A few short years ago, Jamie Foxx was the opposite of an award magnet — but that was before he won a Best Actor Oscar for the 2004 Ray Charles biopic Ray. Since then, he’s been nominated for five Grammys, including three this year: one for his contributions to “Georgia,”…
Kayo Dot thrives at extremes. On its Tzadik debut, 2003’s Choir of the Eye, the act creates exhaustive, dynamic backdrops in which dense layers of distortion descend into exquisite, wistful excursions, like chaos dissolving into serenity — or something akin to dropping acid in a tunnel with Marshall stacks blaring…
Quick: Name three things that come from Denmark. Drawing a blank? You know, Denmark. It’s that little Scandinavian country that owns Greenland, used to reign in blood over vast swaths of northern Europe and until now has been known mostly for tasteful furniture design. Well, Danish metal quintet Mnemic (the…
Anti-Glacier Movement’s most obvious touchstone is Radiohead. Frontman Jesse Nesbitt evokes Thom Yorke’s signature croon better than most of his counterparts who’ve co-opted the British band’s eclectic, folk-influenced space rock sound. Anti-Glacier, though, goes beyond mere imitation. Instead of residing in the safe, warm environs charted by Yorke and company,…
Circusized Peanuts. What a great name for a record. And as I remembered it, Peanuts was also a pretty kick-ass album. Not quite as good as Deadly Kung Fu Action — the classic Warlock Pinchers album, which contained the immortal ditty “Morrisey Rides a Cockhorse” — but pretty kick-ass nonetheless…
Death Becomes You It’s death metal Tuesday at the Larimer Lounge. Okay, I made that crap up; there’s no official, on-going weekly theme at the Lounge. Nonetheless, that’s precisely what’s on tap — too much metal for one hand. Stop by tonight and have your ass handed to by Cryogen,…
Vonnegut Thursday is the new Friday. You got the memo, right? That said, here’s some kick ass shows worth checking out tonight… Vonnegut, Epilogues, (die) Pilot and All Capitals comprise a kickass local bill at the Bluebird, while former Against Tomorrow Sky guitarist/vocalist Mike Stephens’ new band Sedalia shares the…
I’m listening to Billy Joel right now, and it’s all Chuck Klosterman’s fault. That prick. Prompted by a passage that I read earlier this morning in one of his books, Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto, I’m sorting through several of Joel’s deep cuts, among them a…
Now is a bad time to be a giant music corporation, but ethically challenged music fans couldn’t ask for better days. Bootlegging has always been about catering directly to the fans, and the Internet breeds the best bootleggers yet: bigger and stronger and faster than ever before, the better to…
In 2006, the pop-singles market continued to dominate, in no small part because the pick-and-click mentality of online music stores and ring-tone sites gave consumers unparalleled freedom to Choose Their Own Musical Adventure. What suffered in the meantime was the quality of pop and rock albums. These platters frequently spawned…
It was, according to no less an authority than the New York Times, the year rap went regional. There was plenty of recent evidence to support this claim, beginning with the suddenly paltry record sales racked up by some of hip-hop’s heaviest weights. There was a lot of historical evidence,…
The Nashville way of making music is unlike any other, comparable only to the studio system of Hollywood’s golden age — a closed system of songwriters, producers, record labels and artists that creates most of the sounds you don’t want to admit you listen to on the radio when no…
This story, as originally conceived, was supposed to be a compilation of the year’s best boxed sets and other reissues. But then it hit us: In today’s shuffle-driven iPod world, with the pace of pop culture moving at breakneck speed, it’s pointless to make such temporal distinctions. The past is…
Another year, another wave of quirky British bands pouring into the States. It’s got all the makings of a new British Invasion. Well, except for one thing: the invasion. For every Bloc Party and Franz Ferdinand that succeeds in North America, there are dozens more that barely make it across…
Recordings of DJ mixes have been multiplying like e-mail spam over the past decade. The sheer volume of said releases is overwhelming, and it makes one wonder: Who the hell is buying them? There must be a demand if labels keep issuing the things as if the music industry has…
Latin/Anglo Crossover is what Latin American artists have always dreamt of and what American artists are starting to realize they need to pull big sales numbers out of a shrinking market. Crossover success means jackpots in both concert tickets and CD sales, so expanding a fan base across genres, countries,…
The criterion for this list was simple: Only the hardest, heaviest metal albums were considered. Bands who play a hybrid style of metal that is not thrash, speed, death, black metal, hard-core, grindcore or some amalgamation thereof were not included. What follows is pure effin’ metal. Bang your head off…
Hey, dude. So here’s my mixtape that’s been twelve months in the making. Sorry it’s taken a while, but reality often moves at the same molten pace as a couple of the bands culled here. While the new folksters get accolades for their freaky psychedelic tendencies, there’re plenty of heavy…
For nearly a decade, the giants of electronic dance music, a cold-blooded cadre mostly from northern Europe, lumbered across the earth. Tiesto, Paul van Dyk, Paul Oakenfold, Seb Fontaine, Judge Jules and Fatboy Slim dominated small suburban dancefloors and Ibizan caverns alike with crafty disco assembled from chest-rattling basslines and…
Is it getting hot in here, or is it 3Oh!3? Early in 2006, the Colorado hip-hop scene received a smack in the face from Sean Foreman and Nathaniel Motte, two pasty-faced Boulderites ready to get the party started. With barking flow, Casio beats and frenetic live energy, the duo known…
“I write my life as it progresses, as it gets worse — whatever,” says Aaron Yates, who headlines on Saturday, January 6, at the Fillmore Auditorium under his nom de plume, Tech N9ne; Blaze opens the show. “I’m like a fan inside this cat called Tech N9ne, who writes this…
A good friend of mine — a fellow critic, someone whose work I admire — recently confided that he’s tired of seeking out new music. Just the thought exasperates him. Everything these days sounds hackneyed and derivative to his finely tuned ears. Worse, listening to music has become a job…
