What's a Summer Party Without Heaters?

It still doesn’t feel real that, last night, we pulled off our second event ever—our Summer Party, starring Infinity Knives and Brian Ennals and DJ Andy Cush, at the DIY venue Trans-Pecos in Ridgewood, Queens. The week leading up to this function was one of the hottest in recent memory. Temperatures frequently exceeded 100 degrees during the day and pushed everyone’s A/C units to the limit. On Wednesday night, it was 85 degrees in the shade. 

So I was grateful when things cooled down by Thursday, with temps hovering around the mid-to-low 70s as the doors to Trans Pecos opened. Julianne had secured the first-ever Hearing Things banner and she, Jill, and I took in the fresh vinyl smell as we taped it to the wall overlooking the stage. That moment made things feel even more legit because for some reason, a banner makes everything feel more official. Ryan couldn't make it for personal reasons—he's okay!—but his spirit and leadership were in the building regardless.

I ran point on the artist booking this time around, and there was no act I would have rather hosted than Infinity Knives and Brian Ennals. I was first put onto the Baltimore-based duo in 2022 after Knives DM’d me on Instagram at the behest of the homie Gary Suarez, who runs the dope newsletter Cabbages. That was around the time they’d released their incendiary second album King Cobra, a potent mix of hardcore rap, synth psychedelia, and disco-inspired boogies rooted in firm calls to political action (they’re staunchly pro-Palestine, anti-Israel, and anti-cop.) Knives and Ennals’ stuff is raw, personal, and life-affirming without feeling like edutainment, and after writing about them for Pitchfork and seeing them live in 2023, I knew they had something special. And I profiled them for Hearing Things just before the release of their amazing new album, A City Drowned In God’s Black Tears, earlier this year. 

Knives and Ennals drove four hours from Baltimore to perform for our readers, but not before a lively DJ set from Andy, who can spin vinyl like nobody’s business. He spent the first two hours running through rock, soul, and electronic rarities for the crowd—my personal favorite was "diskhat1," a cut from the pioneering British electronic musician and DJ Aphex Twin's 2015 EP Computer Controlled Acoustic Instruments pt2. Attendees danced and kicked it in the venue’s spacious concrete backyard, where we had a table set up for Dare to Struggle, an activist organization dedicated to combating police brutality and the destructive machinations of capitalism, whose presence Ennals had requested. 

But when it was time for Knives and Ennals to take the stage, they wasted no time in burning that motherfucker to the ground. They ran through a handful of cuts from God’s Black Tears, Cobra, their debut Rhino XXL, and “Black Addicts,” a one-off from Knives’ 2020 solo album Dear, Sudan. The vibes shifted from glitchy warfare to cumbia to disco dance-offs on a whim, and the crowd drank in every mood change—some fans even cast their inhibitions to the wind to dance and start mosh pits. Near the beginning of their set, Knives and Ennals thanked Hearing Things for the support and revealed that their current manager, Ben Parrish, found out about their music through reading my profile of them. This is my job, but there’s no way to describe the feeling of connecting like-minded souls as they make their ascent. 

That pride and communal love was widespread. Andy learned that Knives and Ennals currently live in the same area of Baltimore where he grew up. The great Rolling Stone writer Andre Gee, who wrote about God’s Black Tears for the magazine, popped out; Ennals gushed that he was “able to show my mom I was in Rolling Stone!” Moments like these don’t happen without the passion and camaraderie I’ve come to expect from every DIY music event I attend or organize on my own time, and have been integral to how Hearing Things approaches our seasonal parties. Peace to everyone who came to turn up with us on a Thursday night and helped make our second event so special. We’re all hype to see you at the next one!