RVA Magazine | Richmond, VA

RVA TV: Best Friends Day The Movie - Part I

If you only watch one RVA TV video in your life, make sure it is this one.

It's Richmond's favorite day of the year and now favorite weekend. It's Best Friend's Day 9!! Our coverage takes you from the opening concert to the lake where this video starts to take on a girls gone wild at a judas priest concert parking lot kinda feel. Join our hosts Ashby and Jesse on this tour as they show how much our cameras love drunk people!

CLICK HERE FOR Best Friends Day The Movie - Part I

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DAILY RECORDS: Funeral Pyre, Laurie Anderson, Tourmaline

Funeral Pyre - Vultures At Dawn (Prosthetic)
Funeral Pyre aren't breaking new ground--throat-shredding screams; fast, somewhat melodic double-picking mixed with gothic dirge riffs; and dark, warlike imagery are all standard elements within the black metal genre. However, they craft an excellent album from these elements, making their relative lack of originality easy to forgive.

Laurie Anderson - Homeland (Nonesuch/Elektra)
Minimalist, quasi-classical backing, over which the featured instrument--Anderson's voice--is given ample room to roam. It grows to fill the space it's given--talking, humming, singing, chanting. Bizarre, mesmerizing, and at points devastatingly topical, Homeland is a predictable addition to Anderson's oeuvre, but certainly not an unwelcome one.

Tourmaline - Save Me EP (tourmaline.bandcamp.com)
Decent mid-paced rock n' roll with a significant emo influence. Not bad, but I'd like to see more speed here. None of the songs do much more than stroll along, and while they're pleasant enough, sometimes pleasant is just a synonym for boring. Liven it up a little, guys.

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Moon Duo: Coming September 14 To Strange Matter

A particularly psychedelicized lovers collaboration, Moon Duo pump out endless twilight biker-rock riffs, punctuated by interstellar space echo and a repetitive, romping White Light White Heat drum-machine pulse. Like the Spacemen 3 motorized by Neu!, with the electric fuzz and fucked distorted organ sounds of the aforementioned Velvet Underground LP, Moon Duo riffs on “Love On The Sea” for over ten minutes--ten minutes of phased-out headiness where the Silver Apples-style cosmic synth and oscillations are drowned out by a plateau of perilous hooks on infinite loop. “Escape” is seven minutes of Psychocandy-outtake fuzz pop drifting over a Casiotone beat.

Modern psych-heads should recognize the guitar playing of Ripley Johnson from his other heady rock band, the Wooden Shjips. Already having played this summer at the bohemian-celebrated Big Sur forest in central California, as well as in Jeruselum and Tel Aviv, Moon Duo are true road dogs.

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Best Friend's Day 9 VIDEO WRAP UP PARTY

We bring you the best of the BFD 09 videos done by people in the community. Cue the music.

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RVA RADIO: BbopNRokstedy August 2010 Mixtape

Electro Richmond duo BBopNRoksteday have released their first mixtape. You might have caught their set at WEIRD a few weeks ago or at the surprise RVA issue release party. Give it a listen and keep a look out.

1. Electrixx- Tetris
2. Mike & Charlie- I Get Live (Bird Peterson Remix)
Calvertron- Funky Jam (Cold Blank Remix)
3. Hiroki Esashika- Kazane (Disco of Doom Remix)
4. Benni Benassi- I Am Not Drunk (Bloody Beetroots Remix)
5. Electric Soulside- Feel Funky (Cold Blank Remix)
6. Dj Manie Ft. Casablanca Connect- Kiesz (Mightyfools Remix)
7. Aaren San- Apes from Space (Dirtyloud Remix)
8. Felix Cartal- Berlin (Religion Remix)
BbopNRokstedy- Us Us

CLICK HERE FOR THE MIXTAPE

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RVA NO.2 is turning zombies into people.

2010-Cover-No.2-B.jpg

Just realized we hadn't put out an official post for the new issue. We are feeling good about this one. Check the press release and spread this thing around.

Open publication

We are enjoying the last days of summer here at the office and sniffing the pages of the newest episode of RVA. Ahhhh, smells sweet as this is our best issue yet, hands down. No joke. Completely blows all others away. It is packed to the rim with relevant information on our city and we are pretty stoked to see it in your hands and preying in your minds.

In this issue of RVA, we have an exclusive interview with none other than the iconic Pharrell Williams of N*E*R*D and the Neptunes. He talks about the upcoming album and the love he has for the ol' Cap City. We follow that up with words with metal/punk illustrator Will Towles, former Commonwealth and current Dominion designer Bryan Woodland, share secrets with pinup artist Erik Jones, stir up controversy with PUNCHLINE creator Pete Humes, weave a tale on the East End Fellowship in Church Hill, profile the enigmatic Diamond Black Hearted Boy, touch weirdness with Kemper, and understand the origins of The Gods Of The Bobbleheads. After that run on sentence, you have the latest and greatest incarnation of RVA to reach the masses ever!

So take a minute, flip through our pages, sip on your moonshine and find out what Richmond, VA is really about.

Cover by Joseph Talman