ARTICLES
Advertisement
Pretty Lights VS Bassnectar & Beats Antique 2NITE!
If you like electronic music than tonight in Richmond might be the one time where you cannot go wrong.
UPDATE : PRETTY LIGHTS IS OPENING FOR BASSNECTAR AT THE HAT FACTORY and VICE VERSA!! 2NITE! Has this ever been done?
PRETTY LIGHTS has sold out The National several times already with his tightly produced dance trax that bring elements of hip hop, club, jazzy and electro together in one great head bobbin set. The new album is dope and you can download it HERE to get a flavor of what tonight will bring.
BASSNECTAR has come out of the Burning Man desert to descend on Hat Factory with his super popular brand of dubstep. If you are more into the electronic music being played outside the club and looooove BASS! then you need to make the pilgrimage to be at this show and pay your respects.
Opening for BASSNECTAR is BEATS ANTIQUE and their brand electro-gypsy-world music that we at the office have been playing on repeat the last few days. Great for bringing a lady friend and dancing to. IF you need more incentive, their music is accompanied by beautiful bellydancing - check the video above.
Seriously, it a good day to be a Richmonder (and a gansta) as you can not go wrong with either of these shows.
ART FEED: Rocky Grimes
Growing up on the southern tip of Florida, Rocky discovered a love for skateboarding at the age of 12, which became a common thread he shared with just a few people living in the Florida Keys. The music and art he was introduced to through the skateboarding culture made a profound impact on his life and to this day continue to influence him as a person and as an artist. Heavily influenced by the punk and hardcore scene in Miami, Rocky taught himself how to screen print in the mid to late 90's so he could make his own shirts and patches. The natural progression was to start making his own artwork using the silkscreen methods he had learned. Since 2001 he has shown work all across the US including live silkscreen exhibitions in LA, NY, Las Vegas and Miami and has been featured in various publications such as Swindle and Juxtapose Magazine.
Check out what Rocky is up to here.
Deep Thoughts With Chris Bopst
I went into work last week and a friend of mine in the kitchen greeted me with, “I have something you need to hear.” This particular individual isn’t known for getting all that giddy over most things, so his robust enthusiasm caught my attention. Everybody else in the kitchen had seen the twinkle in his eye, and were working harder than usual to suppress their knowing giggles, so as not to spoil the surprise awaiting my virgin ears.
Here’s what he had to play.
PLAYLIST: The Jams Of Terry (Nov. 2010 Edition)
Welcome to the November edition of The Jams of Terry. This month, we will be exploring the slick r’n’b of the 1980s, when hair relaxer was not ironic. Thanks to Mikey P. AKA Hang Glider for the input. With no further ado, I present to you... Buppie Jams!
1. Billy Ocean “Caribbean Queen”
In 1986, my father bought a CD player and two CDs: some fucking contemporary Fleetwood Mac album, and Suddenly by Billy Ocean. This was during that brief period when the CD jewel case came in a tall cardboard box, to discourage thieves. The Billy Ocean CD box was this giant turquoise thing that sat on a shelf in our house’s den for years. Dad was already known to pick one song and play it, ad nauseum, for weeks. This small CD collection made the habit all the more real. Thanks to that, nearly a quarter of a century later, I can sing the entire saxophone solo in “Caribbean Queen.”
2. Luther Vandross “Never Too Much”
This is the joint. Just yesterday, my boss was saying, “I like fat Luther better... and crackhead Mary J. Blige. Sorry.” The woman is right! These ‘80s videos are entertaining as well. I love how the different boomboxes and gigantic Walkmen are implying that the whole wide world is pumping Luther. Now, someone get me that jogging jacket with the boysenberry yogurt-colored highlights. Quick question-–why is it amazing to walk around with a brick-sized Walkman on your hip, but those cellphone beltclips are only worn by embarrassing stepdads?
3. The Whispers “Keep on Lovin’ Me”
“Hey, we’re just five buddies with really clean teeth, who work together and spend our lunch breaks, plus the following evenings, twirling around our office park in suits. Life is good, huh?”
4. Primetime “I Want Somebody Tonight”
This is a bit of revisionist history, kind of like how modern day record nerds like to think that all teenagers in 1970 drove around listening to Big Star and Odessey and Oracle, when in all actuality, they probably just listened to the Osmonds or some crap like that. This Primetime record is an obscure ‘80s release that has been elevated from discount bin status in the last five years by collectors who have dubbed this era of synthesized soul “Modern Soul.” Right after I moved to NYC, the Joshes in Richmond found this record at Plan 9, and dropped a dollar on it on the strength of the cover. Whenever I came back to visit, this was our “5am, about to pass out” jam. We’d blast it in Bark’s room while Smalls yelled, “They had a perfectly good hit song... but they ruined it by scat singing!” Then their roommate Jen would come down the hall and tell us to shut the hell up. Sorry Jen. If you want to hear more under-the-radar r’n’b, Thes One from People Under the Stairs made a mix called Mustache Soul.
5. Junior “Mama Used To Say”
Here’s some more revisionist history. And what an awesome video. Maybe one day I too will sing to the ladies from a cartoon bathtub.
6. Earth Wind and Fire “Brazilian Rhyme”
Smalls, if you’re reading this, it is possible to be someone besides Cab Calloway and have a hit that consists mainly of scat singing. Unless I’m wicked ignorant, and he’s actually singing in Portuguese here. Hmm. On the real though, how many rap songs have sampled this? I’ve been living in Chicago for a little over two years, and something that I appreciate is this city’s high amount of civic pride. Chicago loves all things Chicago, and Earth Wind and Fire are among our favorite sons. I felt like I’d really arrived a month ago, on September 21st, when someone drove by me in Uptown, blasting “September” by EWF. That song’s leadoff lyric is “Do you remember/the twenty-first night of September?”
7. Jeffrey Osborne “You Should Be Mine”
Better known as “The Woo-Woo-Woo Song.” Here’s a way to find out if you’re going to like hanging out with a group of people: If things seem to be going well, get up like you’re going to the bar for a round, then say, “Hey, quick question, y’all,” and sing, “Can you woo-woo-woo?” Walk off, and if they laugh, feel free to sit back down with them.
8. Sade “Sweetest Taboo”
Where would this list be without a little quiet storm in the mix? Ahh, quiet storm, the official music of driving home at 5am with wrinkles in your suit and your dick still sticky.
9. Alexander O’Neal “Criticize”
Watch this, then a couple Robert Palmer clips, and ruminate on the whole “White people stealing ideas from black people” thing. Also, the drummer is going bananas. Tom Tom Magazine should write her up.
10. Phil Collins and Philip Bailey “Easy Lover”
What symbolizes the ambition of the ‘80s more than a music video that kicks off with a helicopter blasting into the air? Dear Philip Bailey, will you please give Phil Collins’ Charlie Brown-looking ass some of your clothes? That sweater vest makes him look like a manager at Best Buy.
ART FEED : Alexa Meade makes 3-D Paintings
What looks at quick glance to be a flat 2-D painting is actually a combination of performance art, photography, and painting. Alex Meade has broken new ground by taking her real life subjects and painting them into her paintings, literally to make them 3-D. With television and movies going down this road, it only makes sense that art would follow suit.
Check out the video below to see the process.
Check out her site for more - www.alexameade.com
----------------------------
Alexa Meade is a 23-year-old artist based in Washington, DC. She is represented by Irvine Contemporary. Alexa Meade has innovated a Trompe-L’Oeil painting technique that can perceptually compress three-dimensional space into a two-dimensional plane. Her work is a fusion of installation, painting, performance, photography, and video art.
Rather than painting a representational picture on a flat canvas, Meade paints her representational image directly on top of her three-dimensional subjects. The subject and its representation become one and the same. Essentially, her art imitates life on top of life.
Meade’s approach to portraiture questions our understanding of the body and identity. Meade coats her models with a mask of paint, obscuring the body while intimately exposing it, creating an unflinchingly raw account of the person. The painted second skin perceptually dissolves the body into a 2D caricature. The subjects become art objects as they are transformed into re-interpretations of themselves. In turn, the models’ identities become altered by their new skin, embodying Meade’s dictated definition of their image to the viewer.
Meade’s project plays on the tensions between being and permanence. The physical painting exists only for mere hours and is obliterated when the model sheds its metaphorical skin. What endures is an artifact of the performance, a 2D photograph extracted from the 3D scene. The photographic presentations create a tension between the smoothness of the physical photographs and the tactility of the painted installations captured within them, blurring the lines between what is depicted and depiction itself.
DAILY RECORD: The New Hope
Various Artists – The New Hope (Smog Veil)
I’m not the first, and certainly not the most eloquent, to use the idea of punk rock in its earliest years as a counterbalance to the excesses and failures of the first hippie era’s tail end. What started as an earnest attempt to change the world for the better ended up with a bunch of self-congratulatory nostalgia, an elitist group constantly patting each other on the back because the public can now buy granola in the grocery store and tie-dyed shirts at the mall. The same group shot themselves in the foot by accepting the condescending half-measures offered by mainstream society and by treating subsequent generations of interested participants with distrust, as potential consumers at best. Punk was supposed to be more egalitarian. In the instances where that promise was fulfilled, you made your own noise where you were and you dressed and acted as you wanted, society be damned. While that ideal was rarely lived up to, there were moments when it seemed a palpable alternative to both society’s apathetic conformity and the failed idealism of past countercultural movements. That some of the best and most ferocious American punk and hardcore bands came from outside genre hotbeds like San Francisco, New York, and D.C. is testament to this ideal. All the frustration and ennui of small-town lives eroding under the weight of the era’s seismic economic and cultural shifts, channeled into ninety-second blasts overflowing with the sort of piss and vinegar that makes the fashionable nihilism of the bands’ better-known counterparts seem tame in comparison.
SHOW REVIEW: Matt And Kim
Matt And Kim with Donnis
October 21 at The Canal Club
There may not be anything more triumphant than a Matt and Kim show. Standing side-by-side with wide grins and excitement in their eyes, the two performers stared at an audience sharing the same sentiments. One could only imagine what the duo had in store for Richmond, Virginia.
Chad Hugo of N*E*R*D n Kid Icarus in RVA this Friday!
Chad Hugo of hip-hop super group N*E*R*D is coming to town with Kid Icarus to spin at the Paradise Lounge. Sounds like a dope show presented by SlapDash's Octavion Xcellence and KULTURE.
For full info check the facebook event post HERE.
SOURVEIN: Bitchslappin' the Past
Troy Medlin (or simply T.Roy) is no stranger to the East Coast and Dirty South heavy metal scenes. As far back as 1993, T.Roy was fronting influential sludge metal outfit Sourvein, who came together under the banner of "old gear, dirtweed, [and] the love of Black Flag/Black Sabbath/Robert Johnson/filth/doom." From 1996 through 1998, he was the touring sample man for Richmond, VA's own legendary sludge metal pioneers Buzzov-en. Yes, Mr. Medlin has earned his street cred.
Between tours in the late 90's, T.Roy earned his income and satisfied his boredom by booking bands at the Dixie Tavern in New Orleans, where he met and became fast friends with metal gods like High on Fire. Soon after, in 2000, Sourvein intended to release their debut album, Salvation, on Frank Kozik's label, Man's Ruin. Unfortunately, though, the label folded, and the record was instead released by the Game Two label. After relocating several times (living at one time or another in New York, New Orleans, Texas, Los Angeles, and North Carolina), Sourvein released their second album, Will To Mangle (2002), on Southern Lord. Things were looking up.
However, by 2003 Sourvein's future seemed as murky as the ever-present swamp water. With only a few releases to their name, and in light of the departure of his former fiancée and Sourvein co-founder Liz Buckingham (ex-13, currently in Electric Wizard), T.Roy had a lot of thinking to do. Would he disband Sourvein completely, or regroup? The answer was an easy one, as it would be for any lifer: Regroup, motherfuckers!
Seven years, several split records (two with Church of Misery, and one each with Rabies Caste, Blood Island Raiders, Weedeater, Hogjaw, and Thee Plague of Gentleman), three EPs (Emerald Vulture, Ghetto Angel, Imperial Bastard), a new project (Hail!Hornet--more about them below), a track on the EYEHATEGOD tribute album For The Sick, and a new Sourvein album (Black Fangs, on Candlelight Records), T.Roy has every reason to give a shiny, gold-toothed smile and lift his freshly cracked 40oz. in the air.
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
