GW seniors Rick Sorkin and Christian Brucculeri are two business majors who have molded their entrepreneurial skills to suit a greater vision: rock ‘n’ roll. As members of local GW-based group Waterstreet, they are marketing their new album Nocturnal Transmission (Pimplounge Records) as part of their final class project.
“We’re molding our major around what we like to do,” Brucceleri says. “We’re majoring in rock ‘n’ roll.”
Before his band takes stage at D.C.’s Finest, a small U Street club, Waterstreet front-man Brucceleri sits on a deck overlooking the neighborhood on a cold, black night. Bassist Bob Nashawaty, guitarist Rick Sorkin and percussionist T.J. Brunner join him.
“We’ve spent five months on this new record,” Sorkin says. “The last one we did in 20 hours and mixed in five. We logged at least 400 hours on this one. We had free reign of the music department, so we could like wheel in timpanis in the middle of the night and stuff.”
The record offers a pretty calm mix of instrumentation and vocal process. Waterstreet’s sound is built on Sorkin’s guitar effects and Brunner’s spare drumming, with an excellent use of cymbals. Brucculeri’s voice is often calm and confessional, helping the deep personal lyrics of many songs. Still, there is a lot of fun on the record, from handy piano work for an elegant feel to a blaring saxophone.
“We’re really serious,” Nashawaty says. “This album comes from that real aesthetic, the expression of real emotions and feelings.”
Waterstreet will release the new album at 2:K:9, a club located at 2009 8th St., Saturday. The record release party is a peak for the group, which Sorkin and Brucculeri formed when they were freshmen in Thurtson Hall.
Sorkin and Brucculeri said they will hop on a school bus and take their act on the road after they graduate in May.
“(The bus) is gonna have hydrolics and a hole in the floor for peeing,” Brucculeri says.
No matter where the bus tour lands, the group is always full of laughs and good vibes.
And as for their anxious audience, Brunner has only one thing to say: “Wait ’til they get a load of us.”
Waterstreet record release party
2:K:9 2009 8th St.
Metro: U Street-Cardozo
Saturday
