This Thursday, aka Valentines Day, Elevated Arts & Entertainment brought ill.Gates, ill.esha, Knowa Lusion, Nico Luminous, and Fisk performed Casslemans in Denver for night of 18+ debauchery, psychedelic art appreciation, and sick grooves. Casslemans is my favorite Denver venue, I’ve been trying to see ill.Gates for over a year, and I had my valentine’s company, so it was shaping up to be a smooth night. Talented visual artists such as inert geometry, and Freedom-Art  added to the ambiance with live visionary paintings. This night was also notable for including a brief performance by ill.esha in celebration of the release of her Grassroots line.

I arrived around 8:45 to take advantage of their free entrance before 9 pm deal. Fisk’s set was underway by then, playing to a small crowd of freebie-seekers. I took this time to check out the vendors. They had fantastic glass works, apparel, and artwork, all of which was too overpriced for me to buy, but still excellent. As Fisk closed, the crowd had grown to about thirty, and Nico Luminous walked out to perform his beatboxing soundcheck. He produced a deep wobble through his beats, which he then added effects and live-looping via a belt controller. After the brief yet compelling warm-up, he moved to his equipment and transitioned into his self-titled “Glitch-a-delic Soul Whomp”. The visuals were generated by a tablet-style spawning software, controlled by a woman in the booth with a stylus. It was quite different from the normal over-the-top type of VJ sets, seemingly less professional, but still a welcome and innovative change. I liked his set; it was sprinkled with his live vocals, and I hadn’t heard any of the songs before (but they were all groovy).

Hoopers started to come out of the woodwork around the time that Knowa Lusion’s set began. There was a wide selection of performers and Cassleman’s willingness to allow fire dancers perform in their venue is admirable. Knowa Lusion’s more upbeat glitch/dubstep fusion had me and the now packed dance floor a-dancin’.  He turned out to be the only artist with a typical VJ, which might’ve been a better decision for ill.Gates, as he has some technical difficulties I’ll discuss later. After a valentine’s day shoutout, some original songs, and a rise in overall energy, Knowa Lusion handed the mic over to ill.esha. She thanked us all for coming, told us a little about her new line, and then sang to us over some hard beats. Her time on stage was short, but as she wasn’t even a listed performer, it was appreciable to see her perform.

ill.Gates finally came on, to the excitement of the crowd. The funky geometric projection screen was connected to his macbook which was running pre-made visuals. This set was intense – the low, rolling basslines kept the entire place feeling good. I recognised a few of his original songs, as well as several Bassnectar songs like Hot Right Now, and -to my amusement -a remix of a Die Antwoord song. Some of his set did feel rather generic though. Fire hoopers, poi swingers, and staffers exchanged the spotlight, narrowly avoiding setting the crowd a-flame. Midway through his set, his macbook refused to connect to the projector, right as I was trying to take my photographs nonetheless. After some fiddling on his part and finally some intervention by the crew after about 5 minutes, the issue was fixed and the show went on. I exited the venue a couple minutes before the show ended, with one of Cassleman’s new delicious energy drinks – the Cannabis energy drink (with hemp seed extract, mmm) – in hand, and a smile on my face. Be sure to come to more rockin’ shows at one of the best venues which *always* has the best music in Denver.