Cop Circles’s Luke Leavitt spent time living in Egypt as a kid and formed a band while attending Vassar College in New York. He moved to Denver and found a city where he could play his keytar as part of a protest and develop an intense live show. We spent…
Luke Leavitt is sitting in the food court at the Town Center mall in Aurora for the second time in a week. At other tables are families with strollers, couples and groups of friends enjoying the cuisine at hand. It’s mostly fast-food fare, but there is also what appears to…
Before the Knife’s show proper got started, a guy who was dressed like a particularly garish Russell Brand got the crowd warmed up with some calisthenics. You know, the sort of thing that’s done en masse in Japan and China. It was part impromptu dance-class primer and part yoga class,…
OM is often lumped in with the genres of “stoner rock” and “doom metal,” and it seems likely to be not coincidental that its tour ended on April 20th in Colorado. But the band’s 4/20 show did not seem to have either a stoner or doom vibe to it. Washingtonians…
Magic Cyclops returns from the rumors of his premature 2011 death to perform at Wax Trax Records this Saturday, April 19th for Record Store Day. For the occasion he is also releasing a limited edition of his “Captain Badass” single on square vinyl. That night he will reprise his performance…
Easter is upon us. The holiday celebrating the death and resurrection of the Christian messiah, Jesus of Nazareth. Pontius Pilate washed his hands, the Roman emperor Tiberius probably heard nothing about the incident from a far-off province of the empire. To Pliny the Younger, Tacitus and Josephus he was not…
The Knife (due Monday, April 21, at The Fillmore Auditorium) from Stockholm, Sweden, is an experimental synth pop duo comprised of Karin Dreijer Andersson and her brother Olof Dreijer. Since the project’s founding in 1999, it has explored unusual rhythmic ideas. Its 2003 album Deep Cuts garnered the group an…
OFF! (due Saturday, April 19, at The Marquis Theatre) is a bit of a hardcore supergroup, founded by Keith Morris formerly of Black Flag and Circle Jerks and Dimitri Coats who was best known as a member of heavy rock band Burning Brides. The two became friends not long after…
Most music festivals don’t have a specific conceptual guiding principal behind them. But for Communikey 2014, the phrase “Take Time,” which was featured in the well-designed schedule and map. As they explained it, the demands of the modern world have created a climate of artificial boredom, overtaxed reserves of emotional…
Hip-hop label Upset Records is celebrating the state’s new unofficial pastime with the release of Colorado Smoke. The compilation is due out April 15th with an in store at Angelo’s downtown. Recorded in 72 hours in the Upset Records studio with various of the label’s stable of artists, these eleven…
Deep Dreams can be viewed as a semi-transitional album for Sara Century, as it was written in part after she started incorporating keyboards and samples into her songwriting. Still intact, however, are the imaginative, demented stories that recall early-’80s Residents records. “iveknownyouforsolonggg” has a somber, spacious quality, like that of…
If IDM artists like Plaid and Squarepusher had access to less complicated equipment and were born in the 1990s, they might come up with something like Lockbox’s Prince Soul Grenade. Is it composition? Cut-and-paste? Sound collage? It sounds like all of the above, with each song constantly shifting in texture,…
Communikey Festival starts this Thursday, April 10, and runs through Sunday, April 13. Though Communikey is in its tenth year as an organization, this will be the seventh time it has hosted the festival, bringing in some of the most innovative and visionary artists in the realm of electronic music…
The members of Residual Kid (due Friday and Saturday, April 4 and 5, at the Hi-Dive) from Austin, Texas are all fifteen-years-old or younger. Despite their youth, it is impossible to ignore their sheer power of the songs — they’re something more than you’d expect out of three guys who…
Gary Numan (due Friday, April 4, at The Gothic Theatre) is most widely remembered for his 1980 hit song “Cars.” That song was merely the most popular in an influential career that had a direct impact on artists as diverse as Prince, Beck, Lady Gaga and, of course, Nine Inch…
The four tracks on the Friends From the Bar EP actually do sound like an attempt to capture a meeting at a bar somewhere — in Berlin, maybe. If there is an overarching style here, it seems to be one that synthesizes house, ambient and downtempo. Kaster Cordalis’s “Soul Romance”…
Intentionally recorded in super-lo-fi mode, Already Dead’s I Want to See You Rot delivers the kind of sound that will never be fully appropriated by the mainstream. Though musically different from early black-metal efforts such as Mayhem’s Deathcrush EP, Already Dead’s project rivals that one in its rawness. On “Joke,”…
Carcass (due Wednesday, April 2, at The Summit Music Hall) were pioneers of grindcore alongside their friends in Napalm Death. By the time of its classic 1993 album Heartwork, the band had transitioned had all but fully into its melodic death metal phase. Carcass had already had a lasting impact…
From the beginning of last night’s first Neutral Milk Hotel show in Denver in some twenty years, when Jeff Mangum stepped on stage with his guitar to play “King of Carrot Flowers Pt. I” it was immediately powerful, no nostalgia necessary. Then, the rest of the band joined him, and…
The Black Lips (due Wednesday, April 2nd, at The Bluebird Theater) are the notorious rock and roll band from Atlanta, Georgia who had to flee India for fear of persecution over on stage antics involving band members kissing each other. Their show at the club Heaven in London in September…
When Annie Clark of St. Vincent took the stage with the rest of her band, it was with the same kind of choreographed ritual that informed the rest of the performance. Her hair these days seems to belong to a visitor from either outer space or the future, as are…
Denver Noise Fest just announced the line-up for its 2014 festival, running Friday, April 25 and Saturday, April 26. The annual festival is one of the largest and most eclectic of its type in the country. Both nights will feature an eclectic array of noise artists from across the country…
