Category Archives: TVD Denver

IDM musician, blogger, and industry famous graphic design artist Scott Hansen was in Colorado for the first time performing as ambient electronic title Tycho. Backstage at Summit Music Hall, he met with The Vinyl District for this episode of TVD TV.

Hansen is deified nerd, an audio/visual authority/visionary with a palette for vintage analog. As ISO50, he also maintains one of the most popular design blogs on the web. Saturday at a packed Summit Music Hall, Tycho stepped onto a Denver stage for the first time.

Low-lit Summit Hall could be the setting for the kind of late ’80s cyberpunk b-film with teenage rollerblade gangs or celebrity hackers. (Actually, I think that’s a real film.) The crowd that filled the multiple levels of the hall that evening was an unusual solution of one part clean-cut graphic designers and one part psy trance festival hippies. The graphic designers looked better, but in the arena of scent the hippies had them overpowered.

Jakub Alexander, Tycho manager and A&R for Ghostly International, led us backstage and past some other band’s personal masseuse to find Hansen. After geeking out over each other’s cameras, Hansen and I sat down, and he gave me the details on his creative process, his instrumental idiosyncrasies and his journey as an independent artist.

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Although 1,2,3′s name evokes an elementary simplicity any kindergartner could grasp, their music is tenaciously complex with a mutinous disregard for traditional genre conventions.

1,2,3′s debut LP New Heaven was a highly acclaimed gateway into the duo’s unique vision and sound. Today, the Pittsburgh powerhouse expands upon the success of New Heaven with the release of their single “Scared But Not That Scared.”

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Snow be damned; it’ll take more than a little frost-slap in the face to derail a hard-earned weekend of booze, beats, and booty.

December might play dirty, but Denver can play harder. So bundle up in a nice whiskey blanket and strap on your dancing boots—this weekend has got a great selection of shows to thaw you out.

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The gist on Clyfford Still, one of the most celebrated Abstract Expressionist artists in American history, is that for over three decades, nearly his entire body of work has been sealed away somewhere far from public and scholarly view. Part of the agreement stipulated in his will was that none of his individual works were to be sold posthumously. The sale of individual Still pieces was rare even during his lifetime, making his work extremely hard to find, but his entire estate was instructed to be given to whichever American city creates a permanent home for the entire opus.

Jump to November 18th, the opening night of Denver’s Clyfford Still Museum, where 2,400 works entered into public viewing for the first time since Still’s death in 1980. Exhibits are arranged by states in which Still spent parts of his life painting, with really cute models (though they claimed to be volunteers) in ’50s airline stewardess costumes posted at the entrance to each new state.

The event was incredibly beautiful and incredibly exclusive, but TVD made it inside for Denver hometown heroes DeVotchKa, performing for that evening’s entertainment. Recently featured at the top of our Colorado’s Top 5 Bands, Devotchka is a gypsy punk pastiche of Spanish, Latin American, and Eastern European world music build atop modern rock arrangements, Grammy-nominated for the amazing soundtrack to Little Miss Sunshine and with a new album 100 Lovers in stores everywhere as of this year.

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Robed figures emerge from white light, her backing band like golems at her bidding fill the several levels of the stage. One figure in the center seems to move differently from the rest until, as she begins dancing forward, the crowd realizes it is Lykke Li and erupts into applause.

Aesthetically, everyone’s saying her new aesthetic was black magic at least a year before we decided dressing like a witch would be the next big thing. The best way to describe Friday night at The Ogden is that Lykke Li conjured her crowd into a frenzy. Even in the balconies there were crowds ten deep dancing wildly out of control.

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The Walnut Room’s behind-closed-doors, back-room venue exudes the air of delicious exclusivity. At first I thought I had the wrong place last Saturday; the small laid-back pizza parlor seemed like a foreign and gauche environment for a live show.

I quickly tried locating the stage before my confusion became blatant to the boozing patrons, when someone asked me if I was there to see Orbit Service. I was then led to the very back; a door was opened then shut, incasing me in a shadowed, intimate arena. Facing the stage, which was now hard to miss, I exhaled in relief and allowed myself to relax into the ambience.

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Space out with Orbit Service at the release party of their latest album A Calm Note From The West.

The celebration, presented by Beta-lactam Ring Records, is this Saturday night, November 12th, at The Walnut Room with performances by Orbit Service, In Better Senses, Brocken Sprectra, and DJ Cosmos Mudwulf set to the phenomenal visual installations of Vj DizyPixl.

Orbit Service siphons its psychedelic space sound from a masterly reserve of talent. The members are Randall Frazier, Kim G. Hansen (Antenne), Dennis Swanson (Dissolved Day Dream), and Kirill Nikolai (Still Light). This is their first new album in five years, and it is not messing around. Featuring guest performances by Edward Ka-Spel (Legendary Pink Dots), Anna Bronsted (Our Broken Garden), Elin Palmer (Violin), and Esther Hernandez (Pee Pee), Orbit Service has raised the bar to a cosmic level with A Calm Note From the West. 

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Raging from Oakland, California,Wallpaper. will teach you how to throw a party. They’ve got the party anthem beats down and when it’s time to get white boy wasted, they’ll set you in the perfect mood.

Wallpaper. consists of a foursome led by the cheeky Ricky Reed, two explosive drummers, and the funky, yet gorgegous Novena Carmel. Their latest club hopper, #STUPiDFACEDD, remains a dominant force that bends your ears in multiple musical genre directions. In a good way.

This Tuesday night, November 8th, Wallpaper. will be opening live in Denver at the Ogden Theatre with headliner The Dirty Heads.

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