Sockets Records first came across our radar due to, surprise surprise, an old Three Stars interview. This one. Then suddenly, they were everywhere. There were Sockets artists like Layne Garrett performing at the Sonic Circuits Festival. Then bands like Buildings and Imperial China put out releases under the Sockets imprint. Then they put on a showcase, selling out the Black Cat Mainstage and demonstrating that they also put out funky hip-hop acts, like the Cornel West Theory. A recent spring mix posted to the Sockets blog shows the depth and breadth of their roster in greater detail.
The man behind this impressive output is Sean Peoples. Peoples started Sockets Records five years ago as a way to document his friends’ live performances on his radio show, but Sockets has since expanded to include the aforementioned acts and albums, sprouting from a youth after-school program in New York. Keeping up with all of the Sockets releases has been relatively easy, as Peoples regularly updates the Sockets blog with artist information. We chatted with Peoples about Sockets’ evolution, growth and his own appreciation for all things weird.
Where are you from originally?
I’m from New Jersey originally. A very rural part of New Jersey. One light, lots of cows. Lots of corn, too. It’s the part of New Jersey people don’t really think of when they think of New Jersey: the Garden State part. It’s called Jacobstown, and it’s near an Air Force base. And I went to school at American and I’ve stuck around ever since, ’98 so, 12 years. It’s been a long time. And D.C. feels like home. It’s not necessarily my birth place, but being here this long and being really really connected to people who have lived here for a long time and people who grew up here makes you feel a little bit more connected than if I was just somebody who had come here for two or three years, did my Hill stint and then left. I like it here.
Tell me about the origin of Sockets.
I started doing a radio show in 2003 and started doing these live sessions. Bringing in bands that were friends. Cornel West Theory was one of the first. We recorded them and I realized after doing a couple of these that it would really behoove me to document them somehow. So out of that was born Sockets. Just trying to document the stuff that was coming through the radio station, the show that I did on Sunday nights. And it was really fun, we had these jam sessions too where we’d just come in and people would grab whatever instrument and then play. So we recorded those too and it was fun. A lot of the Sockets releases I met through the station. So it was an instant community which was great. I’m still putting out releases for some of them, too.
