D.C.’s Black Eyes was one of those bands where you ended up collecting every song. The quintet didn’t record a lot of them, for one thing—fewer than 30 in the three years it existed. That, and the group’s chaotic, genre-hopping, paranoid post-hardcore was—and remains—utterly singular.

You can get a small sense of how that sound emerged at Hugh McElroy’s Ruffian Records Web site, which recently posted some free MP3s from two of McElroy’s pre-Black Eyes projects, A.K.A. Harlot #1 and Exaspirin, as well as a 1996 session McElroy engineered for New York art punk outfit the Vestpocket Psalm. While you’re there, you can also grab (for free) every song that Horses—McElroy’s 2004 band with Black Eyes members Dan Caldas and Mike Kanin—ever recorded, as well as Hume’s Wyfe EP.

Read More “Ruffian Records Posts Rare MP3s, Plans Releases with Sockets” »

Imperial China’s mathy post-punk probably won’t be the next dispensable soundtrack to an iPod commerical, and the D.C. band knows it. The trio is playing a free set in the Apple Store at the Tysons Corner mall tonight at 6 p.m., and the performance apparently merits this disclaimer: “Yes, really.”

OK, so Imperial China’s jagged, discursive aesthetic doesn’t quite fit with Apple’s peppy minimalism in the same way that Steve Jobs seems to have taken to his new liver. That’s cool: You were probably putting off a trip to the Genius Bar, anyway. This way, you get to hear some tunes from the band’s forthcoming full-length (out this fall) while no doubt finding amusement in your fellow mallgoers’ confusion—over Imperial China’s aggro experimentalism, of course, not to mention the vagaries of Apple’s new operating system. Can you get any more win-win?

Check out the show deets after the jump.

Read More “Free Tonight: Imperial China @ Tysons Corner Apple Store” »

Friday

• Imperial China, New Rock Church Of Fire, The Sentiment, A Born Idler. Rock and Roll Hotel. $10. All Ages.
• Julie Murphy Wells. The Barns at Wolf Trap. $20. All ages.
• Donald Harrison, John Lamkin Quartet. Bohemian Caverns, (Friday & Saturday). $25. All ages.
• Velodrome feat. Mas y Mas, DJ Ed Dudes, DJ Scott Bauer. Velvet Lounge. $8. +21.
• Holy Ghost! (DJ set), Mike Simonetti (Italians Do It Better), DJ Will Eastman. 9:30 club. $15. All ages.
• Candlewax Records presents Blake 9. Cafe Saint Ex. Free. +21.
• NSO Prelude. Kennedy Center, Millennium Stage. Free.

Read More “Weekend Music Round-Up” »

Sean Peoples, founder/czar of the SocketsCDR label, dropped us an email to answer questions and to dish about Little Women, Sonic Circuits, and “hip-hop from the future.”

This past year was busy. I can’t think of much by way of disappointments, but the following stood out and really made 2008 for me:

• Dmerit is a DJ/production duo who are killing it right now. I just caught a DJ set of theirs and it included a bunch of their own remixes. I expect even more from these guys in 2009.
• All Our Noise blog – Some friends of mine started this blog, which highlights Washington, D.C.’s cultural rebirth. AON Sessions films local artists performing live and provides a good alternative (not to mention local flavor) to YouTube’s video distractions. Read More “Music 2008: A Note from SocketsCDR’s Sean Peoples” »

American University’s WVAU is hosting its final fall installment of the student-run free concert series Capitol Punishment Saturday night. The show will be in AU’s Kay Spiritual Center. Doors at 6:30; show at 7; all ages; free.

The lineup includes:

Imperial China
Caverns
Solar Powered Sun Destroyer
Hammer No More The Fingers