Arts Desk » Sockets

Ruffian Records Posts Rare MP3s, Plans Releases with Sockets

Jonathan L. Fischer — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 17:44:05 +0000

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.

Ruffian also announced a pair of upcoming joint releases with Sockets Records: Phosphenes, the debut full-length by aggro post-rockers Imperial China, and a compilation LP featuring local bands. In an e-mail, McElroy wrote that the labels are hoping to release the compilation in the spring.

Shudder to Tweet

Aaron Leitko — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 18:46:02 +0000

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.

Sockets Summer Mix Vol. 2

Aaron Leitko — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 16:34:43 +0000

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

Free BLDGS Music

Aaron Leitko — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 22:38:22 +0000

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.

BLDGS Interview Video

Aaron Leitko — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 18:42:03 +0000

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.

New Cornel West Theory Mp3

Aaron Leitko — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 21:18:28 +0000

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.

Chris Grier Curates Sockets Mix

Aaron Leitko — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 18:16:50 +0000

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.

Sockets Summer Mix

Aaron Leitko — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 19:01:24 +0000

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

Sonic Circuits Extravaganza @ Artomatic

Aaron Leitko — Fri, 29 May 2009 17:15:02 +0000

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

Sonic Circuits @ Artomatic
55 M St. SE, Washington DC
Cabaret Stage, 2nd Floor

Performer Time
Robert Blake Highway 4pm
Kingdom of Sharks 430pm
Sean Peoples 5pm
Layne Garrett 530pm
Dave Vosh+Logan Mitchell Sr. 6pm
Nine Strings 630pm
Fast Forty 7pm
RDK 730pm
Soft Pieces 8pm
BLK w/ BEAR+VJ Poppins 830pm
Pilesar 9pm
The Angus Brainpan 930pm
Tone Ghosting 10pm
Twenty-first Century Chamber Ensemble 1030pm
Second Land 11pm
Kuschty Rye Ergot 1130pm
Slug Bait 12am
Aerosolized Mucus 12:30am

Totally Pretentious Zs Music Remixed Into Equally Pretentious Minimal Techno on New 12″

Aaron Leitko — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 15:31:07 +0000

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.