You can give Latristic your money here.

Casper Bangs photo by Adam Kissick (via Rob Pierangeli)

The budding love, painful breakup, and misty-eyed regrets of indie rocker Rob Pierangeli, formerly known as Casper Bangs, are well-documented on the Internet.

In 2009, Pierangeli was in love—dangerously in love, like Beyonce. He named his band after his then-girlfriend, whose last name is Bangs. Then he wrote some songs about her—giving one of them her name ("Kathryn")— and put her face on his EP cover and the promo material. It was intense.

Then they split—quite publicly, thanks to Pierangeli. Google "Casper Bangs" name and you'll find an assortment of quotes like this one: "I can't shake these memories off. I used to be light. Now, I'm heavy rocks...I don't think I'll ever love again."

And this one: "I thought it would be cool to take the last name of my love as a stage name. Then we split and I realized I was an idiot."

Now, the artist formerly known as Casper Bangs is on the mend. He's got a new band name—Latristic— and a new album, The Greyest Shade, in the works. But he needs a little help to pull it off.

"Latristic is a word I made up a while back," Pierangeli says over e-mail. "It's a combination of the words 'electronic' and 'acoustic,' since those are the mediums I work in." It's a frankly forgettable name, but some may remember it regardless—the Maryland native released the album Intro- under that name about a decade ago with friend Steve Cooper. "People seemed to like that old record OK I guess," he says. "But really it just sounds like Radiohead if they weren't as good."

Latristic 2.0's debut won't sound like that. His forthcoming album The Greyest Shade is "darker, hypnotic, and more rhythmic driven," he says. A track from the album is available on his website, and it's meatier than the Casper Bangs we came to know—like sweet-voiced Joe Pernice fronting Swervedriver. "I feel like I'm finally finding my voice as a writer/producer, and hopefully, people will hear this next record and feel the same way."

That is, if he doesn't go broke making the record. Pierangeli, who tends bar at Marvin, recently sent out a mass email asking for donations to fund the album's release. An $8 donation via Kickstarter gets you a free download of The Greyest Shade. $20-59 gets you the album plus his 4-song EP, Two-Minute Pop, and unreleased B-sides. Donate $60 or more, and you get access to Pierangeli's listening party at the Gibson—where he'll whip up a few cocktails and serve hors d'oeuvres—and a live show afterward. But the best reward of all? Helping the dude get over his past.

"I'm definitely moving forward creatively and emotionally," he says. "The name change was inevitable from the beginning in retrospect, but for some reason I felt like I had to let it play out before making a change. It's too bad, because I like the name in of itself, but hated what it had become to symbolize."

And once we get used to Googling "Latristic" instead of "Casper Bangs," the rest of us may forget the symbolism, too.

Good morning! In what's totally a break from our usual coverage, there is a lot of local indie-rock news to discuss today! Such as: that new video right there. It's for "Siberian Eclipse," a song on Screen Vinyl Image's recent cassette on Fan Death records, which I think you should be excited about. It's out now.

Fan Death! You might remember that the Maryland label has no ish hating on some local bands! Perfect segue: One of them—undeservedly!—was Ra Ra Rasputin, which has a new full-length whose release it's celebrating tomorrow at the Black Cat. The band runs through each track over at TBD, and I think City Paper's Ryan Little was spot-on in singling out "Electricity Through the Heart" as a standout in a recent One Track Mind column. Close second place: "The Day Of," whose incessant cowbell you'll forgive when by the chorus it's toying with Calvin Harris's "Acceptable in the '80s." "I've got love for you if you survived through the '80s, the '80s," the band sings.

Also performing Saturday at the Black Cat with a new release in tow: Casper Bangs. You can download his entire new album, I Woke Up, here, or stream every track at the GOG Blog.

Here is a film shot in Portland using music composed by Beauty Pill for Taffety Punk Theatre's suicide.chat.room from earlier this year

Speaking of Beauty Pill, its leader, Chad Clark, is a curator of the Story/Stereo series at the Writer's Center in Bethesda. At tonight's Story/Stereo, Will Eastman DJs and Jenny Browne and Jessica Handler read (8 p.m. Free.). Clark announced yesterday that the November iteration will feature Devin Ocampo singing the songs of Devin Ocampo, meaning Medications, Faraquet, and maybe—maybe!—some Smart Went Crazy.

Sockets has a new Laughing Man song.

Last night I saw Richard Chartier perform a 50ish-minute reductionist sound composition at the Hirshhorn—he used sounds he captured over the summer from the grand tonometer, a one-of-a-kind instrument from the 1800s that contains 660 tuning forks, plus noises from other very old instruments. It was spooky and glacial and I tried to take the advice he gave Arts Desk—“Just kind of let it flow over you. Just zone out. I have had people fall asleep during my shows before. As long as they don’t snore, I’m fine with it.”—but it was both enveloping and jarring. I couldn't keep my eyes closed, even though the lights in the auditorium had been dimmed. Whoever was tweeting for the museum last night summed it up nicely: "Highs flirted w/ pain. Lower, you could tilt your head to squeeze the sound. The deep tones hit in the chest."

Whether the title is a statement of unambition or just something cool-sounding, Midnight Kids' Basement Dreams leaves few doubts about the D.C. band's M.O. The group features three members of disbanded local faves the Apes, and contains many of their signifiers: Mean, muscular riffage, swirling organ powered by black magic,  lyrics forged in the crucible of Mordor. Only, now it's a Mordor strewn with disco balls and confetti. "Night Walk," the record's best song, assaults in fits and starts, like a swirling, brown-acid nightmare. What makes it work, though, is singer LouLou Ghelichkhani's pretty, spacey lead vocal—she's a foil to the sonic maelstrom, a glam-rock angel in a violent abyss.

Midnight Kids and Casper Bangs perform at the Black Cat on March 13. Download the six-song EP for free here, or stream it after the jump:

Casper Bangs, the latest project of the Hard Tomorrows' Rob Pierangeli, dropped a new Spirit Animal remix of "Always On," from his excellent 2009 EP (pay what you want for it here). The remix is robotic and discursive; it allows the chorus to achieve pop catharsis before tearing it down in the verse. At the 2-minute mark a horn fanfare enters the fray—whether Spirit Animal sourced it from, like, a DJ Drama cut or a Sousa march (or both), God only knows.

I had a quick chat with D.C. Don Juan in January, and he asked me to mention his Twitter account; I did, and here it is again. Twit-Tape 2: ConGraduation is his second mixtape inspired by the microblogging service, and you can download it for free here. On first listen, the mixtape doesn't match the ADD connotations of its title: Even at 21 tracks, it's actually a fairly focused collection of party raps. Undoubtedly, Postal Service apologists will be wrestling for years with their feelings about Don Juan's freestyle over Owl City's "Fireflies."

(Juanian request: Follow me on Twitter!)

Correction Appended

For a moment, on the first night he worked the door at the Velvet Lounge, Andrew Bucket thought he was staring death in the face. Her name was Allison Wolfe.

"I was excited to meet her, let alone work the show at all," he says of the Partyline singer, who helped found the riot-grrrl movement in the early ’90s as a member of Bratmobile. "At that point in time, it was 2007, the Lounge was under different management, and they were doing door polling"—a fairly common practice by which venues ask patrons what act they’ve come to see and sometimes use that data to determine payouts at the end of the night. "Allison saw me making the sheet and flipped out."

"Fuck that," she told him. "All the bands are getting paid tonight or we are not doing this." And so at the end of the night, Partyline, which had assembled the show, took the evening’s percentage and distributed it evenly among the three bands.

The Velvet Lounge no longer polls at shows, and Bucket, now the club’s booker, is a passionate opponent of the practice. "It connotes a disinterest in the band," he says. "It really just assumes that the bands don’t know each other, that they’re not willing to cooperate. It puts this competitive edge to the whole thing. It’s bogus."

Local bands have few options these days: DIY spaces like 611 Florida, Kansas House, and DC Mini Gallery have shuttered; the Black Cat books many more touring acts than local ones. That leaves the Velvet Lounge, Comet Ping Pong, and the three spaces in D.C. that poll at the door: DC9, the Red and the Black, and Rock & Roll Hotel.

"We are absolutely not looking to fuck the bands out of the money—if they are pulling in the numbers," says Steve Lambert, who books and partially owns those three venues. "That doesn’t work for anybody."

He says his venues use door polling mostly for his records—so that the next time he’s considering placing a band on a bill, he’ll have an idea of how many people they can draw. He says he mostly polls shows with only local and small-scale touring bands—if a band is on the road, he’ll usually throw it some extra money. Sometimes, he’ll hand bands their percentage—in the case of his venues, 80 percent of the door after an overhead cost is met—at the end of the night and let them divide it themselves. But in other cases, he feels that paying bands based on their draw incentivizes marketing. "I do not believe people should be paid on who they are," he says. "Thievery Corporation gets paid a lot of money because they can draw 5,000 people."

"I’ve always used this system in different markets. It’s a practice that’s done throughout the country," says Lambert, who used to book small- and medium-sized venues in Lansing, Mich. "There are people who aren’t fans of it, but people who aren’t fans of it are people who don’t draw."

Last week, an Arts Desk post by the D.C. rapper Head-Roc titled "Venues ‘Polling’ Practice Is Some Bullshit" attracted 40 comments. "It is a fundamentally flawed system and it doesn’t take into consideration a number of variables," wrote one commenter. "Polling is the fairest way to tell who has the bigger fan base," wrote another.

Dante Ferrando, who owns the Black Cat and drummed in the post-hardcore band Gray Matter in the ’80s and early ’90s, doesn’t like polling. "If you put a band on a bill, if they didn’t draw, they still played, they still came to the club. It’s usually the out-of-town band," he says. "To me, the whole process makes it a little more of a club vs. the band kind of feel."

Opponents of door polling offer several arguments: First, it encourages bands to compete when they should be working together to promote a show; as a result, a music scene’s sense of  community suffers. Second, while venues and bands should share the responsibility of marketing, ultimately, whoever curated the show—the booker—owns its success ("If we don’t get a good turnout, that’s on me," Bucket says). Last, polling isn’t necessarily accurate. For one, patrons may be there to see several bands, or none in particular, or the person on the door might get things wrong. "The door guy’s got a lot to do, and it’s hard to do it fair," Ferrando says.

But Lambert says that venues are doing their jobs by providing space and marketing acts through their Web sites, in advertisements, and through social media. "So we should take the loss for them not drawing?" he says. "Most of the time we recoup the loss [of promoting and running a show], and most of the time the bands get paid."

By Mike Stuto’s estimation, the practice emerged in New York in the early ’90s in smaller rock clubs, and eventually spaces that booked small and medium-sized national acts, like the Mercury Lounge, followed suit. His East Village club, Brownies, which he converted into a bar in 2002, sometimes used door polling, usually for bills of bands whose members didn’t know one another. "We started doing it because bands were demanding it," he says. By basing the system on empirical data, he says, he avoided disputes over who deserved the most money. He says the polls generally struck him as fair; when bands took issue with their accuracy, they were usually "grasping at straws."

Jaxx Nightclub in Springfield, Va., doesn’t door-poll, but it does ask the area bands that play its Localpalooza showcases about six times a year—mostly metal bands whose members are between about 16 and 20 years old—to sell their own tickets. Owner Jay Nedry then pays bands based on how many tickets they’ve sold. He says it’s instructive to them, even if it can be demoralizing. "It’s a good kick in the ass," he says. "It makes people understand it isn’t free."

While Lambert says "no one has ever bitched about it from a band," some local groups say they’re uncomfortable with polling. "For a band starting out, it can kind of suck," says
Dan Scheuerman of Deleted Scenes, "It’s kind of degrading, I guess." Because "it’s already so hard to make a dime as a musician," says Rob Pierangeli of Casper Bangs, "maybe you shouldn’t scrutinize over who gets paid how much."

J. Sequential of Screen Vinyl Image says bands that dislike polling should simply avoid venues that do it; his band usually contacts groups with which it’s playing beforehand and agrees to split the pot. Because three D.C. venues poll, "I think what happens is a natural divide is created in the city," he writes in an e-mail. "There are bands who are looking to get the bigger shows and get paid more and get more exposure, and I believe they will run with the other bands who are after the same thing. But there are bands who just don’t want to deal with that type of noise and just want to play shows and hook their friends up who are on tour and at least get them some gas money without having to clear $250 at the door."

Aaron Estes, who sings and plays guitar in Bellman Barker, takes the opposite view. "Most bands at the polling level (including mine) aren’t really making any money anyway, so I don’t really care," he writes in an e-mail. "The money from a show might help pay some tolls or cover gas, but it’s never going to cover the expense of missing work until you’re playing bigger venues to a bigger fan base, and at that point, no one is going to be polling the door."

Correction | Feb. 17, 2010: Due to an editing error by Managing Editor Andrew Beaujon, the article incorrectly stated that the Black Cat books many more touring acts than local ones. According to the club’s booker, Vicki Savoula, between 50 and 60 percent of bands that play the Black Cat are local.

Mingering Mike & The Big D: "There's Nothing Wrong With You Baby Pts. 1&2"
The first ever vinyl release from enigmatic D.C. soul musician/artist Mingering Mike. Originally put to tape by Mike and his cousin, Big D, in a bedroom, "There's Nothing Wrong With You Baby" is about as raw as you can get. The rhythm track is an afro pick slapped against a phone book. But the song's soulful message–encouraging a young girl to be unique–rings through. Packaging comes as originally designed by Mike, way back in 1969. All proceeds benefit Mingering Mike. A hot debut, to be sure.

Trans Am: What Day Is It Tonight?
Yeah, you took them for granted when they lived here, but now Trans Am has blown out of D.C. and taken it's vocoder with it. Were they joking all of the time, or only some of the time? It's hard to tell with instrumental rock music. Whatever the case, you can't see them play live every other weekend anymore, so this double live record should make a meaningful memento. The live take on Red Line's slow response slams. Expertly written liner notes tell the brutal truth about post-rock living. Thrill Jockey's website says the vinyl is sold out, but there might still be some copies drifting around the local record stores. Available digitally via the Thrill Jockey website.

Casper Bangs: "The Other Half" b/w "Queen of Hearts"
District-based striver Rob Pierangeli presses the best two songs from his debut EP to wax. "Queen of Hearts" pairs dreamy new romantic-vibes with an extended shoegaze space-out. The flip is darker and harder–noise guitar squalls and a tight bass-breakdown buoy tales of bartender suffering. On white vinyl in a white jacket with a braille logo. Decadent, for sure.

Felt Letters: "600,000 Bands" b/w "Lone Wolf-No Cub"
Ian Svenonius, Brendan Canty, and Tom Bunnell team up to deliver the most important musical statement of the last decade. Further details in last week's "One Track Mind" article.

Hays and Ryan Holladay's latest electro-indie-pop project is Bluebrain, whose debut album drops next month.

The 2000s saw a strange reversal in the District’s music: The pulse of its indie rock became barely perceptible while its rap scene began to emerge from go-go’s shadow. As for the new decade, we’ve already loved one record, rapper X.O.’s One. One. Ten. Here are eight more acts we’re excited about in 2010.

Bluebrain
Back in September, the electro-indie-pop band Bluebrain—made up of brothers Ryan and Hays Holladay, both formerly of the Brooklyn band the Epochs—handed boomboxes and cassette tapes to several dozen volunteers and made organized chaos around Dupont for half an hour. The participatory work was called "Cakeblood," and it elicited bemusement—and strangely, some goodwill—from passers-by. On the group’s debut record, Soft Power, out in February on Lujo Records, the entropy instead comes in nuggets—in sudden breakbeats, in tsunamis of synthesized strings, in crunchy, funereal dirges. For the most part, though, the Holladays keep things glossy, poppy, and digestible, if densely produced. It’s like Pop Rocks and Coke, only smart.

Bluebrain performs with Outputmessage at the Fridge Gallery on Saturday.

Casper Bangs
Rob Pierangeli blogs Kanye-style, minus the caps lock: On the Web site of his indie-pop project Casper Bangs, you’ll occasionally read about music, but mostly you’ll see clothes, like a cashmere blazer by Loro Piana or an audacious tartan bowtie. Appropriately, Casper Bangs makes pop songs that are clean, neatly woven, and above all stylish—characteristics that ought to clash with the band’s occasional penchant for glacial noise but instead mesh with it seamlessly. You can download the group’s 2009 EP for free, and Pierangeli’s promising much more in 2010—for starters, a series of new tracks he’ll release gratis in regular installments. You’ll probably have to buy his upcoming album, I Woke Up, however. That $575 Tsovet wristwatch won’t pay for itself.

Casper Bangs performs at the Rock & Roll Hotel on Friday, Jan. 29.

D.C. Don Juan
The Bronx-born, Capitol Heights–raised D.C. Don Juan showed great potential as both a hitmaker and a very personal writer on the mixtape circuit last year. Though his self-absorbed dance-rap favorite "Lookie Lookie" didn’t quite find its legs nationally in ’09, the ink on his deal with Jive Records’ Battery imprint is still fresh. Hopefully, he’ll be able to maintain the more thoughtful aspects of his work on a label that broke party hits like "Stanky Leg" and "Get Stupid." If not, the ringtone money will surely ease his conscience.

Hume
Every band dreams big, but Hume dreams bigger. Each iteration of guitarist/bassist/composer Britton Powell’s constantly metamorphosing prog-punk band has been more spectacular than the last. Which is saying something—Hume used to play shows in a giant octopus sculpture, and last summer the touring lineup included two drummers and three saxophone players. This latest incarnation—a quartet that includes members of D.C.’s much-loved and sorely missed Mass Movement of the Moth—should be the finest yet. At the very least, it’ll be the best-rehearsed. The band has apparently been in seclusion for months now, woodshedding its harmonious Big Star/Afropop/spiritual jazz hybrid.

Hume debuts its new lineup at the Black Cat on Friday, Jan. 22.

Medications
Medications has never been at a loss for a cool riff. The band’s self-titled EP and debut album, Your Favorite People All in One Place, had enough King Crimson–inspired wailing to fuel a year’s worth of Guitar Player columns. But sometimes—between the shredding and the constantly fluctuating time signatures—the onslaught of chops was a bit oppressive. A new, as-yet-untitled record due this spring is just as ambitious in its musicianship, but it’s a whole lot catchier. Here, guitarist/vocalist Devin Ocampo eschews post-hardcore intensity in favor of sweeter melodies and concise, if complex, song structures. It’s taken five-plus years, but all of those riffs seem to have finally softened into hooks.

Oddisee
A long-time underground favorite, rapper/producer Oddisee firmly established himself as the hardest-working man in D.C. hip-hop in 2009: He dropped the Mental Liberation full-length, a series of instrumental EPs, and the acclaimed debut from his Diamond District crew. For the new year, Oddisee’s continuing to drink deep of the workahol, having already handled a large chunk of the beats on his Diamond District partner X.O.’s One. One. Ten. But that’s just the beginning: Oddisee has full-length production efforts for both Los Angeles’ Trek Life and Detroit’s Finale on deck.

Outputmessage
As Outputmessage, Bernard Farley makes dance music that falls squarely in the retro-futurism camp: Think Kraftwerk, think Aphex Twin, and definitely think Daft Punk. But on a trio of EPs in 2009, and now with his sophomore full-length Autonomous, Farley has finally found his footing in the present—a pulsing, muscular, singular sound highlighted by his airy, sometimes Auto-Tuned vocals. The album drops in February on Farley’s own Output Noise Records, and you can catch him at multiple DJ nights each month, including Flat Out at the Rock & Roll Hotel. There, he plays the best songs you’ve never heard from 1985, 2010, and probably 2071.

Outputmessage performs with Bluebrain at the Fridge Gallery on Saturday.

Title Tracks
At some point, every career musician writes a breakup record. But it’s hard to tell who or what, exactly, broke John Davis’ heart on Title Tracks’ debut record, It Was Easy. Was it a girl? A band? Both? Whatever the case, enduring bitterness and popular song often make good bedfellows (See Fleetwood Mac’s Rumors), and they serve Title Tracks pretty well here. The tough times add some extra bite to the band’s jangling hooks on "Found Out" and "Every Little Bit Hurts." But a cover of Bruce Springsteen’s "Tougher Than the Rest"—accompanied by Camera Obscura’s Tracyanne Campbell—proves that even though Davis may have some hard feelings, his heart is still tender.

Title Tracks performs at the Black Cat on Thursday, Feb. 11.

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

Skylark from Casper Bangs on Vimeo.

Queen of Hearts from Casper Bangs on Vimeo.

Casper Bangs w/ Army of Me, Ugly Purple Sweater
Fri., 12/18 @ Rock & Roll Hotel
1353 H St. NE
$12, 8:30 pm