Greencarpetedstairs

Neil Ewing has spent the past several years exploring the odds and ends of experimental hip-hop and experimental electronic music of various stripes. But with this solo project, he takes his creativity to its furthest extent. On this sprawling release, Ewing’s dark-hued pop songs take on a range of sonic…

God Is an Astronaut

Swedish writer Erich Von Däniken is alive and well, lecturing on the influence of extraterrestrial contact on ancient civilizations. His writing, meanwhile, has evidently inspired song titles for this Irish band. Since forming in 2002, God Is an Astronaut has created dense instrumental music in the vein of acts like…

The Grownup Noise

Artists mining the territory between chamber pop and Americana aren’t exactly a rarity right now — and everyone writing pop music worth listening to has been influenced by the Beatles or, for the slightly more adventurous, the Velvet Underground. The Grownup Noise started out writing songs that draw immediate comparisons…

Critic’s Choice: The Still City, August 13, at the hi-dive

Maybe Brian Knab, Brandon Roth and Ryan Murphy wanted to be Laymen Terms back in their days living in Monument and failed at it miserably. But when the trio reconfigured in Denver with bassist Jeff Wiencroft and fused punk-rock spiritedness with a full-bodied, almost orchestral aesthetic, The Still City was…

With its massive sound, Spires won’t be playing small rooms for long

Spires is a brand-new band, by traditional standards. The band made its debut just after the first of the year, which, in the blogosphere, could be considered a lifetime ago. Regardless, you’d never know Spires was a freshly minted act just from listening to its self-titled four-song debut. The inherent…

Review: BLKHRTS at Old Curtis St. Bar, 8/6/11

BLKHRTS at OLD CURTIS ST. BAR | 8/6/11In advance of this show, BLKHRTS spread the word that there would be a sacrificial ceremony to kick off its tour. Considering the names of the opening acts and the lyrical content of the band’s music, this “sacrificial ceremony” promised to be tongue-in-cheek…

Top five 120 Minutes videos

After debuting on March 10, 1986, 120 Minutes became a showcase for non-mainstream music of various stripes until around the year 2000 when it first got shuffled to the side in favor of reality programming. But during its heyday, 120 Minutes introduced a generation and more to music by artists…

Review: Iceage at Rhinoceropolis, 8/2/11

ICEAGE at RHINOCERPOLIS | 8/2/11When Iceage, from Copenhagen, Denmark, took the stage (or floor in this case) at Rhinoceropolis last night, there was a palpable air of anticipation and excitement, and certainly the members of the band had a quiet intensity about them that they unleashed in full from the…

Top five Headbanger’s Ball videos

Headbanger’s Ball started on April 18, 1987, and ran for nearly eight years. With little regard for a narrow definition of what constituted metal, the show’s programmers seemed to embrace it all. So you would see a Poison video, something from Motorhead and then something from the Cult. The early…

Flashlights will shine at the Marquis on August 5

Flashlights started in the basement of Ethan Converse’s house in Four Mile Canyon shortly after he graduated from college, when he and Sam Martin met through mutual friends. Inspired by Martin’s desire to break away from his background in rock groups and propelled by Converse’s realization that a creative endeavor…

Strange Powers

With song titles evoking images of alchemy and the occult, Josh Powers seems to have tapped directly into hermetic knowledge, creating tones that get under your skin in the same way that Skinny Puppy’s “Smothered Hope” does. “Character Map” sounds like a peek into Innsmouth after the introduction of futuristic…

Typhoon

Typhoon is currently capping its membership, touring and otherwise, at twelve members. While this may seem like a gratuitously sprawling lineup, one listen to any of the band’s releases makes it obvious that each member is making an important contribution to the deceptively simple but lushly textured sounds on each…

Dntel

Jimmy Tamborello is probably best known for his work with Ben Gibbard in the Postal Service, where his pioneering, glitchy electronica provided the beautifully textured backdrop to that band’s songs. The basis for that sound was one he’d been developing in other projects, including his main musical priority these days,…

Mercuria and the Gem Stars, August 4 at the Larimer Lounge

If you’ve been to the right places over the past couple of years, chances are you’ve caught Maria Kohler playing solo or as a collaborator in whatever projects Mike Marchant has been involved with at any given time. And if you heard her, you know that Kohler’s soulful voice and…