Papadosio brings ‘Content Coma’ to Aspen on 10-stop Colorado tour

Formed in rural Ohio, now based in Asheville, North Carolina, the electro-rock band Papadosio has found a home away from home in Colorado’s jam-friendly live music scene.

Colorado has become the center of the band’s national fan base over the past decade, as the five-piece has toured relentlessly behind its distinctive, improvisation-heavy mix of jazz, hard electronic dance music and warm ambient jams.

The band is in the middle of a 10-stop tour through the Colorado mountains, including a headlining spot at Belly Up today. They’re due to return here to headline Red Rocks Amphitheatre in May.

The state has supported Papadosio’s freewheeling electronic rock since early on, beginning with a show at The Other Side in Denver a decade ago, when the unknown band drove out here on little more than a whim.

“We said, ‘A bunch of our friends are moving there, so there must be something going on,'” keys player and vocalist Billy Brouse recalled in a recent interview from home in Asheville. “That warm welcome set the tone. … We were so excited. We had openers and we rented this giant light rig that we had no business putting in there. But that’s what we’ve done since then.”

The open-minded and supportive audiences in Colorado have fueled Papadosio over the years.

“It’s a magical wonderland of music appreciation, and I think a lot of people feel that way,” Brouse said.

The band broke out nationally with the 2012 album “T.E.T.I.O.S.,” which included their best known song “Find Your Cloud” — and has built a reputation for never playing the same set twice. They’ve released an album a year since 2014, including a live one recorded at Red Rocks in 2017.

Their newest album, “Content Coma,” released in September, showcases 12 new songs — it’s more polished than any of the do-it-yourself band’s previous outings.

For “Content Coma,” the band for the first time did some of its recording in a professional studio. They tracked drums, bass and piano parts in a high-production studio before sending it through their usual digital composition process.

“We’ve been doing everything ourselves for so long that it just works,” Brouse said. “Sonically, we wanted this to be more professional-sounding.”

The title track was inspired by the smartphone media assault of contemporary life, which set the tone for the rest of the record.

“We didn’t really set out to have it reflect the times we’re in right now,” Brouse said. “With the ‘content coma,’ that whole realization that we’re being fed content all the time all day long, some of the songs ended up folding themselves into that idea pretty nicely.”

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via:: The Aspen Times