Denver Noise Fest returns this weekend. The three-day music festival starts Friday night and will be held at two locations: The Denver Music Venue (The D.M.V) and I-70 Cover Park in Elyria-Swansea.
Tickets for each night are $20. A full line-up can be found on Denver Noise Fest’s social media pages. On Sunday, there will be a free, open mic potluck that anyone can join.
“I encourage everybody to bring a dish and get on the sign-up on the clipboard and you can perform,” festival organizer John Gross told Denverite.
Gross defines noise music as “atonal” and “not dance music.”
“It's a lot of different things that are hard to define, but you'll know it when you hear it,” he said. “Some people come at it from electronic music, some people come at it from jazz. It is hard to nail it down.”
Gross has organized the music festival since 2010 with fellow musician Todd Novosad. This year, Gross is particularly excited about the diversity of acts on the roster.
“We've tried to make it so it's not all white Anglo-Saxon Protestant males or whatever,” he said. “We've got a good representation from across the country. It's a pretty diverse group and I think there's a big range of different styles that you're going to hear throughout the weekend.”
Local performers hitting the stage include Isaac Linder, Erases Eraser, and Loveland-based Anime Love Hotel. Artists traveling to Denver to play include Arizona-based artist Instagon and Bob Bellerue from New York.
A fest brought back from a different Denver DIY era
Previously, Noise Fest has been held at Globe Hall and the now-closed Old Curtis Street Bar and Rhinoceropolis.
Gross was living at Rhinoceropolis, a warehouse on Brighton Boulevard, in 2016 when the DIY arts space was shut down by officials. In fact, his name was on the building’s lease.
The venue was shut down that year following the devastating Ghost Ship warehouse fire in Oakland that killed 36 people. It shook the DIY music scene around the country, and that was the last Denver Noise Fest until 2024.
“Two of my personal friends died in that fire, and then a week later, my house got raided and I was basically homeless,” Gross said.
Gross sees something special happening in Denver’s experimental music scene right now.
“I haven't seen it this active in years, and I've been involved in it here since 1994,” he said. “I'm constantly meeting new people that are a lot younger than me and they're really doing exciting work. So it's a very cool time for experimental music right now here on the Front Range.”
If you go
The D.M.V. will host events on all three days of the festival. Bands will perform at the venue starting at 8 p.m. on Friday, 9 p.m. on Saturday and 12 p.m. on Sunday.
The D.M.V is at 2424 E. 43rd Ave.
The event at the I-70 Cover Park will be held earlier Saturday evening, starting at 6 p.m.
The I-70 Cover Park is at 4617 Thompson Ct.
