Tag: Pile (band)

Queen City Sounds Podcast S3E08: Ghost Canyon Fest

Ghost Canyon Fest organizers (L-R: Brian Dooley, Cory Hager, Jeremy Brashaw and Sean Dove), photo by Tom Murphy

Ghost Canyon Fest is “A Boundary-Pushing DIY Music Festival” that runs August 11-13 across three venues. The event germinated as an idea among friends in the bands New Standards Men, Moon Pussy and Almanac Man who attended and/or performed at events like PRF BBQ, Caterwaul and No Coast and felt there was enough interest and enough mutual connections among bands well outside of Denver to hold a viable, like-minded festival in the Mile High City. In year’s past Denver hosted multiple festivals of strongly focused curation like Goldrush Festival, Transistor Festival, Denver Noise Fest, DAD Fest , Ultra Metal and in Boulder Communikey among others but left field sounds are largely not included in most other festivals in Denver. Ghost Canyon Fest in its inaugural year of 2023 goes to some length to shine a light on those sounds in a more high profile way including a mention in a recent issue of The Wire as a festival of note. If you go, expect to see stars of local and non-local noise rock, post-metal, noise and experimental dance and drone including BIG|BRAVE, Quits, Masma Dream World, Big’N, Church Fire, Pleasure Venom and of course the projects of the event organizers. For a full list and a schedule of events please and to purchase passes for the weekend or single nights visit the Ghost Canyon Fest website. At the site you can link to curated playlists created by various artists performing that weekend. This interview includes a conversation with Jeremy Brashaw (New Standards Men), Cory Hager (Moon Pussy), Sean Dove (Almanac Man) and Brian Dooley (Almanac Man).

Listen to our interview with the organizers on Bandcamp and look for our interviews with various artists performing at Ghost Canyon Fest in the coming weeks.

Ghost Canyon Fest website

The Vitality and Grit of 100’s “Special Vision” is a Pointed Commentary on the Empty Promises of Organized Religion

100_SpecialVision2_sm
100, photo courtesy the artists

Rowen Tucker of Australian post-punk band 100 took inspiration for the writing of “Special Vision” watching from Sydney’s Hyde Park workers retiling the roof of St. Mary’s Cathedral. All that toil and outlay of resources and for what? The expansive urgency of the song charges its words with a paradoxically melancholic and angsty energy both raw and pointed and atmospheric. Its chords cut and highlight literate and thoughtful observations and introspective examinations of one’s own relationship to what some might think of as the larger issues of existence. Except that Tucker grounds it in a spirituality rooted in life experience rather than empty promises of reward in the great beyond. The line “Sacred space for the chosen few” skewers the aspect of religious faith that reinforces class differences and linking poverty with lack of morality. In singing “Spend my life making bad decisions, I do it clean because I’ve got no religion” points to a personal morality in which one acknowledges one’s own mistakes and their consequences with no need for guilt or eternal punishment for “crimes” and “transgressions” that mean little outside a religious context. The chorus, and the source of the title of the song, “No special vision” is like a non-religious chant rejecting that post-Manichaean ethos of judgment and guilt necessary in most modern Christian sects. No need for thinking you’re special and above others because of one’s special relationship with god. The immediacy and grit of the song is palpable and fans of New Model Army and Pile will find much to like about the band’s inventive guitar work and pointed poetics. Listen to “Special Vision” on Spotify, connect with 100 at the links below and look for the group’s new EP out later in 2020.

open.spotify.com/artist/34CBZlqmK3KCxHeAcgQHTH
triplejunearthed.com/artist/100-0
soundcloud.com/100its100
facebook.com/100its100