Next week is big for Sockets Records, a label Arts Desk has praised before: The label is dropping two new LPs, from local groups Imperial China and Buildings, and hosting a showcase on Jan. 28 at the Black Cat. Last week, the label previewed the new records at a listening party at Montserrat House, and now [...]
Dept. of Future Releases: Sockets Records tweeted at the world yesterday that two of its bands—noisemakers Imperial China and space-punks Buildings—turned in their albums this week. Both, Imperial China's third album, How We Connect, and Buildings' first LP, should be out next Jan. 28.
Cluster-Eastwood-fuck: TBD's Jenny Rogers landed on the red carpet for last night's Newseum premiere [...]
One of the hallmarks of Capital Fringe, however unpleasant, is the time spent on those sweltering nights on New York Avenue NW underneath the festival's Baldacchino Gypsy Tent, trying to drink away the thick, punishing heat. And sometimes, the booze isn't enough, but a band playing in the next room might ease the swampy brutality [...]
Last month Baltimore post-punk trio Double Dagger announced it was breaking up after a little more than nine years together. The six-paragraph note on the band's site sums up the bittersweet nature of Double Dagger's demise, which is taking place simply because, in their words, it's just time.
Followers of vocalist Nolen Strals, bassist Bruce Willen, [...]
We've been digging Noon:30 for a while, but we've never heard the D.C./New York group like this. The band, now a two-piece, stopped by the City Paper parking deck last week to record a short set, but the two songs they played—"The Dream Architect" and "Peter Pan"—were nothing like the group's Pylon-esque post-punk that we [...]
My editor suggested in a post yesterday on the Wammies awards ceremony that I might want to add my two cents regarding this year's nominees, and he’s right. The slate of nominees for the 25th anniversary Wammies contains a familiar ratio of impressive choices, mind-boggling omissions, and troubling mistakes (2008-formed Baltimore band Mama's Black Sheep as “New [...]
Halloween may be long past, but Imperial China hasn't stopped creeping people out. The trio's new offering is essentially a video mashup, but with some snappy editing, eerie clips from the 1973 horror flick Messiah of Evil complement the darkness of the Imperial China song "Letter of a General" quite well. Check out the gruesome [...]
It's coming. The exponential rate at which technological progress keeps happening, according to respected futurist Ray Kurzweil and his kin, points toward an impending Singularity, when artificial intelligence will suddenly exceed the capabilities of its human creators in wildly unpredictable ways. In other words, remember pre-gubernatorial Schwarzenegger? Turns out the underlying plot of Terminator (aside [...]
Hello! I'm sure there a lots of fascinating things to aggregate this morning, but first: Let's talk about Gyptian. No, no, not the smooth-singing dancehall star, not specifically. I'm talking about "Africans," the "Official African Remix of Gyptian’s 'Hold Yuh,'" which landed in my inbox yesterday, which stars a bunch of D.C. artists and producers, [...]
Good morning! I woke up at 4:30 and my mind is Jello, so I'm sticking to quick hits today.
WaPo's Jessica Dawson on "One Hour Photo," the exhibit at the Katzen Art Center in which 128 photographs by different artists are shown for one hour each, and then never again. In other words, they each have [...]
