Vibe Squad at 12th & Porter 

Eight Miles High

Eight Miles High
We never pegged Colorado as a hotbed for forward-thinking electronic music, but this week's appearances by Fort Collins' Pretty Lights and the one-man funk machine known as VibeSquad has us reconsidering our stance. Pulling from a wide berth of influences from reggae to funky breaks to jazz and house, VibeSquad mastermind Aaron Holstein creates up-to-date electronic music that's both familiar and refreshingly new. A former student of jazz-master Yusef Lateef, Holstein works the wobble-bass like a master, constructing engaging textural shifts through stuttering electronics on tracks like “BassTravel” and deep-space dub excursions like “HammerMarley.” He's also a CamelCase enthusiast, which is driving our spell-check nuts but we find it TotallyEndearing.
Thu., Oct. 22, 8 p.m., 2009
  • Eight Miles High

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Thanks for the review, but I'm sure that anyone who actually read this and showed up to the concert was surprised to find respectable intelligent-minded kids that didn't fit the mold of a stereotypical "Electronica" demographic. In fact, it breaks most any mold that could be applied here since the vocabulary of today's (Nashville's) musical standards couldn't quite contain something like this. If there were a word to describe this movement you'd might need to dig into old crates of Miles Davis or Jimi Hendrix albums for inspiration, to say the least. The real movement lies in today's frustrated youth who see past the "veil" of misappropriated attention given to false talent pushed into the spotlight by a struggling corporate industry. I wouldn't blame anyone for just now discovering Colorado's "forward-thinking" electronic music scene. It was off the radar anyway. But Nashville just facilitates the music venues. We brought the talent here because the musical intention matched our values. What are our values? Update your SpellCheckers and we'll talk.

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Posted by This is Art on 11/05/2009 at 4:23 PM
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