Goldrush Music Fest 2015 in Photos
In 2015 Goldrush Music Festival descended on Denver, Colorado for its fifth year. This year, the fest was held September 18-19th, 2015 at the historic Savoy at Curtis Park, a Victorian structure built in 1887, almost 30 years after the Colorado Gold Rush and only 11 years after Colorado became a state. Goldrush Music Festival is a celebration of adventurous listening, the unique, and the independent. An annual Colorado rendezvous, an autumnal pop-up weekend breeding and feeding ground for the weird and curious seeking new, rare, and unusual music and media.
On Friday, Denver’s American Culture kicked things off on the Impose stage.
Berlin-based former local Married in Berdichev played a dreamy dusk set, the first on the smaller Tiny Mix Tapes stage. Performances would alternate between these two adjoined spaces throughout the fest, with projections by Curt Heiner providing much of the visuals.
Crown Larks from Chicago followed with a free jazz splattered, motorik-propelled set, punctuated by keys, sax, guitar, and vocals.
Solo performers provided the evening’s remaining sets, starting with Seattle’s Lisa Prank.
Prank’s jangly, light-hearted, and nostalgic pencil box pop was burst by Sweden’s John Chantler, wrangling his noise case.
Denver’s Dugout Canoe shredded hyperactive sequenced synth cascades, restless and wave bobbing.
Australia’s Lawrence English coaxed the assembly to the floor, using the skeletons present as instruments, ears; skulls and spines to hardwood, to the mirrored walls out from which he reached to shake shoulders, to wake, buried in ceiling dust.
The Space Lady took the next room down a dusty psych voyage of her own.
Brooklyn-based former local Pictureplane closed out the night with a set of dance-friendly genre crossing and defying.
On Saturday, the Savoy was occupied throughout the day by Denver Small Press Fest. Goldrush resumed Saturday afternoon with Nevada Greene from Columbia, Missouri, wafting in from the plains.
Austin’s Amulets and More Eaze followed. Amulets blended prepared cassettes, electronics, and electric guitar.
More Eaze offered a lilting combination of vocals, guitar, and drums.
Salt Lake City’s Braeyden Jae plucked the upper range of his bass guitar against an ambient laptop wash.
Denver’s Bang Play pulled the ambient veil with their tight, skronking no wave, followed by fellow locals déCollage and Bollywood Life.
Brooklyn-based, Kansas natives Baby Birds Don’t Drink Milk doused the crowd in their Alt reverb pop.
Pretoria, South Africa duo Make-Overs brought their infectious stripped-back rock guitar, drum, and vocal interplay.
The ambient rock of Connecticut’s Landing came in loud and easy, eliciting thanks from the crowd.
Washington-based Benoît Pioulard crouched close to the ground to conjure sonic woodlands with his guitar then rose hushed, singing wildfire smoke.
Next was Queens’ Guardian Alien, who had shared a festival bill with Lawrence English at Hopscotch the previous weekend. Alexandra Drewchin floated bells, electronics, and vocals over and among Greg Fox’s pummeling double kick pedal drum assaults.
Portland-based Tara Jane O’Neil shared characteristically sensitive, touching new material including her moving and poignant contribution to the recently released Remembering Mountains: Unheard Songs by Karen Dalton, “At Last the Night Has Ended”.
Yoni Wolf and his Cinci sidekick DJ Northside Nick played the last set of the night and the fest, a fact which Yoni admitted was “some sad shit”. But their set, which rapidly and elastically retraced and reimagined Yoni’s output with Why? and Clouddead for an enthusiastic crowd, was anything but.
As midnight arrived, the stages were emptied and silenced. Goldrush Music Festival 2015 had shown itself out. While Goldrush’s future remains uncertain, it won’t be static.
[Stephen Molyneux is an artist and musician based in Denver, CO and co-runs the No Kings Record Cadre imprint.]
