Dance music is seeping into every nook and cranny of contemporary life, soundtracking everything from network dramas and NFL touchdowns to ads for the latest Japanese import. It’s hard to remember a time when phase delays, synth washes and drum beds were not a part of the media landscape, but…

Like all good French boys, Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo like to take things slowly, allowing time to savor the finer things in life. It’s been eight years since the Parisian duo adopted the Daft Punk brand in order to tinker with the then-underground club sounds booming across the…

When artists make a conscious effort to strike out and do something different, they are sometimes led into the fertile fields of creativity. But they often wind up in the same sonic cul-de-sacs already ruled by other, more interesting bands. For every Beatles, Talk Talk or Moby — each a…

England is just a weird place geographically,” says Paul Ortiz, aka DJ David Watts, attempting to pinpoint why the U.K. is so alluring to music-hungry Americans. “It’s an island that’s not really a part of Europe. And it’s a really small place, but they have all this wealth and power.”…

Los Angeles imprint Priority Records has snatched up a two-year-old recording by JS16, the hip and sexy handle for Finnish tech-head Jaako Salovaaro. The twenty-something knob-twiddler has loaded Stomping System, his stateside debut, with ten tracks of get-on-up-and-dance music. The tracks here are grown primarily on simple tribal house programming,…

Sometimes, a couple of good lines from a pop song can explain in a few words what otherwise might take an hour: “Consider for a minute who you are/Then decide it’s time to re-invent yourself/Like Liz before Betty, she after Sean/Suddenly you’re missing, then you’re reborn.” Neil Tennant’s pithy lyric…

DJs Eric Morillo and “Little” Louis Vega (right) are hitting the turntables at Vinyl on Thursday, January 18 — and bringing a taste of deep and funky house to the Mile High City. Part of a much-needed renovation of the Broadway club’s talent lineup, the two Manhattan mix meisters’ Denver…

With techno booming from every ESPN promo and truck commercial on the air, it would be easy to assume that electronic music is the only sound capable of getting Nineties kids on their feet. But Gary Norris and Patrick Robinson know better. These vinyl-crazed young men have built a sizable…

Cibo Matto Stereo Type A (Warner Bros.) The latest serving from Cibo Matto has a tough meal to follow. The band’s debut, 1996’s Viva! La Woman, was a smorgasbord of wonderfully twisted hip-hop for the Food Channel set: selections included “Apple,” “Beef Jerky,” “White Pepper Ice Cream” and a cover…

Argan South Moroccan Motor Berber (Barbarity) I know that a lot of you have been burned by world music: You’ve picked up a supposedly catchy album after reading a rave review by a writer with a couple of tattered tour guides and a vocabulary with a glandular condition only to…

When Michael Chapman speaks, his words make him seem like the sagest of club veterans. “You want to get that positive response, watching people dance and go nuts to your music,” he says authoritatively. “If you’re not reading the crowd, they’re not going to respond to what you’re doing, and…

John Williams Star Wars, Episode I: The Phantom Menace–Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (Sony Classical) The week before the film that birthed it arrived in theaters, the Episode I soundtrack entered the Billboard sales charts at number three, vaulting past Shania Twain and Britney Spears and lingering behind only Tim McGraw…

“I like playing deeper records,” says Josh Wink. “But it’s just hard sometimes, because people expect me to play bangin’ music all the time.” Such expectations are natural: Among dance-clubbers from Rio to Helsinki, this dreadlocked white boy is as famous for his hard-techno sets as fellow Philadelphian Dick Clark…

“I try to imagine what the scene in Denver would be like if we hadn’t been here–myself, Darrin Choice, John Chamie, Hipp-E and the other visionaries,” says Ken Hamblin III, better known as DJ K-Nee. “And I’m not certain it would be as interesting. We all saw that this music…

When it comes to the Denver club scene, the Eighties are in. Expensive venues such as Polyester’s and Lucky Star are treating expanding crowds to a diet laden with plenty of the Human League and the Cure, and nightspots associated with modern rock or current dance music, including Tracks 2000,…

From a musical perspective, Vienna, Austria, remains best known as the birthplace of the waltz, a dance that is as beloved today as it was during the nineteenth century, when Viennese composer Johann Strauss Jr. was first recognized as “the waltz king.” But for aficionados of the international club scene,…

Until recently, disco entrepreneur Kekoa Franconi was a kindergarten teacher. But these days, the younger brother of internationally known dance maven Keoki (“DJ Keoki, Superstar,” July 18, 1996) is offering a much different form of instruction. With Kidnapped, his mysteriously named partner, he’s created Playscool, an ultra-swanky sixteen-and-over event at…

The ties that bind can often strangle. Just ask the members of Skull Flux, who during their six years together have experienced as many setbacks as successes. But after nearly dissolving in 1998, the band–vocalist Conrad Kehn, drummer David Hesker, bassist Steve Millin and guitarist Greg Stretton–appears to be back…

In the February 27, 1997, edition of this column, Reed Foehl, longtime leader of Acoustic Junction, explained why he and his mates had decided to rechristen themselves Fool’s Progress shortly after signing a two-album deal with Capricorn Records. “We felt that we weren’t reaching as many people as we could…

“There are times in a DJ’s career where you can see that they’ve just lost it; they’re all about the money,” says Greg Diehl, better known as DJ Dealer. “And there is money out there for the higher echelon of people. Those kind of people get paid well, but a…

Like Burt Reynolds, Depeche Mode tends to be viewed as either comically irrelevant or deserving of more praise than it usually receives. But no one denies the staying power of these doomy dance-pop veterans. The band has been around for eighteen years, yet the act’s current worldwide jaunt in support…

Dan Wanush is best known as King Scratchie, the twisted, hard-rapping frontman for the sadly defunct Warlock Pinchers. But although Wanush still loves the fusion of hardcore, funk and hip-hop that the Pinchers brought to Denver during the late Eighties and early Nineties, he admits that he’s harbored a secret…