ARTICLES
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.
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
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RVA NO.2 is turning zombies into people.
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.
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
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SHOW REVIEW: The Diamond Center, Tungs, Climbers
The Diamond Center, Climbers, and Tungs
August 26 at Strange Matter
Strange Matter--the most recent reincarnation of Richmond’s revered punk rock venue, 929 W. Grace St--was swimming in a sea of psychedelic bliss last Thursday night. The Diamond Center, Tungs, and Climbers performed for a sizable crowd, who were there to hear some of the most exciting new sounds in Richmond live and in person. The evening was a tremendous experience, as each artist helped to create a spacious yet sharply vibrant soundscape. It seemed to hang over the evening even between sets, producing a cohesive aesthetic that flowed through the divergent styles of the acts involved.
HIP-HOP PLAYLIST: The Jams Of Terry (Sept. 2010 edition)
Hey, my name’s Chris Terry. My friends call me “C.T.” Here are a few hip-hop and soul songs I’ve been hyped on this summer. I made a YouTube playlist so you can rock it while you read.
1. Am I A Good Man? – Them Two
From the incredibly solid rare soul comp, Numero Group’s Eccentric Soul: The Deep City Label. Wonderful warm, up-front sound and cascading rhythm that reminds me of another favorite, “Fool for You” by The Impressions. While searching for this video, I saw that Band of Horses do a cover, which I assume sounds like a shoebox full of queefs.
JAMES RIVER FILM JOURNAL: “Films I Wished I’d Watched With My Dad”
If there’s one thing that my father and I used to like to do together, it was watch movies. We didn’t see enough of each other to catch whatever dropped into the local cineplex–rather, we had an intense sort of competition, a desire to seek out and find great, great movies to recommend to one another. My Dad lived in North Carolina, I lived in Minnesota, and we’d call now and again and brag about seeing, say, Children of Men or Buena Vista Social Club for instance. We’d argue, cajole, laugh, complain about this movie or that, and that was wonderful. It was our way of talking, of sharing a moment. These conversations enriched our lives… and the movies.
Dad died in the summer of 2008, and since then I’ve felt his loss continually whenever I see a movie. Good or bad, I keep wanting to talk to him about the thing. When I saw Inception, and loathed it, I found myself wishing I could have called and asked him what he thought… and honestly, I was itching to have the usual argument with him if he indeed loved that overblown mess. Recently, in fact, I had a dream that he adored Avatar, and we argued about its merits while walking the streets of a ghostly town (I was happy for that dream, let me tell you.) It was my father who turned me on to Welles, Bergman, Gene Kelly, and assorted classics. I had turned him onto the aforementioned Children of Men, L’Atalante, The Band’s Visit, and, believe it… Mr. Bean’s Holiday. I’m most proud of that last one, in spite of what you might think about it, because he told me it made him happy, and took his mind off his chemotherapy.
When James River Film Society president Michael Jones wrote me earlier this spring about “films I wished I’d watched with my Dad,” (Mike being the “I” in question) it was deeply inspirational. Mike’s dad passed away shortly after my father did, and, like me, he had a long history of watching movies with his pop. It’s a lovely idea, and I hope he gets his list onto this blog, because I’ve seen it and it’s worth sharing.
So without further complicating this matter, here’s some of the movies I’ve seen this past year that I desperately wish I could have seen with Dad. But before I leave you with it, if you love movies then I urge you to catch as many as you can with that person you love more than anything–Dad, Mom, wife, brother, best pal. That’s what makes the movies worthwhile, the way we share them.
SHOW REVIEW: Purple Rhinestone Eagle, The Catnip Dreams, etc.
The Grapefruit Experiment, The Catnip Dreams, Purple Rhinestone Eagle and Black Liquid
August 25 at Strange Matter
After expressing frustration with the way late shows on weeknights are often run, I found myself unwittingly becoming part of the problem last Wednesday night. I showed up at Strange Matter just after 10:30 and discovered that the first band was already halfway through their set. It's not fair to complain about shows starting late when you don't show up on time, is it? Mea culpa, mea culpa. I was pleasantly surprised to discover a decent turnout at the show. I tend to consider myself relatively "in the loop," and yet I had never heard of any of the bands that were playing. Therefore, I figured the show would be sparsely attended, which turned out to be a foolish assumption on my part. It just proves that being in the loop about one small segment of the scene does not mean that you know everything; there are probably other loops that you are out of, perhaps even to the extent that you don't know they exist.
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