by Joel Center

Tucked away in the northeastern hills of Arkansas, lies a little place called Mulberry Mountain. For most of the year, this beautiful landscape serves as a tranquil home for the most gorgeous flora and fauna in the region, but for four days every summer, Mulberry Mountain opens its peaceful terrain to welcome tens of thousands of hippies and hipsters, young and old, from across the world for an event so mind-boggling that there is hardly an attendee whose life isn’t changed by it: Wakarusa.

From May 30 – June 2, the awe-inspiring hills of Ozark, Arkansas will transform into a scene straight from the other side of the rabbit hole. The music booked by Wakarusa attracts people of all kinds – and one look around the festival grounds will reflect that quite well. Even during the day, when things are “tame,” technicolor fans can be seen bounding across the festival grounds in full party regalia, usually sporting a hula hoop, scarf, or some other kind of concert toy, and grinning the most surreal grin you’ve ever seen. At night, however, things start to get really… weird. The atmosphere is that of an enormous tribal gathering; everyone has traveled great distances to revel in nature, far from the banalities of daily life, with good friends new and old and, of course, the music.

Wakarusa has always prided itself on providing acts of a wide variety of genres, and this year will be no exception. With musical styles ranging from Widespread Panic and Dispatch to Tipper, Zeds Dead, and Shpongle, and almost every conceivable genre in between spread out across five different stages, there is constantly something for everyone to enjoy. This year, Colorado’s own artists Yonder Mountain String Band and the Motet will be providing eargasms across the Ozarks as well. There are over a hundred other artists that will be at Wakarusa (including live visual artists), so for a better grasp on what music will be played this year, check out the lineup on Wakarusa’s official website.

A few words to the wise: a four-day festival can be tons of fun, but it can also be a pretty rough experience for the ill-prepared. There are a few things to make sure of before you venture off to Arkansas, and some are absolutely more important than others. Perhaps the most important thing to be prepared for is the weather. Wakarusa has been scorching hot for all four days in past years, and in other years it has been ravaged by tornadoes, hail, and thunderstorms. Be sure to check the forecast before leaving, and pack appropriately. Aside from this, be careful what you bring for food. A cooler full of meat ready to grill sounds tasty, but keeping it full of ice at $5 a bag for the whole weekend proves to be an expensive and tiring task. With a slight slip in timing, that cooler full of delicious foods can quickly turn to a rotting box of bear bait.

There are some less obvious things a festy can do in preparation as well. It can be fun and useful, especially if you’re going with a large group of friends, to build and bring along some sort of totem to carry with you that can be seen from afar. Eloquently dubbed “Rage Sticks” by some, these little tools can range from a simple branch with some glowsticks on it, to huge characters towering over the crowd. Also, things to trade can become of much more value inside the festival grounds than out. Wakarusa quickly becomes a free-trade society, and anything from posters to cigarettes can be used as currency amongst official and non-official venders alike. Be sure to check out the list of Wakarusa rules on their website so that you know what can and cannot be brought inside the grounds – getting your possessions taken at a security checkpoint is an easily-avoidable bummer. As a last word of caution, driving to Arkansas with Colorado license plates has become a much larger liability since the passing of Amendment 64, so take care on those long stretches of Kansas State Trooper habitat, and if you happen to bring any contraband, make sure that it’s well hidden!

This year marks the 10^th Anniversary of Wakarusa, and they have pulled every string they can to make this the absolute best year yet. Main Venue camping sold out quicker than ever before, and the anxiety is building. Fans are ready for the biggest, wildest party Arkansas has to offer!

www.Wakarusa.com

“If melodramatic anime movies featuring star-crossed lovers had good soundtracks for a change, they would probably sound a lot like what Roniit Alkayam has been doing for the past couple of years. Alkayam has been a purveyor of moody, ethereal, electronic pop songs that evoke a more meditative Switchblade Symphony or a house-oriented Siren Project. The duo’s 2011 self-titled debut was a fully formed blend of late-’90s EBM and modern techno-pop. A new EP, In the Shadows, finds the band exploring further depths of its atmospheric palette.”  Tom Murphy – The Westword Weekly (Denver, Colorado)

AEG LIVE is proud to present The Midnight Circus featuring darkwave pop music artist Roniit along with supporting acts Glass Delirium, Larissa Vienna, and Hydrogen Skyline live in concert at Denver’s Bluebird Theater Saturday August 3rd, 2013.  Advance tickets are $10 and are available during box office business hours at the Bluebird Theater, the Ogden Theater, the Gothic Theater, and online at www.bluebirdtheater.net. The show is all ages (under 16 must be accompanied by parent or guardian).

AEG LIVE’s Midnight Circus concert event marks the first time Roniit has headlined Denver’s legendary Bluebird Theater. We are happy to coordinate email and phone interviews in advance of this show directly with Roniit and can make available complimentary “All-Access” media & photographer concert passes to select music writers, bloggers, and photographers. Please let us know your name and media outlet you work with so we can coordinate as promptly as possible. Noted below are highlights, weblinks, and various excerpts of information you may find useful. Thank you in advance for any and all media consideration.

Singer, songwriter, and vocalist Roniit is fast becoming a popular musician in the dark electronic pop music world.  Her dazzling live performances feature panoramic sonic textures of piano and lush vocals, esoteric circus performers, an array of ethereal visual elements, and a full backing band.  Roniit will make you dance with her electro pop songs, then strip it down to just a piano and vocals for a heartfelt ballad.  Fans who attend her live performances dressed in costume also enjoy complimentary tarot card readings.

With a very popular debut EP along with a professionally produced cinematic music video for the song “Lost At Sea” (and a second album set to be released later this year), Roniit has attracted a strong, intensely loyal international fan following.  Although Roniit resides in Colorado she has also performed outside the state on a few well received regional and national solo tours. Roniit’s voice is also featured on numerous collaborations with various DJs and producers from around the world.

Link to high resolution artist photograph: http://www.roniit.com/images/full-screen/06.jpg

Link to high resolution event poster: http://www.roniit.com/Roniit_bluebird_poster.jpg 

Link to “Lost At Sea” music video: http://youtu.be/UF4YY8xsEZQ

Link to debut EP “In The Shadows”: http://bandcamp.roniit.com/

Visit Roniit’s website at www.roniit.com for more information, including links to streaming music and videos. You may also reach Roniit direct at (303) 995-0107

by Joel Center

For the past ten years, one group alone has been at the forefront of psychedelic Indietronica; Black Moth Super Rainbow. Founded by songwriter/producer TOBACCO in the woods of western Pennsylvania, BMSR is a group that sounds like nothing you’ve ever heard before. Packed full of synths, keys, pads, vocoders, and occasionally a few “normal” instruments like a guitar, bass, and drums, the music thrown into your ears at a Black Moth show is a dreamscape of summery tonalities that irresistibly seduces any fan in attendance into a trance that is utterly relaxing and inspiring.

Much mystery surrounds this group of electronic maestros. They are prone to hiding their faces in music videos, promo photos, and even live shows, and they are certainly not the type of group to hype themselves up by putting their songs in commercials or embarking upon huge national ad campaigns. Black Moth fans are attracted to that electronic dreamland because of its unmistakable uniqueness and curious intrigue. The vocoded lyrics speak of love, joy, and other profoundly human emotions, but in a tone so robotic that you can’t help but wonder whether or not there is a certain level of irony involved. Either way, once those well-crafted electronic timbres enter the ear of a listener, they are instantly transported into a world of happy, technicolor psychedelia that they’d be only too happy to remain in forever.

This Friday, May 17, residents of the Mile High City will be able to experience a bit of the trippy sonic glory that is Black Moth Super Rainbow live at the Bluebird. Because the group has been gaining popularity at a steady rate, this is an excellent opportunity to catch the band at a fairly intimate venue before they are selling out the Fillmore, and at only $17 advance / $20 door, it’s a bargain that can’t be beat!

by Jenn Cohen

Denver’s Nate Cook (the Yawpers), and Josh Lee (Eldren) are sick of people being nice, so they’ve formed a partnership, a “cross-genre, unholy marriage of men,” they say collectively, laughing. “It’s more than just playing shows together,” says Lee.

“We started talking about doing a podcast together in a general effort to speak up [about the music scene], and hopefully inspire musicians to raise the bar a little bit,” says Cook. “There is this glad-handing element to the music scene, that you feel like you have to kiss the other band members’ babies in the hope they’ll give you a show.”

Eldren and the Yawpers are playing many shows together as of late and while it’s not your typical partnership for a billing, that’s precisely why they’re doing it. “There’s no one on the planet who would go to an Eldren show and then to a Yawpers show and say, ‘Oh, those are similar bands,” says Cook. “They are totally different. We put on psychedelic, prog rock country shows,” says Cook. “Why the f*ck not?”

Concerning criticism, Cook says, “I’ve gotten bad reviews from every side of the board . . . bring it on! It crushed me for a few days, then I came to certain realizations about what they were talking about, and it created a desire to get better. If you’re above reproach, as an artist, then get the f*ck out of the game.

“There’s a movement in the music scene at large, kind of a pontification of musical identity to the point where people are playing the most white-washed pedantic bullsh*t you can imagine,” says Cook. “A lot of that boils down to [the fact that] there’s not a lot of criticism. If you’re in a band that’s trying to make it in the Denver music scene, you would never say to another band, ‘Hey, you guys weren’t that good tonight.’ And we (Yawpers and Eldren) try and do that with each other. There’s this whole attitude of just being nice to the point that it doesn’t allow for any growth or inspire people to be more creative or interesting, or more honest. If you continue to let shitty art to be represented because it’s cheaper, then you cheapen the scene; it demeans the true value of music.

“There has to be some sort of scale, you’re either above it or you’re not. There’re plenty of weekend warriors out there who watered down the music scene to the point that it’s hard to get a $600 guarantee,” Cook continues, “and you’ve spent 30-40 hours a week practicing, nine months on the road, six months recording a record, and then you go out and play a show–you should be able to make a living off of it, if you’re good enough.

“The venues need to change their attitudes about it, too,” he says. “Think about the hi-dive. The hi-dive has a built-in crowd because they’re exclusionary; they get good bands to play there, so people go there to see good music. Cervantes Other side, on the other hand, has no built-in crowd because any jerk-off who is willing to play for $80 for three hours can get in there.”

They hope to stir up a little bit of controversy, get people talking, and angry, even, if it means that bands will be more selective of who they play with, so as to not saturate the scene with the same thing over and over. “What happened to the Jim Morrisons?” asks Lee. “What happened to all the fanatics who actually brought rock and roll to what it was?”

“If you think about it, every great scene that has ever really been burgeoning has always been a scene of exclusion,” says Cook. “Scenes of inclusion generally tend not to be good scenes. Scene of exclusion tend to have really strong ethos attached to them, really stringent musical ideas, and that’s where you see these breakouts of punk, grunge, hardcore—they’re scenes of exclusion.

“It’s more about creating awareness. There is a lot of good music out there, music is not as subjective as you think it is,” says Lee. “Good food is good food. You will feel it when you eat it. You might not prefer it over everything else, but there’s no way you can deny that this plate in front of you is the most amazing style of that cuisine.” And if you don’t like? “Then you should tell someone.”

“Unsolicited criticism would be borderline asshole behavior, which is definitely not the goal,” says Cook. “There is a real lack and need for honesty in the scene that doesn’t exist.” Adds Lee, “We’re tired of musicians being nice, just to kiss ass. There is 80% marketing and 20% productivity because we’re not speaking up; we’re not doing our job.” Adds Cook, “If the end goal isn’t to make art, then you’re really just a corporate piece of shit cocksucker.” Feel free to comment; in fact, bring it on!

Upcoming Shows: May 2, Oskar Blues; May 4, Shine Boulder; May 17,
Stoney’s Bar & Grill

Online: yawpers.com and eldrenmusic.com