If so, he certainly has good taste. Exodus is the influential Bay Area thrash band that helped to establish the genre. After all, Kirk Hammett left Exodus to join Metallica so the thrash pedigree is undeniable. But it’s Gary Holt’s crunchy and driving, expressive, guitar style and his tasteful solo as lead is oft imitated by rarely equaled. Virginia’s Municipal Waste, though coming along in the beginning of the Twenty-First Century, has exerted influence of its own inspired by 80s crossover groups. Its guitars sound like the perfect blend of thrash and late-era first wave hardcore. But its rhythm, particularly the drums, sound borderline grindcore. But Municipal Waste is perhaps best known for its irreverent sense of humor. A band that calls one of its videos “Thrashin’s My Business…and Business is Good has to get some points for iconoclasm. Call of the Void you wouldn’t call a crossover band even though its grind and hardcore amalgam might give that impression. Its sound is more savage than the typical crossover band but its articulation of pushing the sound of despair and desperation to the extreme as a form of catharsis is often just what you need.
Saturday | March 3, 2018
Paperbark, photo by Tom Murphy
Who:Centered Vol. 2: {arsonist}, C. Reider, Paperbark, Luxury Hearse When: Saturday, 03.03, 8:30 p.m. Where: The Ubisububi Room Why: This is going to be a kind of ambient/modular synth show in the basement of The Thin Man. With Paperbark, John Mulville uses his modular synth to make abstract sounds that capture textures and the feeling of being in the natural world even as it is completely unnatural, as it were, in generating his soundscapes. C. Reider’s vast catalog of fascinating sound experiments and compositions can be found most readily on his Bandcamp page. With releases going back to the late 80s, Reider is something like Colorado’s Aphex Twin except less on the glitch end and more on the avant-garde and ambient end of electronic music. Pittsburgh’s {arsonist} employs layered atmospheres, textures and strings to create otherworldly compositions reminiscent of The Future Sound of London side project Amorphous Androgynous. Luxury Hearse has a pretty diverse set of sounds but some of its best work sounds like a super chill, secret dance club for minimal synth heads.
Who:KGNU and Lion’s Lair Quarterly Showcase: Simulators, Mirror Fears, Joseph Lamar, Rich Jones and CRL CRRLL (DJ set after Rich Jones) When: Saturday, 03.03, 8 p.m. Where: Lion’s Lair Why: KGNU is one of the few legit radio stations taking real chances with its programming these days (having a community sponsored format probably helps). So every quarter the station has been working with Lion’s Lair to book a showcase of some of the more forward thinking and experimental music in various spectrums of the local music world. This particular event is also a Fasor Records mini-showcase. The label started by CRL CRRLL will probably include like-minded artists who push the boundaries of where electronic dance music and hip-hop production intersect. As indicated above, CRRLL will do a DJ set. Also on hand for this show are raw and spare post-punk duo Simulators, maximalist, deeply emotional and socially critical electronic artist Mirror Fears and Joseph Lamar who has found a sweet spot with his solid songwriting based in indie rock, jazz, experimental electronic music and a theatrical performance style.
Who:Pretty Mouth, The Patient Zeros and Kitty Crimes When: Saturday, 03.03, 9 p.m. Where: Streets of London Why: This is going to be a different kind of show. Pretty Mouth is Marie Litton’s more Americana side of her songwriting. That said, there is a spiritual quality to Litton’s songs and performance even though she seems to be writing from a life that hasn’t been short on struggle, heartache and a deep love for people and of living like you mean it. The Patient Zeros are in a similar realm of songcraft but more in a rock and roll vein. Too many bands have tried to be “rock and roll” but The Patient Zeros’ songs don’t sound like they learned about Jack White a few years ago but have none of the poetry or genuine swagger. The Patient Zeros never come off like the second-rate Kings of Leon. Kitty Crimes…Maria Kohler has always been up to some noteworthy music including Science Partner and Mercuria and the Gem Stars. Kitty Crimes has been sort of a dirty rap project but in Kohler’s hands there’s an elegance and transformative quality that renders that sort of thing into something fun and worth your time above and beyond the appeal of anything transgressive but not inherently harmful.
Monday | March 5, 2018
Bully, photo by Alysse Gafkjen
Who: Bully w/Melkbelly When: Monday, 03.05, 7 p.m. Where: Larimer Lounge Why: Bully’s first album, 2015’s Feels Like, polarized critics. Oh, sure, the band sounds like it was beyond influenced by early 90s alternative rock. When you grow up with some kind of music it’s bound to creep in there sometime. But the founder of the band, Alicia Bognanno got a degree in recording and did an internship at Electrical Audio—Steve Albini’s Chicago-based studios—before going on to working as a recording and live sound engineer and then establishing her own studio to record her own music. That’s a lot more dedication to craft than many musicians bother with learning or enduring. It doesn’t necessarily make for better music but deserves better consideration than outright dismissal. The follow-up record, 2017’s Losing, refines the jagged, angst-driven melodies that made the debut album worthwhile. In the past decade or so there has been a lot of safely celebratory music or the kind of music that hides raw feelings and outrage in palatable constructions. Any darkness and frustration you hear in Bognanno’s songs doesn’t feel manufactured or couched in some identity stereotype. Even if you feel like her music is a retread of 90s rock you have to give her credit for sincerity.
On the bill tonight as well is Chicago’s Melkbelly is roughly an exact contemporary of Bully and based in Chicago, where Bully recorded both of its full-length albums. Melkbelly’s music has often been referred to as noise rock, which fits well enough. But Miranda Winders’ voice is a consistently melodic focus amid the urgency of the beat and the pulsing, splintered sounds and sense that the song could fragment into burning chaos. Melkbelly has the spirit and energy of a punk band but its sounds are more experimental and more wide-ranging. More Live Skull and Melt Banana than Shellac or Daughters. The group’s 2017 album Nothing Valley is an auspicious debut full-length that signals throughout that Melkbelly isn’t going for just one or two sounds and dynamics. Also, a band that calls a song “Twin Lookin’ Motherfucker” has to be a bunch of glorious weirdos and cherished in a time when the music industry too often rewards easy marketability over outright quality and uniqueness.
Who:Alex Cameron and Molly Burch When: Monday, 03.05, 7 p.m. Where: Globe Hall Why: Alex Cameron’s 2017 album Forced Witness sounds like it could have come out in the mid-80s and hit big alongside the likes of post-Squeeze Paul Carrack or Paul Young—new wave-y, well-crafted pop songs mixed with blue eyed soul. When a lot of other artists now are still tapping the classic rock sound or Laurel Canyon pop, Alex Cameron’s update on Icehouse sounds pretty fresh.
Molly Burch may be an artist whose sonic antecedents rest in Brill Building pop and soul singers but her smoky, hushed yet warm and resonant vocals and vulnerability have a mysterious quality that draw you in like Julee Cruise or Angel Olsen. Burch’s music has a familiar quality that waxes timeless rather than derivative. Her 2017 debut full length Please Be Mine sounds, track for track, like Godard’s 1960s films look—vivid yet dreamlike, emotionally tumultuous yet refined, a lyrical economy of style that uses space and silence to convey much more and much more effectively than clumsily spelling it all out.
Wednesday | March 7, 2018
Brother Saturn, photo by Tom Murphy
Who:Weird Wednesday: Brother Saturn, Hello Darkness and Full Bleed When: Wednesday, 03.07, 9 p.m. Where: 3 Kings
Why: The current edition of Weird Wednesday features a pretty broad mix of sounds. Hello Darkness is sort of a folk punk band without the de riguer labor struggle era folk covers. Rather, its use of various acoustic instruments in the mix makes Hello Darkness the folk pop equivalent of a chamber pop band. Except with more political content than most bands that can be described as “chamber” anything. Considering two thirds of the band used to be in Reality Show it should come as no surprise there’s some lively emotionalism on stage. Brother Saturn’s melodic soundscapes are reminiscent of the 90s period of guitar and beat driven instrumental ambient/abstract rock acts like Bowery Electric, Seefeel, Magnog and Stars of the Lid. Maybe even Flying Saucer Attack. There is an innocence and elegance to the composition that suggests Drew Miller has carved out a space in his heart and imagination for a pure and universal expression of the kind of transcendently tranquil energy he articulates in his music in general. Brother Saturn is just the more shoegaze-ish end of that.
Who: James Blood Ulmer
When: Wednesday, 03.07 (store.dazzledenver.com/EventTicket/EventDetail/3229/id0/james-blood-ulmer) and Thursday, 3.08 (store.dazzledenver.com/EventTicket/EventDetail/3230/id0/james-blood-ulmer), 7 p.m.
Where: Dazzle
Why: James Blood Ulmer was one of the guitarists who was steeped in jazz but also helped to define fusion with his imaginative, textured guitar work with Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers as the first electric guitarist to record and perform live with free jazz genius Ornette Coleman and his long time collaborations with Pharoah Sanders. Ulmer’s solo material tends to be a blend of styles with a rich mix of jazz, blues and brooding funk. Whatever Umer’s specific music alchemy of the moment, he brings more than dazzling technique and soul, he brings something otherworldly and riveting. The guitarist performs two shows in Denver. As indicated above, the evenings of March 7 and 8 at Dazzle.
Queen City Sounds and Art 
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