Tag: Joe Sampson

Saturday | 04.01
What: Wild Powwers w/Calamity, DANA, Body and DJ Marika
When: 8
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Wild Powwers from Seattle basically picked up where neo-grunge style spelunkers left off and turned it into a vibrant and lively riff heavy variant that bears some comparison to Sleater-Kinney for its spirited vocals and creative rhythmic layers. But heavier and its moments of unhinged catharsis, at least listening to its recorded output lives up to the name of the band. Calamity is the project name for the works of Kate Hannington whose own songwriting is in line with the kind of pointed emotional delivery of the headliner but with a touch more introspective atmospheric element that live hits a little harder than seems obvious from the evocative singles available via Bandcamp. DANA is an experimental, psychedelic garage rock band from Columbus, Ohio whose quirky and ebullient songs sound something like the offspring of Tyvek and Suburban Lawns. Body is also an eccentric pop band but one whose songcraft bringing together borderline campy krautrock synth with indiepop is surprisingly moving and refreshingly unlike insipid indie rock trends of the past decade. No surprise considering talented weirdos like Roni Beer, Ned Garthe and Stuart Confer are in the band.

Sunday | 04.02
What: KEEP w/Cherished, Flower Language and Glacierface
When: 7
Where: Seventh Circle Music Collective
Why: KEEP from Virginia recently released its most recent album Happy In Here expanding on its reputation for crafting gritty, engulfing shoegaze in the vein of acts like Airiel and A Shoreline Dream. Elegant melodic arrangements and a deep sense of space work toward establishing a sound that is both otherworldly and immediate. Cherished is a Denver shoegaze band that emerged from an earlier, more post-punk sound but leaned into its instincts for emotionally rich atmospherics and heartfelt moods. Flower Language seems to have taken a route out of metal and hardcore to reach its own urgent and searing brand of atmospheric rock. Glacierface finds Jackson Lacroix who many may know more for his immense talent as a drummer playing guitar and using electronic processing to this four piece lo-fi dream pop/shoegaze four piece.

Monday | 04.03
What: Filth is Eternal w/XSAVAGEX, Victim of Fire and Suicide Cages
When: 7
Where: Seventh Circle Music Collective
Why: Filth is Eternal is a hardcore band from Seattle that seems to find no contradiction in aesthetic to incorporate vocal processing and more angular guitar dynamics more often heard in post-punk in creating its seething and pointed sound. XSAVAGEX is also a hardcore band based out of the Emerald City but one that, as the name suggests, is more in the driven vein of amped up straight edge style. Victim of Fire from Denver is more D-beat flavor of hardcore with highly political lyrics that are aimed squarely at vested power and authoritarian impulses. Suicide Cages sounds like a former grindcore band that wanted to aim in a more decidedly metallic direction without waxing into metalcore while retaining the absolutely scorching and feral sound of its roots.

Tuesday | 04.04
What: Enumclaw w/Nitefire and Compass & Cavern
When: 7
Where: Lost Lake
Why: Enumclaw is still touring in support of its excellent debut full length Save the Baby and breaking expectations for what a band playing this kind of emo-inflected post-punk has to look or sound like and doing so with great spirit and off-the-cuff attitude.

Tuesday | 04.04
What: Black Belt Eagle Scout w/Claire Glass and Adobo
When: 7
Where: Larimer Lounge
Why: Katherine Paul’s latest Black Belt Eagle Scout album The Land, The Water, The Sky expands on her already entrancing and emotionally expansive ambient rock music that sounds like it’s connected directly to something beyond mundane reality. And on the new album Paul dives deep into connecting with the energy and spirit of her ancestors and the land that connects her to a cultural lineage that rapacious development and rapacious capitalism seeks to erase and transform into a commodity when its significance is much greater than limited and short term considerations of profit. Paul brings a sensitivity and poetry to tapping into what makes the continuum of native cultures and yes civilization relevant not just for those who share that blood lineage but for anyone that would attempt to share that space and how it connects with the world entirely. Closing the album with the powerful track “Don’t Give Up,” it’s clear Paul has chosen the opposite of the despair and apathy we’re encouraged to adopt in the face of vested power.

Tuesday | 04.04
What: Unknown Mortal Orchestra w/Amulets
When: 7
Where: Ogden Theatre
Why: Unknown Mortal Orchestra can be depended upon to provide some left field sounds that not only disrupt past expectations but also those for trends in indie rock that it helped to spark with the wildly original psychedelia of its early records. It’s new album V (2023) the sounds are even more lo-fi and in going that direction the songwriting has also become even more exposed and raw embracing a delicacy inherent to not embracing the varnish of overproduction to easily fit in with some arbitrary playlist algorithm. It may not be what a conventional record label would want from the band but that’s why UMO continues to provide us with music that challenges as much as it charms.

Tuesday | 04.04
What: Aly & AJ w/Miya Folick
When: 7
Where: Summit Music Hall
Why: Indie folk/pop artist Miya Folick is on the verge of release her new album Roach (due out May 26, 2023) and advance singles for the album showcase her gift for subtle shadings of mood in her introspective melodies. That and a penchant for experimentation in her composition weaving free jazz flourishes and ambient beatmaking like she has been listening to some Kate Bush and Laurel Halo or even Julia Holter and making her own style of a new variety of hypnogogic pop that has no disdain for more mainstream pop songwriters like Jessie Ware and Lana Del Rey. Aly & AJ are a pop duo of sisters Alyson and Amanda Joy Michalka from Torrance, California who have across their nearly 20 year career carved out a reputation for thoughtful and tender songs that make great use of their exquisite ability to harmonize and complement each other as vocalists. Aly & AJ quit performing for around half a decade in the late 2000s and early 2010s but since 2015 have been back to active touring and now in support of the recently released With Love From.

Thursday | 04.06 – Postponed from 04.04
What: Satan’s God w/Disturbing Taxidermy, Polly Urethane and Wolf Larva
When: 9
Where: Glob
Why: Since at least the mid-90s, Jeremy Bequette has been making bass and vocals driven noise experiments with a fairly prolific level of output and this is a rare show he’ll be playing in Denver or anywhere and go expecting perhaps some multimedia performance art style antics. Bonus, you get to see Polly Urethane performing “Elizabeth Citadel” Pt. 1 and given her penchant for switching up the sound and format of her performance for most shows it could be anything but will probably incorporate elements of classic music and noise mashup and confrontational delivery in her usual creative fashion.

Friday | 04.07
What: The Murder Capital w/Pet Fox and The Sickly Hecks
When: 8
Where: Lost Lake
Why: Irish post-punk band The Murder Capital has garnered critical accolades over the past few years for its darkly introspective songs informed by a working class perspective. Which of course has drawn immediate comparisons to peers like IDLES, Shame and fellow Dubliners D.C. Fontaines. Its new album Gigi’s Recovery (2023) features the band’s usual level of fine sonic detail and fusion of electronic composition and rock songcraft with lyrics that are bold in their vulnerable observations and sensibilities.

Friday | 04.07
What: Candy Apple w/Destiny Bond, Zero Function, Crime Lab and Supreme Joy
When: 7
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Candy Apple and Destiny Bond are two of the more interesting hardcore bands out of Denver now. Both have a more experimental edge than a lot of what has passed for hardcore in the past decade and a half with noisier musical elements and more fluid dynamics while both driven by a spirited performance style that is joyful catharsis rather than a modern tough guy stance.

Friday – Sunday | 04.07, 04.08 and 04.09
What: The Mochines w/Cyclo Sonic (04.07), also with The Old Men (04.08) and The Pitch Invasion (04.09)
When: 7 (04.07), 5 (04.08) and 3 (04.09)
Where: Surfside 7 (04.07), Larimer Lounge (04.08) and Globe Hall (04.09)
Why: The Mochines is a garage punk band from Cape Town, South Africa fronted by Ross Kersten formerly of Denver punk legends La Donnas with Tom Cook (Magnolias) on drums, Curt Florczak on guitar and backing voca and Bill Graves on bass and vocals as well (the latter two from B Movie Rats). At least that was the line-up cited on the group’s Bandcamp account from 2019. Whatever the current lineup Kersten will be singing and playing guitar and the band is playing a string of shows in Colorado this weekend and all dates shared with Cyclo Sonic, a musically similarly-minded outfit with its own share of Denver punk greats in Matt Bischoff (Fluid, Frantix, The Buckingham Squares), Arnie and AJ Beckman (Choosey Mothers and also The Buckingham Squares) and Jif Jipers (Rok Tots). Whatever show you catch it’ll be a nice reminder of what punk has been and can still be with much better than average songwriting and musicianship.

Saturday | 04.08
What: Messiahvore w/Cobranoid, Lost Relics and Moon Pussy
When: 8
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Messiahvore is the current band to feature Bart McCrorey of The Crash Pad Studio fame on vocals and guitar with Jenn McCrorey on bass, former The Bronze member Bailey Cecil and Kevin Disney on guitar and backing vocals. It’s straight ahead sludge/stoner rock but a better version of what we got to see in the 2000s. Cobranoid is in a similar mold but with some punk attitude. Lost Relics are more in the vein of heavy noise rock like Unsane. Moon Pussy is the odd band out and its ferocious noise rock is both surreal and experimental and while more in line with what Lost Relics is doing much more in the realm of an Amphetamine Reptile or Touch and Go band.

Thursday | 04.13
What: VV w/Kaelan Mikla
When: 7
Where: Summit Music Hall
Why: Ville Valo is perhaps best known for being the lead vocalist for gothic rock band HIM. But with 2023 release of his debut album as VV, Neon Noir, he’s continuing with an even more pop version of that goth aesthetic for which he’s made a name for himself. So he’s probably the big draw for this show but Icelandic band Kaelan Mikla opening the show is the real reason to make it down for their lushly orchestral darkwave post-punk and genuine air of the mysterious. Its most recent album Undir Köldum Norðurljósum (2021) is an otherworldly journey into a realm of never ending winter.

Thursday | 04.13
What: 100 Gecs w/Machine Girl at Mission Ballroom
When: 7
Where: Mission Ballroom
Why: Hyperpop legends 100 Gecs recently released their second full length 10,000 Gecs and thankfully tend to confound more conventional minds because there’s the usual layered genre busting material but also genuinely catchy pop that border on ska, at least with “Frog On The Floor.” Still surreal and creative in threading together stylistic aesthetics at will, this might be a good time to catch the band as it’s expanding its own horizons. Opening is industrial dance project Machine Girl that isn’t short on hyping the audience with its own high energy antics.

Thursday | 04.13
What: Casey James Prestwood, White Rose Motor Oil and Chella and The Charm
When: 8
Where: The Skylark Lounge Bobcat Club
Why: The Americana show of the week with Casey James Prestwood and his own interpretation of fairly traditional country songwriting tinged with some of the punk sensibility with his background as a member of Hot Rod Circuit, Chella and the Charm’s sly and philosophical songwriting and fairly earnest yet atmospheric and nuanced moods and White Rose Motor Oil, the rockabilly band with its own punk edge who are releasing their new album The Gift of Poison.

Friday | 04.14
What: Buck Gooter w/Polly Urethane, Nightshark and Pythian Whispers
When: 9
Where: Glob
Why: Buck Gooter is the legendary “industrial blues” band from Harrisonburg, Virginia originally comprised of guitarist and vocalist Terry Turtle and lead vocalist/electronics musician (though both worked on the electronics side) Billy Brett. Beginning with its earliest releases in 2006 the duo started garnering an underground fanbase including the likes of Henry Rollins for its politically charged, electrifyingly intense songs that blurred the lines between industrial music, dark psychedelia and rock and roll. Turtle tragically passed away in 2019 but Brett was tasked with the legacy of the band and has since released two albums with Turtle contributing posthumously with 2021’s Head In A Bird Cage and the new record Ghost Brain which was produced, recorded and mixed by Oliver Ackermann of A Place to Bury Strangers fame at his Death By Audio studio. Buck Gooter is performing as a duo for this tour and after this Denver date they will be doing shows with Kilynn Lunsford formerly of experimental post-punk legends Taiwan Housing Project but in support of her outstanding 2022 solo album Custodians Of Human Succession. Openers for this show are Polly Urethane who literally does a different set for every local performance and it’s always creative, conceptual and memorable, noise rock and free jazz legends Nightshark and psychedelic ambient trio Pythian Whispers of which this author is a member.

Saturday | April 15
What: Andy Monley, Roger Green and Joe Sampson
When: 7
Where: The Skylark Lounge
Why: Three of Denver’s greatest songwriters on one bill and Andy Monley and Roger Green are both releasing an album. The latter two were once in The Czars together and Monley was a founding member of country punk legends Jux County and his solo material, while quite different, benefits from the sophistication of his songcraft. Roger Green is a professor whose work on psychedelia is widely respected and whose own style dips into the avant-garde and jazz.

Saturday | 04.15
What: Screaming Females w/Generación Suicida and Smirk
When: 7:30
Where: Marquis Theater
Why: Merely calling Screaming Females a punk band does it a bit of a disservice because its musical style is more wide-ranging and often conceptual in the songwriting if imbued with that spirit. But singer and guitarist Marissa Patermoster’s creative guitar riffs and vocal melodies have a tenderness and force all at once. The group’s new album is Desire Pathway. Generación Suicida is a punk outfit from Los Angeles that sings in Spanish and its songs have a spookiness and atmosphere to them that might put them more in the post-punk column. Smirk is the solo project of Nick Vicario who makes some bleak and minimalistic punk that is more in the realm of some kind of lo-fi, arty post-punk with some real grit and mystique.

Sunday | 04.16
What: Dead Congregation w/Predatory Light, Black Curse and Many Blessings
When: 7
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Greek death metal band Dead Congregation makes a stop in Denver for this stacked line-up of regional extreme metal. Dead Congregation was inspired in part by Swedish death metal and maybe the more Gothenburg contingent with its drawing upon progressive rock and grindcore. Predatory Light is a black metal band from Santa Fe, New Mexico whose own melodic black metal has a similar musical DNA as Dead Congregation. Black Curse includes members of Blood Incantation, Spectral Voice, Primitive Man and Khemmis and definitely more in the vein of feral trve black metal. The x-factor is Ethan McCarthy performing as his noise project Many Blessings where he does a distorted ambient music with heavy frequency modulation.

Monday | 04.17
What: Nikki Lane w/Leroy from the North
When: 7
Where: Bluebird Theater
Why: Nikki Lane released her fourth album Denim & Diamonds in 2022 and is currently touring in support of the record. Produced by Josh Homme of Queens of the Stone Age fame, the album represents a new chapter of the artist’s songwriting. She’s always had that voice with a touch of edge and force, resonant in commanding emotional nuance. But the earlier offerings were definitely within the realm of more traditional country. Her witty and insightful storytelling this time around finds a vehicle in an eclectic set of songs that showcase her range as an artist as a musician and as a vocalist. As a live performer Lane seems to have something extra about her stage presence that comes across as authentic, unvarnished and direct.

Tuesday | 04.18
What: Lizzy McAlpine w/Olivia Barton
When: 7
Where: Summit Music Hall
Why: After the release of her 2022 album Five Seconds Flat, Lizzy McAlpine has garnered a bit of buzz for her intimate songwriting style and delivery. The album is a catalog of heartbreak and looming anxieties expressed in hushed yet warm tones and delicate strains of music like a miniature orchestra as the soundtrack to vignettes from her life. Coinciding with the release of the album McAlpine also released a short film named after the album that contains two of the tracks from the record but which features the themes of heartbreak as a small death in cinematic form. Watch below on YouTube.

Friday | 04.21
What: LEAF night 1: Rue/Bainbridge
When: 7 pm start time
Where: Center For Musical Arts (200 E. Baseline Road, Lafyette, CO 80206)
Why: The first night of Lafayette Electronic Arts Festival, a festival dedicated to experimental and avant-garde electronic music with an emphasis on mixed media performances. The festival runs 4.21, 4.22 and 4.30. For more information on the festival and schedule please visit https://leafcolorado.org/. For this initial musical portion of the festival, per the LEAF press release:

“Rue Bainbridge, the bi-coastal duo of Gryphon Rue and Benton C Bainbridge, exists in the intersection of expanded cinema and sonic art. Generating electric calligraphy with a hacked game console, the light patterns become a score, with visual rhythmicity suggesting electro-acoustic events. Perception shifts as light and sound momentarily synchronize, tracing a zone of concentrated intricacy.
Rue Bainbridge is the first recipient of the Nam June Paik and Shigeko Kubota Video Art prize (2019). The project has been supported with residencies at spaces in transition: an Italianate palazzo that housed destitute millionaires, an abandoned 18th century hotel favored by rock stars, and an officer’s house on a former military island. Rue Bainbridge have been presented by Roulette Intermedium, Pace Gallery, Hauser & Wirth, The Hepworth Wakefield, Slate Projects / Foreign Domestic, Center for Visual Music, Public Works at Governor’s Island, Andrew Freedman Home, and Shigeko Kubota Video Art Foundation. Projects are realized as immersive audiovisual performances, yielding single-channel artworks with decentralized provenance. Rue Bainbridge is supported by Andrew Freedman Home Artist-In-Residence program in The Bronx, NYC.”

Friday | 04.21
What: Bud Bronson & The Good Timers album release w/Don Chicharron and The Knew
When: 8
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Bud Bronson & The Good Timers are playing their last show for the near term in celebration of the release of their expansive and heartfelt new record BBGTIII out on Snappy Little Numbers. Connoisseurs of power pop are already fans of the Denver-based band and this new record seems even more ambitious in terms of songwriting and lyrics than its already impressive earlier output and the live band is a force of good will and passionate performance. Joining them for this occasion is Latin psychedelic rock band Don Chicharron who could headline a night on their own and the return of The Knew, one of the most underrated rock bands out of Denver with its own brand of power pop-inflected rock and roll.

Saturday | 04.22
What: Xeno & Oaklander w/Martial Canterel and DJ Eli
When: 8
Where: HQ
Why: Brooklyn-based Xeno & Oaklander has had a long career of producing some of the more forward thinking modern techno dance music in the darkwave vein by way of early electroclash. Its albums have had a consistent through line that suggests a European synth pop influence and a fall like chill in its overall melodic tones. It’s hard, angular rhythms somehow flow and have a tactile quality that anchors the music keeping its ethereal drift grounded in a way that feels like a secret great band in an underground club of the non-dystopian of the cyberpunk-esque near future.

Saturday | 04.22
What: LEAF night 2: Ryan Wurst & Aaron Alexander and The Carbon Diablo Ensemble
When: 7 pm (Ryan Wurst & Aaron Alexander) and 8 pm. The Carbon Diablo Ensemble
Where: Center For Musical Arts (200 E. Baseline Road, Lafyette, CO 80206)
Why: For more information on the Lafayette Electronic Arts Festival and schedule please visit https://leafcolorado.org/.Per the LEAF press release for each performance:

“Ryan Wurst and Aaron Alexander perform an improvisational mix of generative ambience and camera-based visuals processed and mixed in real-time. Hailing from Pueblo, CO where both teach media-based music and art at the University of Colorado, the duo explore slow-moving sonic motifs that surge and swell through live visual pan/tilt/zoom explorations of intimate environments constructed in tiny terrariums.”

“The Carbon Dioxide Ensemble and Diablo Montalban join forces as the Carbon Diablo Ensemble to present a multimedia deconstruction, reconstruction, and live score for the 1910 silent film Frankenstein.

The Carbon Dioxide Ensemble performs improvisational musique concrète with interactive visuals. Members include Thomas Lundy on Copper Heart articulated with dry ice, Victoria Lundy on Theremin and Live Electronics, and Mark Mosher on Live Sampling, Visuals, and Mix.

Performance artist Diablo Montalban, the Master of Audio Disaster, mixes live art through sound collage, drawing inspiration from music, pop culture, and noise. Diablo works spontaneously, creating pieces that are unique for the moment.

In Diablo’s live pop-up performances, he combines multiple sound sources with natural atmospherics — combining, overlapping, reversing, whatever — to create something original, never to be performed the same way again . . . Diablo is obviously influenced by Wayne Coyne’s parking lot experiments. While Wayne’s celebrity is able to attract hundreds, Diablo is often left to his own devices with a handful of quizzical looks for his troubles.”

Sunday and Tuesday | 04.23 and 04.25
What: Goth Babe w/Yoke Lore (04.23) and Cautious Clay (04.25)
When: 7 (04.23) and
Where: Mission Ballroom (04.23) and Red Rocks (04.25)
Why: Goth Babe has been imbuing his recent EPs with some essence of a place and each has a distinct aesthetic and personality including his most recent, Iceland, released in November 2022. Goth Babe aka Griffin Washburn is originally from Tennessee but found a way to live a somewhat nomadic life with his dog Sadie. Which sounds a lot like that influencer hipster “van life artist” lifestyle except that Washburn has carved out a name for himself as a songwriter of note whose evocative pop songs are transporting and poetic recorded either in his studio on a boat or on his RV. With his newer music Washburn has made a soundtrack for wider spaces and forward thinking, expansive experiences with deep and lush atmospherics making it an apt soundtrack for venues the size of which he’s playing these days.

Tuesday | 04.25
What: True Widow w/Shadows Tranquil and Shiny Around the Edges
When: 7
Where: Meow Wolf
Why: True Widow were early adopters of blurring the line between post-punk, doom metal and shoegaze and still one of the best though the Dallas-based trio hasn’t released an album since 2016’s Avvolgere. Live it’s heavy, atmospheric sonic sculptures hit like a dark and transformative dream. Sharing the stage is Denver’s own Shadows Tranquil whose own mixed aesthetic of ethereal yet heavy, metallic shoegaze is emotionally rich in its musical resonance as well.

Thursday | 04.27
What: Crocodiles w/Cleaner and Easy Ease
When: 8
Where: The Skylark Lounge
Why: Crocodiles from San Diego has evolved its sound since its inception in the late 2000s and dipping into various ends of its core sound somewhere between classic pop, noisy post-punk, garage rock and shoegaze. Its new album Upside Down In Heaven sounds like a lo-fi pop fusion of the likes of The Jesus and Mary Chain and The Soft Moon. Like a bubblegum pop band of the 60s that woke up in the 2000s and dove deep into the music of Jay Reatard and No Age. Fortunately like-minded openers like the psych garage band Cleaner and the more dark indie pop Easy Ease will keep the evening from being all the same flavor.

Thursday | 04.27
What: Julian St. Nightmare w/Antibroth and Dream of Industry
When: 8
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Julian St. Nightmare is one of the top tier post-punk bands from Denver with its sound steeped in darkwave, surf pop and garage rock. Antibroth is also a post-punk band but one who seem to be driven by a concept that elevates its angular guitar rock to something more arty yet playful and delivered with a sometimes unhinged intensity. Dream of Industry is also in the darkwave vein but more in the lo-fi shoegaze mode.

Thursday | 04.27
What: Donovan Woods and Henry Jamison
When: 7
Where: Bluebird Theater
Why: Canadian folk pop artist Donovan Woods is currently traveling with Henry Jamison on what they’re calling The Husbandry Tour. Apparently its an attempt by both songwriters who admire each other’s work to become friends and hopefully not ruin the association with such close proximity and daily familiarity. Woods’ critically acclaimed body of work is born out of his gift for expressive and gently poetic songwriting and performance that one might compare favorably with that of Iron & Wine and Bon Iver and that subtlety and power of composition.

Friday | 04.28
What: The HIRS Collective w/Endless Nameless, Ukko’s Hammer, Squerm and BetterSelfs
When: 7
Where: Seventh Circle Music Collective
Why: The HIRS Collective is a Philadelphia-based hardcore band whose hard hitting songs are an assertion of dignity and self-empowerment with songs like “We’re Still Here,” the title track of the group’s new album of the same name. That record with contributions from Shirley Manson of Garbage, The Body, Gouge Away, My Chemical Romance, Soul Glo, Escuela Grind, Screaming Females, Fucked Up, The Locust, Thursday and Touché Amoré is an invigorating blast of amped punk bordering on grindcore that aims at the dissolution of negative structures and celebrating, per its bio on the Get Better Records site, “the survival of trans, queer, poc, black, women and any and all other folks who have to constantly face violence, marginalization and oppression.” And stacking this bill are Denver bands who embody this ethos in spirit and membership.

Saturday | 04.29
What: Lesser Care w/No Gossip in Braille and Bloodsports
When: 7
Where: D3 Arts
Why: Lesser Care might be the greatest purveyors of the synthesis of post-punk and shoegaze in the underground at the moment. Hailing from El Paso, Texas, the trio delivers a disarmingly powerful and emotionally rich music that is as transporting as it is grounding. No Gossip in Braille is an ethereal post-punk band with elegant layers of guitar suffused with a full spectrum of tonality in its expressive interplay. Bloodsports is a noisy post-punk band that sounds like instead of imitating modern darkwave it went in for finding inspiration among older alternative rock bands with imaginative guitar sounds like Sonic Youth.

Sunday | 04.30
What: Morton Subotnik and Lillevan
When: 7 pm start time
Where: The Arts Hub (420 Courtney Way, Lafayette, CO 80026)
Why: or more information on the Lafayette Electronic Arts Festival and schedule please visit https://leafcolorado.org/. Per the LEAF press release for the final night of the festival:

“On Sunday, April 30, the Lafayette Electronic Arts Festival is honored to present pioneering experimental electronic music composer Morton Subotnick, and Berlin-based visual artist Lillevan, performing live in immersive quadraphonic sound. Having worked together for the last twelve years, the technique and process of Subotnick and Lillevan has culminated in the work, “As I Live and Breathe”. Subotnick has stated that he feels this work will be “the ultimate fulfillment of his public performance; one of the last, if not the last, of his public performance works”, as he turns 90 years old this year. The work is centered around Subotnick’s breath, which becomes ever more musically and visually ornamented by Lillevan, only to end with a single, exhaled breath. The work is meant as a musical metaphor for the composer’s life in music.

“In the early 60s, Subotnick taught at Mills College and with Ramon Sender, co-founded the San Francisco Tape Music Center. During this period he collaborated with Anna Halprin in two works (the 3 legged stool and Parades and Changes) and was music director of the Actors Workshop. It was also during this period that Subotnick worked with Don Buchla on what may have been the first analog synthesizer (now at the Library of Congress).

“Between 1961 and 1980, Morton Subotnick’s principal work as a composer was devoted to the development of electronic music as a studio art. The first four years of that period were spent with Don Buchla designing and building an appropriate instrument with which to make music specifically for recorded formats, to be heard in one’s home. In 1969 Subotnick helped carved out a new path of music education and created the now famous California Institute of the Arts.

“Lillevan is an animation, video and media artist who is perhaps best known as a founding member of the visual/music group Rechenzentrum / Data Center (1997-2008). He has worked and performed with an array of acclaimed artists from other genres: music – both club culture and classical, dance, theatre and opera, and has enjoyed challenging projects in performance and installation, and academic settings. His performances, DVD releases, collaborations and solo works have been acclaimed by critics and audiences alike, taking visual music, animation, bricolage and film manipulation to new levels. Lillevan performs and lectures all over the world, previous festivals and events include Europe, Asia, North & South America; Ars Electronica, Transmediale, Mutek, Dis-Patch etc.”

Sunday | 04.30
What: The New Pornographers w/Wild Pink https://www.gothictheatre.com/events/detail/?event_id=464311
When: 7
Where: Gothic Theatre
Why: The New Pornographers is the well-known supergroup from Canada whose membership includes Neko Case, AC Newman, John Collins, Todd Fancey, Kathryn Calder and Joe Seiders with contributions from touring member Nora O’Connor who also plays with Neko Case when she’s touring her solo deal. Twenty-six years into its existence The New Pornographers has established itself as one of the most respected pioneers of modern indie rock but perhaps because its members have their own projects separate from the collective the band’s songwriting has always had a broad range of variety that resists settling into too much of a routine. And yet its new album Continue as a Guest finds The New Pornographers exploring broader vistas of sounds and songwriting ideas and its songs sound like a soundtrack for a literary thriller with urgent energies and lush atmospherics boosted emotionally by the classic New Pornographers harmonies among some of the finest voices in modern music. Live the band has an orchestral yet fresh sound that comes off more unvarnished that one might expect lending it an unexpectedly spontaneous edge.

Sunday | 04.30
What: Xiu Xiu w/Voight https://tickets.holdmyticket.com/tickets/405810
When: 7
Where: HQ
Why: Xiu Xiu at this point can do whatever it wants and explore any creative musical idea and concept and craft it into compelling and deeply imaginative and sonically inventive music. Check in at any point in the band’s career and you’re never quite sure what you’re in for except that it’ll be fascinating and emotionally charged listening. Its new album Ignore Grief might be its most challenging and sonically experimental record to date fully bridging any gaps that existed between its industrial tribal sounds, noise and an avant-garde horror movie soundtrack. Voight won’t be as weird but its own industrial-techno post-punk also has a thrillingly unsettling emotional quality that hits with an unexpected and deep resonance.

To Be Continued…