The Disco Balls Come Down—The bar door was wide open when I arrived at the Albuquerque Mining Company (AMC) one bright Sunday afternoon last October. Peering in, I saw a small gaggle of men in cut-off jeans and high-top sneakers, armed with brushes, rollers and buckets of paint.

Debut

One hour after Albuquerque alternative-pop sensations Ki broke up, ex-members Orio, Powell and Bradshaw, along with other former "lynchpin" musicians from HATEengine, Aisling and This Life (both from El Paso), created Mechanism Of Eve. See their first show ever Thursday, March 1, at the Launchpad. (LM)

Local genre-benders release their polished debut album

Search for "August Spies" and you're not going to come up with an Albuquerque band bent on smart, tight songs—songs that kick over the genre trashcans as they run rowdy down Pop Ave.

From Russia, with love

I like to believe that, in my daily life, I exercise at least a small degree of free will and have some say in what my body does or does not do. So you can imagine my surprise when I found myself in a dive bar on my hands and knees, waiting for the Red Elvises' Igor Yuzov to sing the chorus to "Rocket Man," which would serve as the audience's cue that it was permissible to stop wallowing on the filth-coated floor. It is rare to see a band with that much control over a crowd (of 200-plus people, no less), but for these surf-rockabilly purveyors, it happens every night they put on a show.

Composer uses extended technique and layering to fashion an orchestra

Joan La Barbara hasn't been nervous about getting up in front of an audience and doing unusual things for many years. In the old days, the early ’70s, sometimes people would giggle. "I haven't gotten that reaction in a very long time," she says.