ALOE BLACC AND THE GRAND SCHEME With Air Dubai • Maya Jupiter • Foodchain 11.10.10 | City Hall Amphitheater I’d been seeing posters all over town advertising Aloe Blacc and the Grande Scheme’s show at City Hall with Air Dubai and FoodChain. What those posters failed to mention — and…
For this week’s installment of the Hot Congress residency at Meadowlark, the group is bringing out the big guns, with Hindershot being joined by Vitamins, Kissing Party, and Luke Hunter James-Erickson. For the entire month of November, the collective and record label has handpicked each weekly bill, pulling from their…
Black Magicians From the Mountains of Mars is a bit of a mouthful. And an eyeful, for that matter. And while not everyone from that band migrated over to Skully Mammoth, the colossal sound sure did. Someone reaching for a genre descriptor for the kind of music made by these…
“Pleroma” sounds like a collage take on IDM, post-rock and dream pop, like if Geogaddi-era Boards of Canada blended together bits of sound ideas from Sigur Rós and Radiohead. On Redefinition, Dan Barnett has crafted a melancholy yet expansive set of music that suggests night travel by air over an…
If this is a real record — meaning it didn’t come as a free gift with my flare jeans purchase from Wet Seal in 1995 — then it’s rather alarming that someone would make something like this in 2010. This EP is filled with brain-jarring cliché after flippant cliché, beyond-formulaic…
For more than fifteen years, Ian O’Dougherty was in Uphollow. Early on, Uphollow was something of a melodic punk-rock band, but by the late ’90s, it had evolved into an act that included a lot more nuance and conscious craft in its songwriting. Around the turn of last decade, Ian…
If the DJs at HallowFreakn’Ween didn’t offer enough creepy, haunted-house-worthy tracks for you, then you won’t want to miss Voodeux Live (due at Beta this Saturday, November 13). Comprising two well-respected producers — James Watts, AKA KiloWatts, a downtempo/breakbeats/techno expert, and Tanner Ross, who creates techno and house tracks –…
The itchy-O Marching Band will take its, ahem, marching antics to cable TV tonight for an episode of the DIY Network’s Disaster House, a show that’s best known for demonstrating unusual techniques to destroy homes and then showing you how to fix them back up. Tonight’s episode, which airs at…
Kanye has gotten a lot of flack for doing some absolutely wonky things. Most recently, a photo of his junk mysteriously appeared on the Internet, followed by word that he copped the microphone on a Delta flight last week to perform for the cabin, and last night, he evidently had…
Once upon a time, DJs played records, and going to the club was a dressy affair. Enter Double//Shadow, a flashy, free party happening this Saturday night at Beauty Bar, hosted by musician besties James Holden (of Astra Moveo) and James Yardley (of Snake Rattle Rattle Snake.) The night aims to…
Rock posters have a long and storied history with silk-screening. It has been a tradition in poster and flier design for as long as the promotion of rock concerts has existed. It’s this very fact that warms our hearts when we see local shows with silk-screened posters, and this week…
In an age where “vintage polaroid” is considered a look, Aloe Blacc’s throwback style isn’t much to write home about. But its not Blacc’s retro-cool appearance that makes him stand out — its his stunning, soulful voice and desire to mobilize social change through his music that deserves the time…
Sad news: We’ve received word that Light Travels Faster has reached its natural conclusion, a lot sooner than many around here would have liked. Those who caught the band at last month’s Gathering of the Clouds should count themselves lucky, as that gig unfortunately appears to have been its last…
After selling out shows at Red Rocks and the Ogden Theatre this past summer, Philadelphia’s Disco Biscuits is slated to return to the area for back-to-back nights at the Boulder Theater on Thursday, January 13 and Friday, January 14, followed by two more nights at the Ogden Theatre on Saturday,…
The Dupree sisters — and brother, and a cousin — have been playing music since elementary school, starting with performances in their parents’ Christian coffeehouse in Texas over a decade ago. As Eisley (, due tonight at the Bluebird Theater with Ives the Band, Christie DuPree and Politic), the band…
When half-brothers Patrick Wilson and Nicholas Blake were looking for a concept for their new club, Rock Star Lounge (940 Lincoln Street), they found inspiration in Nickelback’s “Rockstar” video. “It appeals to every single person,” Blake explains. “You’ve got construction workers, valets, policemen, supermodels and Playboy bunnies. And everybody just…
Before he spent time in a cabin on Long Island writing what would become the debut EP by Small Black, Josh Kolenik was in a rock band called Slowlands that played around New York to some acclaim. But when Kolenik moved on to writing his synth-centric material as Small Black,…
Lately, Seattle has become known for lush folk rock in the vein of Fleet Foxes or hammer-headed, Band of Horses-style dreamscapes that caress the soul but punish the ears with shimmering noise. The Moondoggies, however, look the lumberjack part but hit a bluesy guilty-pleasure spot with chugging lo-fi AM rock…
Supposedly started as a joke band of sorts, Arsonists Get All the Girls became more popular than its members’ more serious projects. A sampling of songs from the group’s catalogue doesn’t make the joke immediately obvious, because these guys sound like a serious death-metal band, with electronic sounds stitching everything…
In 2010, it’s a good time to be a rapper who doesn’t fit the usual narrative. Needless to say, J. Cole is off to an excellent start. Born in Frankfurt, Germany, and raised in Fayetteville, North Carolina, Cole took an academic scholarship to go to St. John’s in New York…
All the pieces are here for this band to be the next Fillmore-filler birthed from the jam-friendly loins of the Centennial State. While the act’s sound is clearly organic, a natural byproduct of its members’ influences — Robert Johnson, Sonny Boy Williamson, Allman Brothers, Otis Redding, and Black Crowes, according…
There’s plenty here: ’70s AM gold, big band, new wave, piano ballad, funk. But in forty minutes of run time, nothing especially coherent emerges. The album feels a lot like a room full of shouting people. The standout tracks, by a mile, are a pair of covers for which Meantoad…
