A bigger, better provided the city’s growing psych music fan base a long day and night of top local and national psych acts. This year’s edition of Denver Psych Fest, dubbed “Synesthesia,” was all the better thanks to having the majority of the acts perform at what appears to be a gorgeous, new music space at 27th and Arapahoe, The Savoy.
The second annual Denver Psych Fest (previously known as the Psychedelic Light and Sound Festival) ran smoothly, with bands also playing at Larimer Lounge and the Big Wonderful Sustainability Park. If anything, bands were finishing early, rather than starting 20-40 minutes behind schedule. Kudos go out to the festival’s organizers and the Savoy.
Even all the countless insider recommendations to catch ’s set at 5 p.m. couldn’t have prepared your head for the start-to-finish 3D rainbow of sound Andy Hamilton created with his guitar and pedal effects. Backed by a ferocious rhythm section provided by Ryan Ellison on bass and the non-stop, thrash-kicking, freight train to the head, drumming of Fez Garcia (playing with the first of three different bands Saturday), the power trio played multi-textural, upper stratosphere psych. Songs played at dizzying speeds, were followed by sludgy, stoner rock-paced material in a performance that proved to be one of the best sets of the day by anyone.
Rising local star, , continued to draw fans with their set of multi-genre-inspired (pop, glam and more) psychedelia. With great vocals, enticing songs and solid musical chops, itap only a matter of time before even non-psych fans discover this charismatic band.
The Savoy’s smaller, downstairs (street-level, actually) music stage also featured great acoustics. The venue’s upstairs ballroom-sized space featured a first-rate light show and stellar sound throughout the evening — even when bands got ear-splittingly loud or when handling Prism Waves electronic, multi-layered, multi-keyboard sound. Moving beyond their earlier Cocteau Twins-influenced material, the band, now a five-piece, added more electronics to Zale Hassle’s vocals and Jordan Wyattap ethereal guitar playing.
Pale Sun, already a formidable local Dream Psych act, added a harder, metallic (not metal) tint to their Denver Psych Fest performance. Playing in darkness, or as little light as possible, in the Savoy’s smaller, more intimate room, guitarists Jeff Suthers and Brian Marcus created aural swirls of ethereal cacophony and pure transcendental psychedelia.
Back upstairs, long-time local favorite, Snake Rattle Rattle Snake captivated the ever-growing DPF crowd. If you haven’t seen them perform in a while, they’re performing at a whole new level — more hypnotic … riveting.
The two main national act attractions — Burlington, VT’s the and , from Fullerton, Calif. — drew the biggest crowds and delivered as expected. The Vermont duo floored the room with an electronic sound you might describe as Joy Division on Xanax: snotty vocals over pulsing rhythms and guitar.
The Cosmonauts relied on layered sonic drones to do the heavy lifting. They built to Bolero-like, ever enveloping, trance-grooves, propelled by powerful, foreboding, primitive, almost tribal, drumming that took the crowd to the upper stratosphere. There were more than a few moments where the band, already firing on all cylinders, would abruptly redline in intensity, as if someone flipped a switch. They’d snap you back to attention, pull you toward the heavens, and then, let you glide back down.
ٱԱ’s closed the day of music with a full-throttle, balls-to-the-wall, hardcore, near apocalyptic, post-rock set that knocked anyone still standing, right back on their ass. Creating a veritable phalanx of sound with guitars (Brian Marcus wrenching wild noise from his), keyboards and Theremin for electronic spice, and propelled by more breakneck-speed, trash-drumming from the indefatigable Fez Garcia, Tjutjuna ended DPF on a very loud, very high note.
After as much as 12 hours of mind-altering music (and whatever substances people took to facilitate mind-alterating), people seemed to float out of Denver Psych Fest 2014.
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Mike Long is a Longmont-based writer and comedian and a regular contributor to Reverb.
Michael McGrath is a Denver area photographer. His work is available at . Visit .
