Gothic Theatre
Friends In Stereo
Stealing the show from the world’s highest paid DJ-Paul Oakenfold-at the planet’s most phenomenal venue-Red Rocks-is a big job, but somebody had do it…three somebodies, to be exact. Booked to headline the second stage of this summer’s Global Dance Festival featuring, among others, Deep Dish, Bad Boy Bill, Dieselboy, Junkie XL and the previously-mentioned Oakenfold, Denver-based Friends in Stereo (Colin Chapman AKA Satori-C, Reggie Lafaye AKA PJ Stroller and vocalist orange peel moses) eagerly rose to the challenge. Not a bad feat for an act that made their live debut just four short months earlier, but stealing the show from Oakenfold is truly only the beginning.
The Friends in Stereo story began at a legendary, but now-defunct Boulder lounge known as Soma. Owned by San Francisco transplant Hardy Kalisher, Soma was voted one of the top ten clubs in America by several national dance music publications. It was within those bass-filled basement walls that all three future members of Friends in Stereo first crossed paths. Chapman was a resident DJ, moses was penning stories about the joint for several local zines, and Lafaye was fine-tuning his first record, one track of which he would eventually license to none other than Lee Burridge (Tyrant). Although most were heartbroken when Soma finally closed its doors for good, that end may have been just the catalyst necessary for the new beginning that was destined to happen down the road in the Mile High City of Denver, Colorado.
Without a single release on the market yet, Friends in Stereo’s website was already bookmarked in the browsers of A-list DJs like Nick Warren (Massive Attack/Way Out West) and Sandra Collins (Perfecto). Actually, Collins and her studio engineer Trent Cantrelle have already put their spin on one of the boys’ own remixes. “Girlfriends,” “Same Old Melody,” “Music” and their title track, “Friends in Stereo” were just released on the popular dance music download site Beatport.com recently, and a nightclub anthem called “Nocturnal Creatures,” written and sung by orange peel, should be pressed on vinyl before Miami’s Winter Music Conference in March. If the tribal house beats, ginormous distorted bass, symphonic pizzicato strings and catchy baritone chorus of “Nocturnal Creatures” don’t rattle the bones of every club-goer on the planet at one point or another, it will be a minor miracle.
We are all…Friends in Stereo.
