That’s right. Check them out at the top of the page, sharing the limelight with quirky jazzbos The Bad Plus.

I’ll admit, the arts section of the New York Times isn’t the first place I turn when looking for the vanguard of loud and filthy rock music. For chrissake, they wouldn’t even print Pissed Jeans‘ name.
But New York Times critic Ben Ratliff had some genuinely kind words about The Points new album.

“Their record has poor sound quality, bad graphics and crooked typesetting, and it’s nearly perfect,” says Ratliff.

The Points are, of course, no strangers to adulation from the press–having been covered in The Washington Post, The Onion, and this very publication you are reading now.

Every musical clique/community/scene has to has to have its middle period. You know, that time when young musicians break up their bands and undergo a laborious process of deep self-examination and artistic reinvention. This usually involves “getting into jazz.”

Well, former Black Eyes members Daniel Martin-McCormick and Jacob Long are throwing that shit right out the window. In Mi Ami they get straight back to what they’ve always done best–that is to say, deep, deep rhythm. The San Francisco based trio, which also includes Damon Palermo, will have a new single,Echononecho, and an album, Watersports, arriving January 27th and February 17 respectively on Quarterstick records (a partner label of Touch and Go).

Echononecho
1. Echononecho
2. Version

Watersports
1. Echononecho
2. The Man In Your House
3. New Guitar
4. Pressure
5. Freed From Sin
6. White Wife
7. Peacetalks/Downer

May we suggest that you nerd out i.e. scan the list of new LP arrivals at Red Onion after the jump. Not on the list but just as fine as anything out there–two new titles from hot vinyl-only label Mississippi Records. Red Onion’s got both (a gospel comp. and a reissue of an obscure punk band you’ve never heard of but should).

Read More “New Arrivals @ Red Onion” »

The Red & the Black’s Web site doesn’t make it very clear what’s going on with tonight’s “Music Is Bulletproof” show; neither does the MySpace page it points to. Details on the show below:

EVENT DETAILS: Music is Bulletproof benefit for the Victims of Violent Crime Compensation Fund

Music is Bulletproof was founded by DJ Key-K after he was shot in 2006. As a result DJ Key-K has been unemployed since his shooting, but it hasn’t changed his will to make a difference in his community. This event uses music to bring peace, support and awareness to individuals, families and communities who are impacted by violence.

This year, Music is Bulletproof is focusing on the awareness of the U-VISA. The U-VISA provides support to non-citizens who experience substantial abuse resulting from a wide range of criminal activity and helps with the prosecution of the crime. The U-VISA also provides eligible immigrants with authorized stay in the United States and employment authorization. Unfortunately, the U-VISA is not a readily available or known about. For more information on Key-K and Music is Bulletproof visit, www.myspace.com/music_is_bulletproof

Only by coming together can we create violence-free communities.

Event will feature:
Trinidad resident- Dj Mellie Mel (80’s Alternative)
Dj Seth B (Master of Old School Hip Hop, Reggae & Funk)
Dj Key-K (World Music)

Cover: $5 suggested donation (upstairs)
Proceeds will goto Victims of Violent Crime Compensation Fund Office.

Oct. 2nd
The Red and Black
1212 H St. NE
Washington, D.C.
21+ to enter

Punk legend, Blowoff DJ, and onetime City Paper columnist Bob Mould is going to publish his autobiography with Little, Brown. Michael Azerrad will assist; pub date’s 2010. Mould has more info on the deal on his blog.

Chris Harris at MTV.com is reporting that Bad Brains will make their triumphant return to D.C., performing with their original lineup, at the 9:30 Club on election night 2008. Details have yet to be announced via IMP, but this is sure to be an incredible night. Build a Nation!

It will be the first time in years the band has performed in the nation’s capital, and it’s one of four shows Bad Brains has booked with its original lineup. The group performed in Chicago on Tuesday; they’ll play the 9:30 Club on Election Day, followed by a gig at New York’s Irving Plaza on November 6 and one in Austin, Texas, on November 9.

Meltdown’s The Map, a seminal, second-wave no-wave masterpiece originally released on Portland, Oregon’s Archigramophone Records in 1997, is available for download online. The D.C. quartet’s unusual instrumentation (three guitars, one drummer), its members’ age and sex (teenage girls), and its penchant for male guest vocalists resulted in relentlessly chromatic music that transcends mere demography. Listen for the splintery guitar stylings of Raquel Vogl (later a member of the Cranium and Legends) and Fiona Griffin (later of Et At It and Horses), as well as spiel from Chuck Bettis (All Scars, Measles Mumps Rubella).

A few weeks ago I wrote up Extra Life; now here comes another offshoot of NYC avant-garde rockers Zs: a quartet of dual sax, guitar and drums by the name of Little Women. Little Women’s debut recording is a 19-minute thrash-jazz blowout released by SocketsCDR, a local label run by Sean Peoples (of FFFFs, Hand Fed Babies, Big Cats and so on). Sockets has previously put out a bunch of DC experimental/noise type stuff, with some 40+ releases under its belt. I believe Teeth is actually their first or second release to come out on an actual pressed CD rather than a CD-R.

There’s a good-cop bad-cop kind of thing going on here: if Extra Life is the nice, accessible Zs spinoff, Little Women are the mean, violent mofos. Much less structured and rigorously composed than Zs’ chamber-music approach to math rock, Teeth sounds like a live-in-the-studio take, featuring all the energy of a punk rock show distilled into less than 20 minutes. The two saxophonists alternate between improvised flailing skronk of the most strident kind and blistering unison lines, with frequent breakdowns that showcase Ben Greenberg (the Zs member here) pounding away with a clean, undistorted guitar tone. Like Univers Zero, who I profiled last week, it’s impossible to pigeonhole this stuff; one moment there’s an obviously free jazz-influenced blowfest, the next there’s a thrash-metal breakdown, and through it all there’s this kind of punk-rock aggro.

The final track ends with some or all of the band members babbling and screaming with maniacal abandon, all pretense of “music” tossed aside. Like the rest of this short debut album, it’s not pretty, but it’s certainly intense, and it will probably alienate a lot of listeners. It’s also an indication that these guys don’t take themselves too seriously, an ever-present criticism when it comes to such uncompromisingly uncommercial music.

D.C.-area crime novelist George Pelecanos has submitted a playlist of some of his favorite songs to Paper Cuts, the New York Times’ books blog. Among the local selections: William DeVaughan’s  “Be Thankful for What You Got,”  Slant 6’s “Time Expired,” and Fugazi’s “Cashout.”

Thurston Moore’s and Byron Coley’s photo history No Wave: Post-Punk, Underground, New York, 1976-1980 has a black-and-white-and-puke-green color scheme, which feels appropriate: The movement’s music was designed to be both stark and a little stomach-turning. Playing the role of Lower East Side oral historians, the Sonic Youth guitarist and longtime music journalist interview the scene’s prime movers, including James Chance, Lydia Lunch, Rhys Chatham, and, most provocatively, Brian Eno. Glenn Branca vents about No New York, an Eno-produced compilation that spawned jealousy among those not included (”what [Eno] did destroyed No Wave,” he says). But Eno wasn’t wrong to call it “one of those sort of flames that burns very brightly for a short time and then goes out,” and the dozens of photos included capture evidence of the fire: a chainsaw taken to a guitar, a scrum between Chance and critic Robert Christgau, and lots of empty lofts and rooftops reclaimed for art’s sake. Moore and Coley discuss and sign copies of their work at 4 p.m. at Politics and Prose, 5015 Connecticut Ave. NW, Free, (202) 364-1919; at 7 p.m. at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, 500 17th St. NW, $22, (202) 639-1770. —Mark Athitakis

(Also, see our interview with Marc Masters, local author of his own No Wave book, which was published earlier this year.)