If there’s anything to be excited about in this unusually warm but otherwise typically mundane month of January, it is what I happened to be part of this weekend. The DC music scene is swarming with vivacious music fans, and they were out in full force not only at the Sockets Records Showcase on Saturday at the Black Cat, but at the Lightfoot show on Friday at the Cat as well.
This fact was especially exciting because both shows catered to vastly different audiences, yet each was packed with smiling faces and smiling bartenders with large bar tabs. Everyone was feeling it on Saturday due to four talented bands hand-picked by founder Sean Peoples to showcase the spectacular label that is Sockets Records, Cigarette, Buildings, Imperial China, and Protect-U (themselves on the Future Times label). I am not even kidding when I say that this showcase introduced me to two new favorite local bands (Buildings already being one, of course).
Cigarette started the night off by playing beautifully delicate songs off of their demos Total Nag and (appropriately named) Blush behind mic stands adorned in bouquets of flowers. I was convinced that there must be a pedal effect on the meek petal-soft vocals, but after discussing it with a dear friend, I may be wrong. “Precious,” she described them. I couldn’t agree more.
I kept asking myself how such a minimal and sweet sound came from a band with such a large presense, as there were six people on stage, including two guitars, keys, a viola, and trumpet. How the fuck do they make a sound so feather-soft and ambient that it might make Bradford Cox weep along with the angels that float in the ether? Blush is the soundtrack for the most unforgettable and tenderest of moments.
Don’t let the fact that Buildings (BLDNGS) are an entirely instrumental band deter you from listening; anyone with an artistic sensibility will find themselves entrenched in the emotional heights and climaxing creativity of each song. I am always overcome with rich experience every time I share a room with Buildings, who always back their instrumental performances with experimental and interesting projections that mirror the intricacy of their songs.
On Saturday, their visuals centered on the drummer, David Rjich, who was book-ended by Collin Crowe on guitar and bassist Nick McCarthy. The trio released a full-length LP, Everything in Parallel, that day. While other reviewers compare them to Don Caballero, I’d compare them to the DC threesome Ostinato, who write equally inventive instrumental music.
This show was perfectly curated, and following the mounting energy that Buildings stirred, Imperial China took over the stage like an atom bomb. Sorry, cliché, but shit, they were fucking huge! Imperial China’s performance harnessed the percussion-driven DIY mentality of post-punk icons Liquid Liquid while fusing experimental song structures that anarcho-punk band The Ex might envy.
Imperial China don’t just know their influences, they own and surpass them, proven by the confidence and force they exuded on the Black Cat’s stage Saturday night. In a city where Fugazi is an underlying influence of, well, every damn thing, they beat the shit out of their obvious influences and surpass them with song structures that keep you guessing and punk rhythms that knock you on your ass.
And then Protect-U played, and it was mind-boggling how this was my first time ever seeing them. I did not know that in my own backyard, there is an electronic duo playing post-punk-inspired enigmatic dance music as pure and intense as Peter Hook, but creative and bizarre as the sound of ’80s era Yello, sometimes getting even a bit Cabaret Voltaire and shit. I’m far too excited about this band to write sentences that make sense—seriously, that good, y’all.
For some reason, by the time Protect-U took the stage, the crowd had been thinning, maybe due to the last Gold Leaf show that was simultaneously happening. Regardless, every single person in the room was dancing, amazing. I rushed the merch table after their set; even though I was dead broke, I was going to buy a Protect-U LP if there was one. Not surprisingly, all that was offered was a CD full of drones. (There were, however, LPs available from the other bands, including Imperial China’s How We Connect, also released that day.) Aaron Leitko of Protect-U assured me that there are copies floating around Discogs, so get ready to fight me for one, people.
We look to music labels to curate artists that convey a style and aesthetic, one with which we might be able to identify, and quite often, obsess over. Sockets Records have collected many of DC’s electronic, post-punk, edgy, and experimental musicians into their catalog, proving they are tastemakers of the DC music scene. As such, the Sockets Records Showcase was a memorable showcase of talent. It has left me craving their next, and I am wholeheartedly look forward to it.
Photos by Liz Gorman
