Queen City Sounds Podcast – Page 18 – Queen City Sounds and Art

Queen City Sounds Podcast Ep. 48: Gila Teen

Gila Teen is Hunter Wood and Aidan Bettis. They went to the same middle school in Lakewood but really met in high school when they started being in the same friend circles and formed their early bands at that time. After a bit of a hiatus and while in college the two musicians reconnected and started projects that some may have seen in and around Denver in the DIY scene and elsewhere like the folk punk groups Bear Face and Burgundy Church Wagon. But they started Bert Olsen in around 2017 though the roots of the songwriting for the band go back to 2011. In 2018 one could see Bert Olsen at a variety of venues and even early on it was obvious it was something different seemingly threading together disparate stylistic elements and creating something that has felt unique. One hears in its music the influence of emo, shoegaze, post-punk and electronic music. They played their final show as Bert Olsen in June 2019 opening for Church Fire, Rabbit Fighter and Natural Velvet at Lost Lake. Changing the name to Gila Teen and utilizing a drum machine, Wood and Bettis have leaned into any idiosyncratic style choices for the stage that occurs to them as well as songwriting instincts that have kept its sound fresh and unpredictable not fitting neatly into a specific genre. Its most recent release is the 2021 album Pain Vacation.

Listen to our interview with Gila Teen on Bandcamp linked below and go see the band at Down in Denver Fest on Sunday, 8/21/22 at 6:30 pm on the Further Stage. For more information on the festival and on Gila Teen visit the links beneath the interview.

www.downindenver.com

Gila Teen on Instagram

Queen City Sounds Podcast Ep. 45: Polly Urethane

Polly Urethane is the performance moniker of Amber Benton. She started performing under that name in 2021 and garnered some attention in certain Denver underground music circles for her performance art style shows in which she breaks the stage and audience barrier pretty much every show at this point. Her music combines classical music in her piano work and operatic vocals, electronic composition, musique concrète and industrial soundscaping. In 2021 Polly Urethane released her collaborative album Altruism with Rusty Steve who some may know from his work in futuristic hip-hop glam project N3PTUNE. It showcased a shared knack for pop songcraft that fused darkwave, hyperpop, industrial and R&B. Though Polly Urethane’s presentation can be confrontational the intention is to shake up expectations and arbitrary norms of the performer and audience relationship and is informed by a spirit of humor and the absurd in the intensity and mysterious aesthetic of the performance.

Listen to our interview with Polly Urethane on Bandcamp linked below and go see the band at Down in Denver Fest on Friday, 8/19/22 at 9:45 pm. For more information on the festival and on Polly Urethane visit one of the links beneath the interview.

www.downindenver.com

Polly Urethane on Instagram

Polly Urethane on YouTube

Queen City Sounds Podcast Ep. 44: Pleasure Prince

Pleasure Prince is a soulful synth pop duo from Denver comprised of Lilly Scott and Will Duncan. The latter had been part of the Americana scene from Denver performing in Oblio Duo and other projects. Scott as a teen had spent time going to shows at DIY spaces and house shows seeing noise, other experimental music and the wide array of bands that performed at such places. In 2010 she auditioned for and appeared in the ninth season of American Idol and lived in Los Angeles for eight months before returning to Denver and forming Varlet, a jazz and Americana inflected indie rock band in which Duncan played drums. But that group parted ways around a decade ago and Scott and Duncan moved to New York City where they played clubs and other show opportunities throughout the city before deciding they wanted to be back in Colorado, returning at the end of 2019 just in time to discover how much the city had changed both culturally and in other ways that impacted being a musician in the Mile High City. Then the pandemic hit and Pleasure Prince had some time to incubate its creative impulses. While in NYC the band had acquired a number of synthesizers that shaped its current songwriting and while the duo’s gorgeously lush and evocative current music is a bit of a departure from Varlet and previous musical endeavors it reflects the core of strong songwriting Scott and Duncan have cultivated across several years as evidenced by a recent performance in which the songs had to be translated to a more or less non-electronic form. In 2022 Pleasure Prince released its new album Numbers.

Listen to our interview with Pleasure Prince on Bandcamp linked below and go see the band at Down in Denver Fest on Sunday, 8/21/22 at 8:30 pm on the Further Stage. For more information on the festival and on Pleasure Prince visit one of the links beneath the interview.

pleasureprince.com

Queen City Sounds Podcast Ep. 42: Rowboat

Rowboat at Mutiny Information Cafe September 2019, photo by Tom Murphy

The roots of Rowboat are in Sam McNitt’s solo work as a songwriter from his early days writing music in a more folk style. But in the mid-2000s he started the band Small Objects with his friend Jeff Shapiro before that more indie rock band split with most of its members starting shoegaze greats Blue Million Miles. The latter garnered local attention for its raw sonic power and McNitt’s thoughtful yet emotionally charged lyrics. When Blue Million itself parted ways around 2012, McNitt moved into doing Rowboat as his musical focus. The literary and powerful lyrics delved deep into dark psychological places that we often try to shy away from in not wanting to confront the foundations of our insecurities, examine deep seated emotional wounds and and the components of our desires and aspirations. McNitt does so with a poetry and sensitivity that gives his song writing a nearly palpable depth. Inspired by visual art McNitt’s music conveys imagery that embodies the moods and places he and his bandmates go in the songs. The gentle catharsis of the live show always seems unexpected and welcome. The most recent Rowboat album Forests Burn released on February 25, 2022.

Listen to our interview with McNitt on Bandcamp linked below and go see Rowboat at Down in Denver Fest on Saturday, 8/20/22 at 9:30 pm on the Further Stage. For more information on the festival and on Rowboat, visit one of the links beneath the link for the interview.

downindenver.com

Rowboat on Instagram

Queen City Sounds Podcast Ep. 41: Ray Diess

Ray Diess makes experimental electronic dance music and has been playing live under that project name for a few years minus the time of the pandemic when no one much was having shows. His 2022 album It’ll Always Ache released in July 2022 and its blend of synth pop, hyper pop and darkwave has a surprising depth of emotional expression. If you have been out at select shows you may have caught Diess live and his dramatic performances or just run into him making the shows work at places like Jester’s Palace or maybe even seeing him play keys in With Special Guest. He has collaborated on music with confrontational EBM/darkwave artist Hex Cassette and he otherwise seems as involved in his creative community as making the music that is a part of it. We recently caught up with Diess and discussed his background growing up in rural Elizabeth, Colorado and getting into theater and metal and ultimately to where he is now with music that has a similar intensity but a different sound.

Listen to our interview with Ray Diess on Bandcamp linked below and check out It’ll Always Ache on Spotify.

Queen City Sounds Podcast Ep. 38: White Hills

Since 2003 White Hills from New York City has been making psychedelic rock that has evolved in consistently interesting ways across a prolific career. The core duo of Dave W and Ego Sensation have incorporated elements of krautrock, space rock, metal, ambient soundscaping, post-punk into their sound so that the project’s body of work is eclectic yet coherent with a palette of mind-expanding sonics and rhythms that have separated the band from most other artists that might fall under the psych umbrella. For White Hills it’s not just a sound adopted from influences, it’s an outlook on the possibilities of the psychological impact of the music on both the members of the band and those who take in one of its records or attend a performance. Each record has been made with an approach that gives it its own sonic identity so that while the band’s sound may be fluidly evolving it has built into its aesthetic a drive to not get stuck in a rut. Now after nearly 20 years as a band White Hills has established its own imprint Heads On Fire Industries with its first physical release being that for a double vinyl of The Revenge Of Heads On Fire which is a reworking and re-imagining of the 2007 album Heads On Fire for which several more songs were recorded during the sessions with an album in mind with that music included but due to a disagreement with one of the parties involved with the record some of the songs were left out. So with some refinements added to complete the recordings left on the cutting room floor, as it were, really on an old, thought dead/defunct hard drive, White Hills presents the album as it was meant to be heard in its originally conceived form and with its themes of transformation and self-inspiration seeming as relevant now as it was at the time of original release. The vinyl edition of the record is available for pre-order (releases, assuming things go as planned, on September 16, 2022) on the band’s Bandcamp page linked below where you can find other links related with White Hills currently on tour with Telekinetic Yeti.

See White Hills with Telekinetic Yeti and Hashtronaut at Globe Hall on Sunday, August 7, 2022 and listen to our interview, apologies for the usual mobile phone connection issues, on Bandcamp also linked below.

Queen City Sounds Podcast Ep. 34: John Baumgartner of The Trypes

The Trypes is an experimental, psychedelic folk band that began in 1982 in Haledon, New Jersey. It’s instrumentation began with an eclectic mix of sounds and textures so that its music was difficult to narrow down to an established genre. Fans of Savage Republic (who were contemporaries) and Stereolab will find something to like in The Trypes’ unconventional use of rhythm and composition at times seeming to favor compound time signatures and textural atmospheric elements. Its brand of folk and psychedelia sounded like it had tapped into a bit of the minimalist post-punk of the early 80s like Young Marble Giants and the more avant-garde Swell Maps whose own use of noise collage has some resonance with what you hear in a song by The Trypes. Around the mid-80s Glenn Mercer and Bill Million of influential post-punk band Feelies joined The Trypes for a time when their own band was on hiatus adding to some of this group’s artistic legacy. In 2012 Acute Records released the collection Music fore Neighbors which collected the group’s 1984 EP The Explorer’s Hold as well as unreleased demos and a compilation track not so easy to come by. But now in 2022 that compilation has been reissued on Pravda Records to celebrate the band’s 40 year anniversary and now includes songs from a 1984 showcase at the Bottom Line in New York and two tracks recorded when the original Trypes performed a reunion show in 2017. The CD is available now with a gatefold vinyl to be issued later in 2022. This interview was conducted with founding keyboard player John Baumgartner and delves into the group’s early days in New Jersey and its development and for many rediscovery.

Listen to the interview with Baumgarnter on Bandcamp linked below and for more information on The Trypes and to order the CD/download of Music For Neighbors visit the links below.

The Trypes on Facebook

Pravda Records

Queen City Sounds Podcast Ep. 33: Green Typewriters

Green Typewriters, photo by Tom Murphy, 2022

Green Typewriters formed in 2007 out of songwriting sessions between Gioja and Jared Lacy. The couple had met in New York when Jared was visiting a cousin and the two hit it off immediately. Gioja had grown up in Orlando, Florida and had moved away to get away from had felt like a narrow social circle with limited life choices at the time. The band named itself after an Olivia Tremor Control reference and its own songs came out of a similar love of transporting sounds and recording experiments and like OTC those songs ended up being as much pop as psychedelia. Green Typewriters became a bit of a fixture in Denver’s indie underground in the late 2000s and early 2010s before going on hiatus while Gioja attended mortuary school and Jared pursued graduate studies in philosophy and religion. Though the project has been around for fifteen years it had never had much in the way of official releases minus some burned CDs the band would give away at shows. So it’s 2022 EP The Solar Anus (named after the parodic essay by Georges Bataille) marks its first official release and on cassette with artwork by Wendy Danger York. The album was produced and engineered by long time DIY/underground musician Zach Bauer who some may know for his fine recording skills but others more so for his numerous experimental bands like the punk noise outfit Zombie Zombie, the doom metal-esque The Outer Neon, psychedelic post-punk group Wicked Phoenix and Can tribute band Future Days. Those who regularly attended shows at Rhinoceropolis may have witnessed Zach as a member of Spellcaster’s Rock and Roll Time Travel Committee. What is less known is Bauer’s gift for writing and recording artistically ambitious pop songs, a skill he brought to bear in helping Green Typewriters realize making fifteen years of songwriting into a coherent and vibrant set of songs.

Listen to our candid interview with Gioja and Jared on Bandcamp linked below. Green Typewriters will perform at Enigma Bazaar celebrating the release of The Solar Anus on Saturday, July 16, 2022 with Falcon’s Eye. To connect with the band visit it’s LinkTree for the appropriate avenues.

Queen City Sounds Podcast Ep. 31: Ivan Nahem

Ritual Tension (Ivan Nahem center), photo from Bandcamp

Ivan Nahem’s career in music reads like a who’s who of early New York post-punk and No Wave. He was in a band called Carnival Crash with Norman Westberg before the latter joined Swans. Nahem himself performed on the Swans albums Greed and Holy Money while he was a member of industrial post-punk outfit Ritual Tension from 1983 until its dissolution in 1990. The group’s confrontational energy, tribal percussion style and noisy, caustic guitar sound and deranged-sounding vocals was akin to the likes of, naturally, Swans but also Scratch Acid and Flipper. Once Ritual Noise parted company Nahem stopped being as actively involved in making music. But In 2016 Nahem and his brother Andrew started working on remixing their early song “All Wound Up.” A year later Nahem was asked by Gregg Bielski to put spoken word vocals to his tracks and the project came to be called ex->tension. But in the end Ritual Tension reunited in 2017 and continues to this day. 2022 finds Nahem releasing a new solo album Crawling Through Grass with collaborations from Bielski, his brother Andrew, Westberg, Mark C (of Live Skull), Jon Friend (Campfire Flies), Jadwiga Taba (Nac/Hut Report) and Nahem’s wife Helen. The new album is a true fusion of post-punk, musique concrète, ambient, folk, tape collage and what might be described as New Age meditation music all born out of Nahem’s yoga practice and interest in Eastern philosophy and sounds like music made in a remote monastery dedicated to universal tranquility. For Nahem it probably seems natural and intuitive to go in that musical direction but for those more familiar with his 1980s output it’s a fascinating contrast of styles and yet both seem aimed at a catharsis and transcendent experience and attaining a deep interconnectedness with others and within oneself.

Listen to our interview with Ivan Nahem below, give a listen to Crawling Through Grass and connect with Nahem at the links provided.

onaboutnow.com

Ivan Nahem on Facebook

Ivan Nahem on Instagram

Ritual Tension on Instagram

Arguably Records on Bandcamp

Ritual Tension on Facebook

Carnival Crash on Facebook

Ritual Tension on YouTube

Queen City Sounds Podcast Ep. 30: Gus Englehorn

Gus Englehorn is a songwriter who now resides in Quebec City, Canada. He grew up in Alaska and Hawaii with parents whose lifestyle meant jobs in both states and as a youth got into snowboarding and turned it into a career. During that stretch of his life Englehorn became exposed to genuine underground and otherwise non-mainstream music partly through skateboarding and snowboarding videos which often showcase cutting edge artists. Though Englehorn didn’t fully grow up playing music he started picking up guitar toward the end of his tenure as a professional snowboarder and he realized at one point that he couldn’t spend the rest of his life in such a physically demanding sport and around a decade ago he started to make the transition into more creative endeavors. While many people who come to music later in life than usual often latch on to a musical style of their younger years or something more trendy at that time. Englehorn instead leaned into his creative instincts and personality and has produced a body of work striking for its uniqueness and creativity. The songwriter’s first album Death & Transfiguration released in January 2020 right before the still ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, possibly the worst time to release and promote a new album in recent memory. The record nevertheless had the hallmarks of what has made Englehorn’s music stand out. Though it could be considered a truly idiosyncratic indie pop that fans of Half Japanese and Daniel Johnston might appreciate, Englehorn is clearly tapping into some musical ideas of the 90s but stripped back the sonic excess to allow the songs to hit with a charming vulnerability in its unusual character studies and stories that should form the basis of a future, more benevolent Harmony Korine film.

With that first album and its 2022 follow up, Dungeon Master, Englehorn has performed the music with his partner in life and drummer Estée Preda who also does the artwork for both records. Her visual style akin to children’s mythical storybooks and manga both is a perfect analog of the music within. Dungeon Master finds the duo exploring the inclusion of synths and an even more surreal sensibility in the lyrics and blending of musical elements. The album sounds like a great collection of stories you’d want to see as a Jim Jarmusch anthology film. Fortunately music videos for “Exercise Your Demons” and “Tarantula” at a minimum exist and both reveal even more layers of the wonderful yet highly accessible weirdness of this album. We had a chance to speak with the charming and engaging Englehorn about his life and his art and with any luck we’ll see a more extensive set of live shows in the near future. Apologies for not getting this posted in time to let people know about Estée Preda’s art show in May 2022.

Listen to the interview below on Bandcamp and to get a copy of Dungeon Master or Death & Transfiguration digitally you can visit the artist’s own Bandcamp and for the physical media (cassette/CD/vinyl) you can visit Secret City Records.