DENVER'S UNDERGROUND ELECTRONIC MUSIC SCENE.

THE SCENE AND ITS CHARACTER.

Denver's electronic music community developed through the 1990s rave circuit, through the outdoor festival culture that Colorado's landscape enables, and through the kind of independent venue ecosystem that mid-size cities with counterculture-inflected identities tend to support. The city's proximity to the mountains — to the outdoor experience that draws a significant portion of its population — has given Denver's electronic music culture a particular relationship to outdoor and festival-format events that urban underground scenes don't necessarily share.

The legalization of cannabis in Colorado in 2012 changed the cultural context of the electronic music scene in specific ways — it normalized a major harm reduction step by removing cannabis from the legal risk profile of attending underground events, and it brought a wave of new residents who included electronic music audiences. The cannabis-adjacent culture in Colorado has influenced the aesthetic of some segments of the scene in ways that are distinct from other major American cities.

The bass music community in Denver is one of the most developed in the country. The genre — ranging from dubstep through bass-heavy electronic and into the psychedelic bass that Colorado has particularly championed — has deep roots in the city's underground, with artists like Bassnectar (based in Colorado for many years) and Ganja White Night drawing enormous audiences while maintaining connections to the underground.

VENUES AND SPACES.

Cervantes' Masterpiece Ballroom is one of Denver's most important music venues for electronic music and live acts, operating in the Five Points neighborhood with programming that spans electronic music, funk, jam, and the genre-fluid artists who serve the Colorado market. Cervantes has hosted underground electronic artists alongside more mainstream acts and has maintained programming integrity across decades of operation.

Club Vinyl, which operated for many years as Denver's dedicated underground electronic music club, closed but its programming legacy continues through the community of DJs and promoters who built their careers there. The venues that have operated in its absence — Beta Nightclub, which focused on the commercial electronic market, and various smaller venues in Denver's RiNo neighborhood — have served different segments of the market with varying commitment to underground values.

The warehouse party circuit in Denver — in the industrial neighborhoods around the River North Art District — has provided space for underground events that don't fit the licensed venue format. RiNo's transformation from industrial warehouse district to upscale arts neighborhood has put pressure on this circuit, but events have continued to find spaces.

THE OUTDOOR FESTIVAL CIRCUIT.

Colorado's outdoor festival circuit is one of the most developed in the country, taking advantage of the state's geography and the outdoor orientation of its population. Electric Forest, held in Rothbury Michigan but organized by a Colorado-based team, has significant Colorado cultural DNA. Sonic Bloom, held annually in the Colorado mountains, is specifically a Colorado event with deep roots in the state's electronic music community — programming psychedelic bass, jam, and experimental electronic music in an outdoor mountain setting.

The combination of the Rocky Mountain setting and the Colorado community's appetite for both music and outdoor experience has produced a festival culture that is specific to the region. Camping festivals in Colorado mountain settings have a particular character — the altitude, the temperature swings, the physical environment — that creates experiences not replicable elsewhere.

Red Rocks Amphitheatre, the world-famous outdoor venue in Morrison outside Denver, has hosted significant electronic music events that use the unique geology and setting to create something impossible to replicate in an indoor venue. Electronic artists including Pretty Lights (Colorado-based), Flume, Bassnectar, and many others have performed at Red Rocks in events that are reference points for the region's music community.

THE COLORADO COMMUNITY AND ITS DISTINCTIVE SOUND.

Colorado has produced a distinctive strand of electronic music that blends bass music, live instrumentation, jam band aesthetics, and psychedelic sensibilities in ways that reflect the state's particular culture. Pretty Lights (Derek Vincent Smith), based in Colorado, built one of the most distinctive careers in electronic music through a combination of sample-based production, live performance with a full band, and a free-music-distribution model that built his audience before streaming made that mainstream.

The Colorado bass music scene has international influence disproportionate to its geographic location. The artists, labels, and festival infrastructure built in Colorado around bass and psychedelic electronic music have shaped a segment of the underground whose community extends far beyond the state.

The visual art community in Denver — the murals in RiNo, the gallery scene that has developed around the arts district — intersects with the electronic music community in ways that reflect the broader creative community the city has attracted. The integration of visual art with electronic music events is more developed in Denver than in many comparable-size American cities.

COMMON QUESTIONS.