The Loops Podcast

Hi all, This mini-episode of the Loops Podcast is about seeing endings as new beginnings. It’s about (and for) my dear friend Nirantha Balagopal, who last month played one last show as Language Barrier , a lo-fi pop project she started nine years ago in Phoenix. I met her before that, serendipitously, at a leadership camp for high-school sophomores started by an actor who played Wyatt Earp on TV i...

An hour of psychedelic trance, baile funk and hard techno from the Denver DJ to make you go feral. Vicky Burp is a 25-year-old artist and DJ in Denver. Raised in San Antonio, Texas by a Chilean father and Mexican mother (the Tejano singer Lisa Lopez), her life has always been about music, performance and heritage. She says her Loops mix, is now a good time to tell you i love you? , was inspired by...

In my last interview with glitch-pop producer Iron Hox , we talked a lot about noise — about how cathartic it can be to push the volume and manipulate sounds beyond recognition. Simone and Savanna (no last names shared) from Pink Lady Monster also get a kick out of letting loose in the studio. The band’s performances are knowlingly theatric, manic and offbeat. Their new EP, Psychic Antennae and a...

I’ve lived in a few cities since college, and every time I arrive at a new one, I try to familiarize myself with its clubs, record stores and dance music scene. When I moved to Denver, I had an idea of what was to come. I knew the city generally resorted to high-volume, low-brow EDM — and there is a lot of that, all the way from the clubs on Broadway to the almighty Red Rocks. But I’ve been gratef...

This second episode of Loops Radio is twice as long and double the fun. I play cuts from two cassettes by kindred ambient spirits Midwife and Paul Riedl , as well as new club tracks by Burial , Joy Orbison , Kelela with DJ Manny and Jonny from Space . At the halfway point, my wife Becky Otárola, who sings, writes and records as Bellhoss , joins me for an interview about her latest EP, A Rose, A Th...

The latest EP from Denver electronic producer Iron Hox starts with a bit of sound design straight out of a horror movie. Water droplets echo deep inside a crumbling cave; from the abyss appears a figure drenched in autotune; then, heaps of clipping, thunderous bass bury everything in rubble. It’s a fake-out, a harsh noise false alarm. Though the rest of Light That Slices is defiantly murky and abr...

Dear Looper, I met Isadora Decker-Lucke and Sumner Erhard soon after moving to Denver in 2021. They were friends of my girlfriend (now fiancée) and part of a local indie-rock scene I’d get to know more intimately as the months passed. I knew Isadora wrote her own music and Sumner played drums in another band from the scene, Corsicana . They were friendly and funny, cracking jokes, sharing memes an...

Happy Nuggets-in-Four Day, Today’s edition of the Loops Podcast features a conversation with Chris Bowers-Castillo of Kiltro, a Denver rock band whose sophomore album Underbelly comes out tomorrow (June 2). Chris was hard at work over the last few years, writing songs during the early days of the pandemic and bringing them to life with bandmates in long studio sessions. Chris and I first met at th...

Hello all, When I decided to call this newsletter Loops all those years ago, I wasn’t kidding. I love loops. Love them as samples, as drum machines, as synths, as vocals, whatever. I could listen to a repetitive techno track like Luomo’s “The Right Wing” for days on end. I love loops so much I personally wrote a letter of recommendation for them. And even with all that devotion, I still don’t thin...

Dear Looper, I give you the first edition of the Loops Podcast , an audio format of this newsletter featuring interviews with artists, mixes and more! Joining me is dh porter (Daniel Porter) , a rapper and producer from St. Paul, Minnesota who dropped an album called old haunts last month. Porter writes verses that are witty on the surface but reveal inner pains underneath. The overall sound is mo...