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RVALUTION 14 :: Party Liberation NOW
With a lineup of Mr. Jennings (dubstep / glitch hop massive), Michael NightTime (electro killers), JReinhold (bouncy party jams) and Beatdown (Bmore club-electro), tonight's RVALUTION is gonna be massive.
Use promo code "RVA" to get the discount treatment and buy your tickets early HERE to make sure you are not left out in the hot summer heat with no where to go.
photo by Todd Raviotta
Click HERE for the facebook info.
main photo by Skye Von Derosten
Kristin Beal-Degrandmont's Indigenous Territory at ADA
Kristin Beal-Degrandmont's shadow and movement based Indigenous Territory opens at ADA gallery today at 7pm.
"My studio practice unites my training in painting and drawing with technology. Historically, painting has used pictorial representation to enact Alberti's metaphor of the 'window.' This employed painting as a metaphor for the window, and the window as a metaphor for painting. The Renaissance established this classical screen as the space for images of the world to be recorded. The images of our world are now developing through new interactive technologies. I believe the resilience of painting reveals itself through its ability to adapt its fundamental practices to new mediums.
The fallibility of man in the face of technology’s guarantee exposes a culture that has created a pathetic and histrionic world-view; one that has allowed technology to take precedence in our lives causing the steady reduction of contact with the living world. By mediating the aesthetics of mark making and gesture through the promise of technology my work feeds from the Melodrama. I am interested in this interplay between humans and their surroundings; in the thoughts, feelings, memories and interpretations evoked by a landscape, and by the sentimental aestheticization of ones homeland.
My work seeks to isolate points of beauty, commonality and memory or déjà vu, either recreated or frozen in various ways to frame the viewer’s experience. As a child in the Midwest, I grew up riding along the expansive landscape. The cinematic experience of riding in the car; the window breaking up the landscape like scenes, or stills on film. Our collective hopes and dreams projected onto that vast horizon. I am looking to capture different types of pictorial space that embody the mark as relief, or as movement allowing the viewer to become further spatially orientated with the work. Shadow is used to evoke feelings of the past, or of a dream, there is magic and beauty and promise. Rather than capturing one static moment in time, my work employs various notions of time in order to convey several moments; be they layered in video or recreated in relief, time is orchestrated and controlled." Kristin Beal-Degrandmont's artist statement
More information at kristinbeal.tripod.com
ada gallery 228 west broad street richmond virginia
gallery hours: monday through friday noon - five pm
www.adagallery.com
DAILY RECORDS : The Bewitched Hands On Top Of Our Heads, Darren Hanlon, Hey Rosetta
The Bewitched Hands On Top Of Our Heads - Hard To Cry EP (Sony)
The five songs on this insanely-named French group's new EP vary significantly in sound and quality. Yet a common thread unites them--airy psychedelic pop that reminds me of the Polyphonic Spree. Their Beatlesque psychedelia is charming enough, but not of sufficient quality to stand out from the pack.
Darren Hanlon - I Will Love You At All (Yep Roc)
English-sounding singer-songwriter stuff with a traditional folk bent. It's certainly not horrible, but the repetitive song structures and well-explored genre territory leaves me cold. Someone playing this style with this much talent is probably performing at an Irish pub near you right now. Go see them instead.
Hey Rosetta - Into Your Lungs (Sonic)
These songs feature the same sort of long buildups to emotional climaxes that Frightened Rabbit have made work so well on their last two albums. Violins and pianos join the mostly acoustic guitars for a folk-influenced sound that does nothing to quiet the storming emotional heart of this music.
Diamond Black Hearted Boy at Strange Matter
Be in the mood for something strange at Strange Matter on July 19th when Diamond Black Hearted Boy takes the stage.
Geekity Speakity Episode 21 w/ Special Guest Sera Tabb
This week the Geeks are joined by their first Special Guest..and she is Sera Tabb. She has joined to Geek out about her documentary Identity Richmond (Tentative Title) as well as to show off her other geek creditials in a variety of other topics..so sit back..listen up..and Enjoy...and remember...GET YOUR GEEK ON!!
CLICK HERE FOR GEEKITY SPEAKITY
More information on Geekity Speakity
Photo from madnessletters.com
DAILY RECORD : Hostage Calm
Hostage Calm – Hostage Calm (Run For Cover Records)
Hostage Calm’s second full length record is a difficult one to place. I’d be as justified saying this album sounds like a Dag Nasty record as I would saying it sounds like the Beach Boys. The band’s sound is all over the place, yet cohesive. This is one of the most musically ambitious efforts I’ve heard in years, and the result is a very rewarding album for music fans. I’d say it’s an early candidate for album of the year.
Despite a noticeably different approach from their traditional hardcore sound, the band doesn’t abandon its roots entirely with this album. The spirit and energy are certainly there, but it offers up so much more than a standard album in the genre. Bells and acoustic guitars layer over the band’s normal instrumentation to create a Latin infused verse that strip down to a classic sing-along chorus in the song Ballots/Stones. Other songs have beautifully arranged three part vocal harmonies that float over crunching guitars and driving drum beats. Other moments feel like one of the Clash’s later records. It’s simply an impossible record to sum up in easy terms; give it a listen.
The self titled album will be released July 20th on Run For Cover Records on CD and LP.
FILM REVIEW : Predators
It seems obvious from the title that the filmmakers behind Predators were, in some way, trying to channel the success of Aliens. The two franchises have always been closely related, and even though that relation culminated in the two abysmal Alien Vs. Predator movies, both series always garnered respect separately. They began in very much the same fashion, with both original films focusing on a lone alien monster hunting a small group of humans. The two series parted in their sequels. Alien was followed by Aliens, and, as the plural form of the title indicates, the humans had hordes of monsters to contend with making for a fresh experience. Predator was followed by Predator 2, which offered very little different from the first. It moved the action from the jungle proper to the concrete jungle of the big city. It sounds more clever than it was. Now, after 20 years, we are finally given the plural Predators. Unfortunately, in trying to capture both the slow tension of the first Predator, as well as the nonstop action of Aliens, the filmmakers fail to achieve either one.
GODS OF THE BOBBLE HEADS NO. 10
The Gods of the Bobble Heads is a new radio show coming out of Ashland. Its pretty damn funny and RVA is a proud sponsor. We will be posting a new episode every week on RVAMAG.com. Be sure to check it out live every Saturday on WHAN1430AM and download all the past broadcasts at www.bobblegods.com.
The Broken Richmond Social Scene
In the last ten years Richmond has evolved into a college town. Sure, Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU)has been here for forty years, and the University of Richmond has been here longer, they were not central to the culture here. VCU is now one of the largest public universities in the state and as a result it has physically grown too, buying up property and steadily expanding both campuses. VCU has become the unifying factor in the social circles of Richmond. It, like all colleges, brings together people from all walks of life and more importantly different areas of Virginia.
Go to a party, ask someone if they’re at VCU and the follow up question is to ask where they’re from. They are most likely from one of three places – Northern Virginia, Virginia Beach or Roanoke. If they have stayed in school you’ll go on to ask them what their major is, and this is when they find a way out of the conversation, or you do. Because you or them are at this party with your three closest friends, and you were maybe introduced by one of those friends, but no one it seems is interested in getting beyond those friends. And those friends, they’re friends that they’ve had since middle school.
After moving here I found it difficult to meet like minded people, which I found particularly strange in a place that claims to be so open-minded. It became apparent that open-minded didn’t mean accepting, it mean agreeing to certain ideologies to which I didn’t fit. What does someone do that’s not just here for the party? Or Art school? Or Vegan? Or Straightedge?
You float between the different scenes always remaining an outsider.
DAILY RECORD : Obliteration
Obliteration – Nekropsalms (Fysisk Format/Forcefield Records)
Once a genre of music has existed long enough to have a comfortable understanding of itself as a system of aesthetic parameters and preconceived notions, its practitioners often begin to cast their creative gaze backwards. The results vary – typically such artists produce banal rehashes of once-fresh ideas, soulless wallowing in retro nostalgia.
Occasionally, however, effective tribute can be paid to a genre’s earliest practitioners without being derivative or compromising their own creative vision.
To many ears, death metal as a genre has had little forward momentum creatively since its inception in the mid-80s. The vocals still growl, the tempos still blast, and the imagery is still mired in Z-grade slasher films, but the style has become more and more inclined towards a slick professionalism, with recordings often glossed over with such strong studio treatment that the much of the energy and aggression which served as stylistic cornerstones have been rendered toothless and mechanical. It wasn’t always this way – early death metal bands like Nihilist, Repulsion, and early Darkthrone tempered the increasing bombast of 1980s heavy metal with a punkish rawness and an almost total disregard for the whims of the mainstream.
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