Author Archives: Dan Mancini

For New Years 2011 I’m looking past all the dubstep poster parties, the furry boots, the sets by DJ D-BAG; I couldn’t care if Flux Pavillion is an artist or a venue, this year I’m taking refuge on the other side of Denver for a party worthy of the last New Years Eve mankind may ever to celebrate before doomsday.

Rounding it’s third year, HOWL is a united showcase of music, performance, and environmental design thrown by Betty Bluebird, who brought the Clyfford Still grand opening into being back in November. Each year’s HOWL borrows the aesthetic of a new era in history, with this year’s clock turned back to 1858.

A pastiche of pioneer-punk and that sexy delta sound, HOWL featured a photo booth and confession booth – both of which became the kissing booths – not to mention what we all came to call the love tepee, lit from within so as to cast incriminating sillouettes of it’s goings-on to outside. The showcase also held tarot readings with Andye Murphy, a gaslamp bar by Peach Street Distillers, and all the vaudville cosplay one off-street denver warehouse could contain.

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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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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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When I first got into Eisley I could still sing the high parts on “Invasion” from their Combinations album. That made it all the more charming to sit down in the tour bus with the familial five-piece a couple years and a bit of puberty later at the outset of their ValleyScapes tour. 

Kicking off the tour at The Black Sheep in Colorado Springs, I got to see the newest incarnation of Eisley and the darker more visceral sound of The Valley album released this year. Moving the tour to The Marquis Theater in Denver the next day, I was invited aboard the big blue bus to ask the band the questions everybody really wants answered, like what color lightsaber would you have, and what’s your natural hair color? The answer is blond, for every one of them.

These kids were crazy fun, and the espoused Darren King of MUTEMATH, new hubby to Eisley’s Stacy Dupree, was there on the bus to be a welcome obstruction. They promised to be back in CO again, so look out for more to come from Eisley in the future.

I’m excited and honored to represent the The Vinyl District as it opens up metaphorical shop here in Denver. Colorado has such an eclectic musical profile. It’s a mecca to electronic music culture as well as home to the world famous Red Rocks Ampitheatre, and of course you can’t properly articulate the culture of musicianship in Colorado without homage to its folk/traditional music scene, which will also be getting some of our love.

TVD Denver is your spot for reviews, interviews, giveaways, and upcoming shows around the Rocky Mountains. You can watch us for music news locally and nationally alike, with a focus on Denver, Boulder, Colorado Springs, Fort Collins, and Morrison.

My co-editor Emily began with The Vinyl District in DC before coming to Colorado. She found me, and now we have the privilege of launching the latest addition to The Vinyl District family here in the Wild Wild West. I’m a filmmaker and former member of more over-ambitious and under-funded bands than I could count. In celebration of the new TVD Denver, my co-worker Emily and I have tag-teamed to list the Top 5 Most Successful Bands, love them or hate them, to come out of our beloved rectangle of a state.

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