Sampling the thought streams of D.C. musicians past and present.

The Jet Age:

-Our brand new album, “in ‘Love’”, is out on October 27! Keep your eyes peeled for ordering info and tour dates!: http://bit.ly/CeTKL

-Surprisingly underwhelmed by the new Revolver remaster. :( -E

Sockets:

-Vintage episodes of American Gladiator just aren’t doing it for me right now.

-New Sockets column FORGOTTEN VINYL. First download is a posi disco raga by Charanjit Singh! http://bit.ly/2MKvoQ

Edie Sedgwick:

-Speedy Gonzales on the phone…trying to get me a licensing deal. Gonna need a big advance if I’m gonna sign with a stereotype…

-Hanging with Rodney Dangerfield and Trotsky tonight. Trotsky really pissed that Dangerfield called Marx’s dialectical materialism “a farce.”

Travis Morrison:

-http://bit.ly/oj8Tr AND http://bit.ly/ZFB1v. Weird day for a Washingtonian.

-my bus driver hit a squirrel today and mumbled at it for the rest of the ride. You can’t just jump out in the road like that.

The weather may be cooling off, but Sockets isn’t quite ready to pack up the shorts and deflate the beach balls. The label recently posted this mixtape–which includes songs by Food For Animals, BLDGS, and Edie Sedgwick–in the hopes of stretching the summer season out for a few more weeks.

Here’s the tracklist:

1. “Love Showers” – The Dirty Church
2. “Tomorrow” – Buildings
3. “Would You Kill?” – The Cornel West Theory
4. “Fifty Seven” – Andrew Black
5. “Dope” (Ricky Rabbit Remix) – Food For Animals
6. “Preproduct” – Aaron Thompson
7. “Wilderness” – Roses They Won’t Hurt You
8. “Doubting Thomas” (Sockets Mix) – Edie Sedgwick
9. “1000 Miles” – Metropolitan

The music blog RCRD LBL recently posted a few songs for new Mp3s by D.C.’s own BLDGS (pronounced Buildings). The songs, “For You” and “Now,” are drawn from the band’s upcoming EP Endless, which should be out on Sockets within the next few weeks. Check them out here.

Sockets, the local record label/blog, just posted a interview with BLDGS as well as some live footage of the band performing live at Kansas House. If you didn’t believe them when they said they were into wearing Dashikis, well, now you can witness it for yourself.

Buildings from Sean Peoples on Vimeo.

Twinkling rhodes piano. Ambient computer noise. A lightly funky acoustic guitar loop. If you were under the impression that The Cornel West Theory was all about fire and brimstone—a safe assumption, given the ski masks and angry vibes depicted in this video–, well, they can also take it down a notch. “An Angel For You,” a track that the band’s label, Sockets, just posted on its blog, is sort of hiphop nytol. In a good way, though. After all, it’s summer, and there’s no harm in invoking the ghost of Marvin Gaye.

Guitarist/noisemaker/gentleman Chris Grier–who has performed with Kohoutek, To Live & Shave in LA, and Scarcity of Tanks–recently assembled a digital mixtape for Sockets Records. It’s the third in the Fringe Era series, which has also featured contributions by Occupational Athlete (aka Patrick Connolly) and Washington City Paper beer guru Orr Shtuhl. Greir has provided some choice cuts here, though–including as yet unreleased tracks by Love of Diagrams and Wylde Ratttz (the studio band composed of Ron Asheton, Thurston Moore, Steve Shelley, Mike Watt, and Don Fleming) as well as a few old time favorites.

So far, summer is having a little trouble getting started. So far all we’ve gotten is a lot of rain, no Screen On The Green, and no Fort Reno schedule. But please, let this free summer mixtape, compiled by local label Sockets, be a salve to your bruised expectations. There are exclusive cuts by Maximillion Dunbar (Food For Animals rapper and Future Times label boss), Hume (recently back in DC after traveling through India), and Cornel West Theory, who have been M.I.A. since ‘06, or maybe I’m just out of the loop.

Tracklist:

1. Loveloop – Maxmillion Dunbar
2. Prophetic Suicide – the Cornel West Theory
3. Wise Light Born – Hume
4. Sleep In – Big Gold Belt
5. Tired – The Fly Girlz
6. Olds Achieva Care Bear – Framed Mistake
7. Come on the Deathbed – Chris Grier

Tomorrow afternoon Artomatic will host performances by, basically, every man or woman who has ever attempted to make noisy music in Washington, DC during the last five years. It’s going to be nine-plus hours of drones, bleeps, bloops, and scratches curated by local avant-music festival Sonic Circuits. Nine hours. Well, you don’t have to watch all of it, I guess. Sockets Records recently posted a helpful breakdown of the afternoon’s schedule, which I’m re-posting below. Interested parties can feel free to cherry-pick their favorites or arrive just in time to see that special someone plug in their homemade synthesizer. Or, you know, make a day out of it, although I would advise you to bring along a pair of earplugs.

Full schedule after the jump
Read More “Sonic Circuits Extravaganza @ Artomatic” »

If you were not already aware, Zs–the Brooklyn-based avant-prog group with DC roots–makes terribly pretentious and inaccessible music. At least, according to Howard Stern, who’s apparently quite the authority on post-Braxton noodling.

Maybe the group’s getting tired of being all alone that lofty pedestal of impenetrable aesthetic superiority, though, because Zs are bringing it down to our level on this recently remix LP, a recent split-release by local labels Sockets and Planaria.

Nathan Corbin (aka Zebrablood, of Excepter fame) takes a couple of the group’s quizzical headscratchers and refits them into minimal techno, which sounds equally pretentious, but in reality, it’s pretty bumpin’. Zs currently has one of the tracks posted on its myspace, here, if you want to see for yourself. If you want to grip the physical object, those can be found here.

Admit it, the coolest thing your high school band ever did was tape a cover of “Creep” using your dad’s webcam. Doesn’t seem that cool now, does it? Certainly not as cool Fly Girlz, a group of teenage MCs who recently made an album with Nathan Corbin (aka Zebrablood) of synth-noise band Excepter.

Tonight DC-based record label Sockets, who released the CD, titled Da’ Brats From Da’ Ville, will be celebrate the record with a dance/listening party at Red Lounge. The ladies themselves probably aren’t going to be in attendance, give that it’s a school night. But DJs from Fatback will be around to blast the Fly Girlz’s music along with some other fine tunes.

Fly Girlz Listening Party @ Red Lounge
2013 14th st.
9 pm.