Andy Turner and Ed Handley of Plaid (due Saturday, November 19, at the Bluebird) were part of the groundbreaking electronic music project The Black Dog in the late ’80s through the earliest part of the ’90s with Ken Downie. Mixing ambient soundscaping with textured, syncopated rhythms, The Black Dog became…
Helluva weekend on deck for you before we coast into turkey day festivities next week: There’s a dual CD release party tonight at Herman’s featuring Omniism and Something Underground, Royal Bangs are at the hi-dive, Tedeschi Trucks Band is at the Fillmore, Elephant Revival’s at the Bluebird. Tomorrow night, PANTyRAiD’s…
The fourteen-year-old Dave & Buster’s at 2000 South Colorado Boulevard just became the chain’s first location to get a major overhaul, which is unveiled today. The redesign is the initial phase of the company’s re-branding, and while there’s no schedule yet for rolling out the changes through the other 56…
Feel like cutting a rug this weekend? Good because there’s plenty on this weekend’s Dance Card: There’s a label launch tonight at minibar for 5 and Dime, a brand-new deep/tech house label; the launch will have music from Bones, ben A, Louis Marr, Joseph Newman and Quinn. There will be…
Overcasters have finished work on their new album, Curses//Prayers, and set a release date. And like with The Whole Sea is Raging, the outfit’s previous album from 2010, this one was produced by Rick Parker (Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Von Bondies) and will be celebrated with a three-day release party…
Bop Skizzum has finally named its new lead singer, and she’s making her live debut tonight at Cervantes’, when the band shares a bill with the legends of Fishbone. Last month we confirmed that the group had indeed found a replacement for the then-departing Erin Jo Harris, but they were…
Ian Cooke’s gotta be breathing a sight of relief today. Yesterday morning, the lauded local songwriter, who was driving by himself, was involved in an accident in which his van flipped. Somehow he escaped injury. According to Ian O’Dougherty, his longtime friend and manager, Cooke hit some black ice, which…
GWAR at SUMMIT MUSIC HALL | 11/16/11There’s not a lot left to say about Gwar that hasn’t already been mythologized. Instead, I’ll defer to tradition: About twenty minutes before one of the band’s shows, you hear the collective sound of zippers. Attached to ponchos and raincoats and the occasional sweatshirt,…
Here are the winners of the 2011 Denver #WebAwards in the category we’re loosely dubbing “music,” which means Backbeat scribes report on the happenings in these areas, right here on Backbeat. These are the winners only; for a complete list of finalists go here: “Here are your 2011 Denver #WebAwards…
Brennan Bryarly, a resident DJ at Lipgloss under the name option4, got to see world-renowned turntablist A-Trak in a room of about forty people at South by Southwest a few years ago, and catching that act in such an intimate venue blew his mind. “Then I started thinking about it,”…
Update 11/22/11: The suspense has ended: Five Iron Frenzy reunites, posts new song, announces plans for new album due in 2013! Oh those crazy Five Iron Frenzy kids. What will they do next? They have something planned. Something big, evidently. And whatever it is, it’s happening tomorrow (uh, make that…
In a report filed earlier this morning by Charlie Amter at the Hollywood Reporter focusing on the mainstream explosion of electronic music in this country, Insomniac president and CEO Pasquale Rotella revealed that the local edition of Electric Daisy Carnival won’t be happening next year. “We couldn’t gross enough [there]…
This year’s Shoe Shine, the seventh installment of the annual custom sneaker competition hosted by DJ Mu$a, is going down this Saturday night at City Hall with appearances by DJ Premier and homegrown DMC World Champion DJ Vajra. According to DJ Mu$a, one of the event’s organizers, the idea for…
Update (11/15/11, 2:18 p.m.): Delicate Steve and Yellow Ostrich, originally slated to appear tonight with Ra Ra Riot, are now playing a last-minute gig at Shugs in Boulder. We also just heard about a couple more new show dates: Young the Giant is coming to the Ogden Theatre on Febuary…
Everything that defines religion is interesting to me,” declares Chris Thomas, who just finished work on his solo debut, Messiah Complex, which is being issued under the name Omniism. “I think people should think about it — basically, read the sacred texts that were written by these people as the…
When you hear an act being referred to as a “musician’s band,” it usually means the band in question has incredible technical skill, but not a lot in the way of emotional resonance when it comes to songwriting — especially if the outfit is instrumental. Panal S.A. de C.V. (due…
If you’ve ever been to Salt Lake City, you know there’s gotta be a dark underbelly of pissed-off people who rage against the prevalent cultural climate in private or in venues that are the underground of the underground. Gaza gives credence to this notion. Are these guys kidding when they…
DJ Premier is arguably the greatest hip-hop producer of all time. With a creative style that relies on jazz, soul and funk sampling and an impeccable scratch execution, Premier has crafted a style that has influenced countless producers. The instrumentalist half of legendary rap group Gang Starr, Preemo built up…
As Little Scream, Laurel Sprengelmeyer chiefly employs her voice. But the singer-songwriter is also an accomplished pianist, guitarist and violin player, and she uses this multi-instrumental power to beef up the sonic landscape for her lyrical storytelling style. Her songs twist freely, going from folk-inspired angles to experimental territory and…
Andy Turner and Ed Handley were once in pioneering British electronic group the Black Dog with Ken Downie. Between that project and Plaid, which the duo finally dubbed their collaboration in 1991, Turner and Handley have been busy writing original music and doing remixes for the likes of Björk and…
Their birthplace was discovered in 1978, when a ten-year-old boy name Xavier Roberts followed a BunnyBee behind a waterfall into a magical valley. There he found them being born and promptly rescued them from the clutches of an evil hag with a jackrabbit henchman who wished to enslave them in…
“Dionysiac” starts out as fairly straightforward technical death-metal fare, with frantically twisting passages of guitar seething around the rhythm. But with one vocalist erupting with gruff pronouncements and the other taking a higher, more black-metal pitch in distorted singing, these songs are doing more than just serving as a showcase…
