richmond music Archives

More Richmond Music Catalog 1980-2021 Part 6

Marilyn Drew Necci | January 25, 2022

Topics: .gif From God, Enforced, Everyone Dies In The End, f1ng3rs, Falls Under April, Fat Spirit, Fatty Love, Field Day, Fight Cloud, Fixtures, Flashbulb Memory, Flechette, Flight Club, Fly Anakin, From Earth To Ashes, from fragile seeds, FXTRS, Government Warning, Graven Image, Haircut, Heartracer, Heavy Midgets, Hewolf, Hoax Hunters, Hold Tight, Hose.Got.Cable, Houdan The Mystic, Illa Styles, Immortal Avenger, Jack Rose, Jazz Poets Society, Jeremy D. Simmons, Jettison Charlie, Joe Threat, richmond bands, richmond music, The Ernies, The Exploder, The Hot Seats, The Richmond Music Catalog

There’s so much. So much more than even I knew when we started this whole process. I keep sending myself emails in the middle of the night with one or two more bands to add. We’re looking at going at least nine installments for this series at this point. Luckily for you, we’re parceling them out at a rate of about one a week, so that you aren’t completely overwhelmed (and more importantly, neither am I). Indeed, this one right here took over a week to finish. That’s the way the ball bounces sometimes. Anyway, here’s our next batch of artists with names between E and J in the alphabet. Enjoy! –Marilyn Drew Necci

Enforced, “Malignance,” Kill Grid
2021 Century Media Records

When a raw, passionate band moves to a bigger label, I always get a bit nervous. So I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t feeling a bit of trepidation as I waited to hear which direction the band would go on their sophomore platter. Would the big label treatment result in a polished sheen, or would the band dare to dial the violence up a few notches?

According to Enforced, that’s not an either/or question, because sophomore album Kill Grid is simultaneously heavier and more polished than its predecessor. While comparisons to Power Trip and High Command are still valid, Enforced occasionally careens their hardcore thrash sound into the more extreme territory of the crossover spectrum, where outfits like Black Breath and Plague Years reside. Heavily influenced by the riffing and chaotic lead styles of Demolition Hammer, Slayer, and Sepultura, Enforced guitarists Will Wagstaff and Zach Monahan spend the vast majority of Kill Grid blowing my fucking mind with their powerful performances. Single “Malignance” demonstrates just about every tactic that the band employs in a four-and-a-half-minute package. The speed, the groove, the squeals, it’s all there, and when coupled with the monstrous hardcore shouts of vocalist Knox Colby, the results are positively lethal. –from Angry Metal Guy

The Ernies, “Here And Now,” Meson Rey
1999 Mojo Records

Mojo Records has a winner with the The Ernies (what a great name for a band!) and their release, “Meson Rey.” This band combines heavy metal, rap and jazz – with the emphasis on the metal – for a highly unusual sound that is explosive and most infectious.

It took me a few spins to get into the groove, but now I am really into this band. The music is energetic, loud and full of life. The words are deep and loaded with thoughtful messages throughout. The band is tight and likes to play and it shows in a big way. The saxophones of Hayes Smith give the band a strange, funky sound that is kind of cool.

I can just bet these dudes put on one bitchin’ live show. Hey, guys, when you’re in L.A. give us a call! –from Rough Edge

Everyone Dies In The End, “Don’t Forget To Breathe,” The Space Between Spaces
2017 Stillwater Recordings

An instrumental quartet with song titles as long and complex as the songs they refer to, Everyone Dies In The End are the sort of band for which the classification “post-rock” was originally coined. Despite their use of the same instrumental configuration with which this band’s members have previously formed hardcore and metal bands, this band forgoes the verses and choruses that have been the essential basis for pop songwriting for half a century now. Instead, they spend extended periods of time constructing atmospheres through ambient effects and repeating rhythms that slowly pick up steam, like boulders rolling downhill. Eventually, of course, those boulders have to crash to earth, and these moments become the loud and powerful crescendos that dot the landscape of All Things Lead To This, the group’s 5-song debut album. –from RVA Magazine, March 14, 2014

The Exploder, “Ceremony For A Fat Lip,” This Sound Starts Right Now
1997 Reptilian Records

Nobody’s written anything worth a damn about this band anywhere on the internet, so here, let me tell you what’s up. The Exploder was what a few West End pop-punk kids — specifically Jesse Lyell and Dan Evans from Pre-Skool and Jedd Wilcox from The Nuns (no, not the famous Cali Nuns, the anonymous early-90s Richmond Nuns) — did once they got a little older and started stretching their creative boundaries a bit. There were a bunch of chaotic hardcore bands in Richmond at the time, playing the sort of music that would be called “screamo” a few years later (Four Hundred Years, Sleepytime Trio, etc), and The Exploder fit right in with that scene. Their live sets were intense freakouts, and they were lucky enough to capture both their energy and their songwriting talent on their lone LP, from which the above track is taken, as well as follow-up EP West End Kids Crusade, before they broke up right around the turn of the millennium. –MDN

Falls Under April, “44491,” Falls Under April
2001 Self-released

Another lesser-known Richmond band who, again, probably would have gotten tagged “screamo” a few years later. This quartet was from Powhatan County back when that was less the outer suburbs and more the straight-up country. My band played with them at a house show a high-schooler booked in their parents’ basement out in Woodlake or somewhere and I was blown away. I figured these random country high school kids had somehow gotten into some pretty heavy bands, but it turned out they’d never heard any of the bands I thought they sounded like. They just managed to make some really sincere, energetic music in isolation that turned out to be some of the best stuff happening in this city in the first few years of the 21st century. Members grew up and went on to bands like Race The Sun, Mouthbreather, and Sea Of Storms, but this track captures them in the first blush of youth. Perfect. –MDN

Fat Spirit (fka Heavy Midgets), “House Of Cats,” Super King
2013 Self-released

it’s a pretty amazing preview of the new Heavy Midgets LP, Super King, which the band just recently recorded and is set to come out… well, sometime soon. We’ll admit the sound isn’t perfect, but for a live recording it does a pretty great job of capturing every instrument working in tandem–and producing what just might be the best Heavy Midgets jam yet. With guitarist Charlanne McCarthy on lead vocals, the song has a pleasing melody that mixes well with guitarist Ian McQuary’s catchy lead lines. John Graham (bass) and Bren Hall (drums) are the motor that drives the song, which is uptempo without being frantic, and seems like it should definitely get kids dancing. –from RVA Magazine, November 6, 2013

Fatty Love, “Double A,” Fatty Love
1994 Tenderizer Records

Short-lived project band featuring John Partin and Chris Wade of Hose.Got.Cable teaming up with Mark Morton and John Campbell of Lamb Of God back when all of them were young Richmond musicians nobody had ever heard of yet. A heavy-rockin’ band that was here and gone so quickly that this EP is all they left behind. Still worth remembering, though –MDN

Field Day, “Barbie With Gun,” Christian Television
2010 Rorschach Records

Field Day’s debut 7″, Christian Television is a three-song spate of lurching but easy-going math rock not far from the likes of Ghosts and Vodka or a less tense June of 44. Though “The Fast” and “And Bi-Curious” (I get it!) are succinct spit-takes of restrained, head-swaying motion, four-minute-plus closer “Barbie with Gun” allows the band’s dynamic rhythms and changes to stretch with more space. The guitars play off each other well in this one, driving into long fits of Built to Spill-esque distortion and off-key pulls towards the bridge and finish. It’s familiar, but done well. –from PunkNews

Fight Cloud, “Pipe Dream,” We’ll Be Alright
2016 Self-released

Fight Cloud and Houdan The Mystic are preparing for a split release that will drop this fall. The new Fight Cloud song we have for you is not actually slated for inclusion on that split. However, the band has posted a demo recording of a song scheduled for the LP they’re planning to release at some point in the future. And my god, it’s so good we just couldn’t resist sharing it with you. The track is called “Pipe Dream,” it has some amazing dual-guitar melodic interplay as well as a talented vocal turn from singer Justin Stuit, and the band apparently recorded the whole thing live, which is amazing in light of how clear-sounding and tightly played it is. Listen to it below, and get ready around the 2:30 mark for the entire thing to lift off into the stratosphere.

If that’s just the demo version, I can’t imagine how good the final studio recording is going to be. –from RVA Magazine, August 14, 2014 [Note: the demo I wrote this about is no longer online, but the final released version above is equally great. –MDN]

F1NG3RS, “Outta There,” Outta There
2021 Self-released

F1NG3RS is a music producer known for his video game music remixes, mashups, pop culture remixes, parodies and video game inspired original music. F1NG3RS combines elements of retro video game textures, synthwave, funk, hip-hop and EDM into a fresh, but nostalgic sound. –From Bandcamp

FIXTURES · THE NEW SWARM

Fixtures, “The New Swarm,” Rusted Screws & Machinery Of Man
2011 Self-released

The problem with the internet age is that sometimes smaller bands come and go, and later on, people who were involved decide they’re not really fans of what they used to do, and they go back to all the places it was located online and make it disappear. If you’re someone who thought what they were doing back then was awesome, you’re out of luck. Fortunately, I was able to find this three-song EP by Southside metalcore band Fixtures lurking on Soundcloud. Enjoy it now, on the off chance that it too disappears sometime in the near future. –MDN

Flashbulb Memory, “Not Some Phony Symphony,” Split LP with Joshua Fit For Battle
2000 Revolutionary Audio

Although they were a punk band more than anything, Richmond, Virginia’s FLASHBULB MEMORY seamlessly blended emo, rock, screamo and hardcore into a pretty danceable creation that is certainly worth checking out.

On the split 12″ with Joshua Fit For Battle, opener “Not Some Phony Symphony” begins like Wow, Owls!, Stop It!! and brings in a few other sounds that generally remind me of late 90s emo and dancier screamo. –from Open Mind/Saturated Brain

Flechette, “Ovidian Hurts,” Flechette
2011 Sound Era

…Sound Era, a new Richmond-based record label owned by members of local scene veterans Mouthbreather, have stepped up to fill this gap, putting out Flechette’s self-titled debut LP as their inaugural release. The 45 RPM 12″ slab of vinyl does count as a full-length release, though just barely–its 7 songs last just 24 minutes, and definitely leave the eager listener wanting more. However, what is here is more than worth the price of admission, with the aggressive post-hardcore stomp of the band’s riffing driven to higher levels of energy by obvious residual influences from the time the members have spent playing fast hardcore. Think Drive Like Jehu at their fastest, Sleepytime Trio at their most aggressive, or Quicksand with the energy of Gorilla Biscuits. There are also experimental touches, made most obvious by the between-song noise interludes contributed by Landis Wine of White Laces and John Hawkins of Roy G Biv. This album would have fit right in with the 90s-era chaotic hardcore scene that produced classic recordings by Unwound, Clikatat Ikatowi, and Swing Kids, but it’s just as welcome here today. In fact, it’s just another of the many examples that we are presented with on a daily basis of just how abundantly awesome the Richmond music scene is, and while it can be hard to keep up with everything going on in this town, this is not an album that you can afford to miss. –from RVA Magazine, June 29, 2011

Flight Club, “No Way (Get Real),” Kinda Funny
2017 Self-released

“True Rock. True with no E, Rock with no C – Tru Rok.” This is the sound of Richmond’s Flight Club.

“Tru rok, if I had to say it was one thing it would be Foo Fighters meets Four Year Strong- ‘Foo Year Strong’,” said guitarist Charlie Mahoney when describing the four-piece band’s music. “Cause it has that aggressive bouncy part of it from four years and where it gets a little bit heavier is the Foo Fighters, who’s just a rock and roll band.”

Although the band commented on how they identify as a “tru rok” band, the overall musical style, from the lyrical content to the guitar riffs that make you want to angry finger point and dance the night away, shows that they are a pop-punk band at heart. The bandmates themselves, however, disagree.

“I think honestly if you listen to the music, right now especially, we probably just get coined pop-punk, but we’re really trying to take that in a different direction,” said Mahoney. “Pop-punk is honestly one of my favorite genres, but even now I’m like, ‘okay, give me something new, we get {it}, you broke up in high school, dude. You’re an adult now, so we’re just trying to add a little bit of maturity to that.” –from RVA Magazine, January 26, 2018

Fly Anakin, “Sean Price,” Sean Price (single)
2021 Self-released

Over the summer, Richmond rapper and Mutant Academy leader Fly Anakin self-released the seven-song Pixote via Bandcamp, along with an announcement that he would no longer be using streaming services to share his music. Now, Fly Anakin has shared a brand-new track, “Sean Price,” which is produced by Evidence and is an ode to the late Brooklyn rapper. It’s also the first track from a new solo project from Fly Anakin that will drop next year.

“Sean Price inspired me to stand on what I believe in and say whatever I feel no matter what type of beat it is,” Fly Anakin said of Price, who passed away in 2015, and who was part of groups including Heltah Skeltah and Boot Camp Clik. “His influence put me in the driver’s seat, I grew wings and shit.” –from Stereogum

From Earth To Ashes, “Ache To Believe,” Dark City
2000 Self-released

The generation of hardcore kids who’d grown up in Richmond during the fertile time of the late 90s came of age around the turn of the millennium, which led to a whole bunch of post-hardcore bands coming out in those first few post-Y2K bands, from Richmond people who’d previously been playing music of the much more straight-up variety. From Earth To Ashes saw several veterans of Richmond’s late-90s hardcore scene, alumni of bands like Indypendant and Broken Chains Of Segregation, recruit Dan Evans of The Exploder to add a more melodic vocal touch to their still chugging but more complex tunes. They only released one EP before breaking up, and since my copy — which dates from very early in the CD-R era — has been unplayable for a solid decade, I’m very thankful that Richmond label Ovolr Records reissued this material last year, and we can all hear this stuff once again. –MDN

From Fragile Seeds, “Comfort,” Myth And Ceremony
2015 Self-released

This performance, filmed by Steven and Lily Photography on what appears to be a back porch somewhere in RVA, features From Fragile Seeds’ current four-piece lineup. However, drummer Chris Gregory doubles as a third guitarist–which is fitting, in light of the fact that Myth And Ceremony was recorded during a transitional period in which the band had only three members. Gregory, an accomplished guitarist in his own right, doubled on drums and guitar for the album, and it’s pretty amazing to watch him play his guitar both in conventional fashion and as a percussion instrument during this video.

Myth And Ceremony will be released in CD and digital formats on Tuesday, April 14. Singer/guitarist Andrew Inge, who also produced and engineered the album, described the seven songs on this full-length as “a bit more focused in style” than the band’s previous album. “[On] the last album, we seemed to have trouble deciding what we wanted to be,” he explained. “We’ve gone more in the “post-rock” direction, I guess you could say. I just think it’s a more grown-up and refined version of our old music.” Gregory agreed, saying, “It’s a little less aggressive overall, so therefore, a little more laid-back. At the same time it has a relatively uptempo feel, in a way, so it’s not extremely melancholy or anything.” –from RVA Magazine, March 31, 2015

.gif From God, “Possible Futures In The Minds Of Children,” Approximation of a Human
2019 Prosthetic Records

I’ve been seeing .gif From God play since their earliest basement blasts of metal noise hysteria and while they’ve been amazing from the jump, they only seem to get better as time goes on. Last year’s split EP with Vein saw them taking things to a higher level with longer, more complex songs, but they retained their edge. They’ve continued to incorporate the best elements of metalcore, screamo, spastic grind a la the Locust, and outright horrible noise into a potpourri of entertaining, energetic sounds that are always delivered with maximum hyperactive intensity. –from RVA Magazine, January 17, 2018

Government Warning, “Arrested,” Arrested EP
2007 Grave Mistake Records

Government Warning has always been a “grower” of a band for me. After my first spin of the No Moderation LP I wasn’t that impressed. It took a few months for me to really get into it, same with their first seven inch. With Arrested, there was no growing period necessary. It hooked me faster than Theo Fleury in a pharmacy.

The fact that the title track of the 7″ wasn’t written by Rikk Agnew is astonishing. How did four guys from Richmond manage to capture the exact essence of early `80s Orange County? This song has everything: the “OC” drum beat, the perfectly placed guitar solo, desperate lyrics, a great sing-along chorus, basically the total package. This shit would have fit in perfectly on any Adolescents, D.I., or early TSOL record. Part of me is really hoping they follow this direction more in the future. It is really that great of a song. Crazy Uncle Rikk would be damn proud.

There was a period for awhile where I was burnt out on hardcore and almost gave up on it completely. Government Warning is one of the main reasons why I’m back in with more of a vengeance than ever before. Pick this record up now. –from PunkNews

Graven Image, “Wrong Way To Utopia,” Kicked Out Of The Scene
1984 Eskimo Records

Hardcore punk in the ’80’s was quite the thing to behold. Violent, dangerous, reckless and amazing all at the same time; this was the music of a generation’s revolt against the status quo. It spread virus-like all over the country and Virginia was no exception, spawning their own small scene of dedicated fans and bands willing to build on hardcore’s reputation. Graven Image, led by the charismatic Dwayne Curd was no exception. Touring and recording at a furious pace, the band made themselves one of the highlights of the Virginia hardcore scene. The band didn’t last very long but their reputation has lasted throughout the years by those who were there and who remembered. –from Perfect Sound Forever

Haircut, “Boys Club,” Shutting Down
2017 Feel It Records

Five tracks of furious hardcore punk on the debut EP from Richmond’s HAIRCUT. Originally formed in nearby Charlottesville, VA (and opening countless shows at the legendary Magnolia House), Haircut released a strong demo at the end of 2016 before landing just down I-64 in Richmond. The speed and precision displayed across “Shutting Down” is rarely captured so well on a band’s first record, but the execution on these five tracks (all of which burn through in 60-90 seconds) is hard to match. Just as essential to this release are Juliana’s tireless, outspoken lyrics (both in English + Spanish) and vocal delivery which echoes from a very candid perspective often missing in contemporary punk and hardcore. A standout EP devoid of any gimmickry or trend-worship. Simply pure, classic hardcore punk. –from Grave Mistake

Heartracer, “Darling,” Darling (single)
2020 Self-released

The band’s name, Heartracer, is for Chris’ lifelong condition, Tachycardia, which causes the heart to speed up and slow down at random. Just like his condition, ‘Darling’, as with their other songs, does a fair approximation, with the high emotional starts and crashing comedowns of steering through love. Low key electronica is quickly supplanted by jagged bass. The perfect illustration of the fragility, yet hopefulness of many relationships, Chris’ vocals are nonetheless anything but shy, while he delivers his lyrics, often of a highly personal nature.

In the music video for ‘Darling’, we see the band in a space that is dimly lit only by magenta and blue bulbs. There appears to be neither walls nor ceiling, and the band, in blazers and sunglasses, are as lost in the track as the listeners, the clip. and the sound of the song itself, harking back to an earlier time, when the focus was on the band and the music, more than the video. –from Essentially Pop

Hewolf, “Iron Survivor Theme,” Iron Survivor 2 Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
2020 Self-released

“Rock, Paper, Scissors, Shoot!” Get ready to rumble, and get ready to listen to Hewolf’s latest album, Iron Survivor 2: The Motion Picture Soundtrack. This movie-less soundtrack needs no visuals to take you on an adventure through the wild world of underground, high-stakes Rock-Paper-Scissors Competitions. Through the eyes of lonely child Danny Laredo, we get to learn about love, lust, and what it really takes to win it all.

Iron Survivor 2 came out on October 30th, and has generated a buzz among Hewolf fans. The album features six tracks that walk listeners through the most poignant moments of the movie (which again, to be clear, doesn’t actually exist). Listen as Danny gains the confidence to compete, take on his most vicious opponents, and then vanquish them all.

Though the plot puts young Danny in perilous and serious positions, the guys in Hewolf don’t let that get in their heads when writing out his story. Their comedic take on “cock-rock” and the theatrics of metal bring light to the soundtrack, and help entrench us in the fast paced world that Danny strives every day to bury his stake in.

“We’re serious about our instruments, but everything that follows after that is sarcasm,” said Throckmorton. “The three of us are dads so we’re responsible, we’re punctual, we make sure that we get the job done, but we’re also total goofballs.” –from RVA Magazine, January 12, 2021

Hoax Hunters, “Teenage Message,” Dormant
2018 Cherub Records

The lyrical topics on Dormant range from surrealist painting to connecting with people over art objects, and draws a line between his activism and art.

The band expertly mimics the sound of 80s and 90s noise rock and punk, sharing sonic similarities with indie bands like Sebadoh and Royal Trux, or more current bands like Estrogen Highs. The band uses lo-fi recording techniques to give the guitars a chainsaw-esque buzz that also brings the sound in line with early punk and hardcore acts. “Teenage Message”, the first song on the EP, features Ottawa, Ontario-based singer, songwriter and multi instrumentalist Catriona Sturton on harmonica. Sturton was formerly a member of Canadian power pop band Plumtree.

As DIY punk and indie subcultures sink further into media’s long tail, the tendency to create in a bubble has become commonplace; Hoax Hunter’s willingness to engage with political and cultural topics in a meaningful way while still retaining some artistic merit is atypical of Richmond’s DIY subcultures, and sets them apart from much of the local enclave. –from RVA Magazine, July 12, 2018

Hold Tight!, “Our Pets’ Heads Are Falling Off,” Can’t Take This Away
2010 Animal Style Records

Hold Tight! have helped lead a resurgence in Richmond’s basement pop-punk scene. They blend pop-hardcore influences like Kid Dynamite and Lifetime with an almost adolescent “let’s have fun and make as many friends as possible because that’s what this is all about” view of music, informed by a deep commitment to the stylings of bands like Blink-182 and Green Day. Fast, loud, and fun, this band is one of Richmond’s best. –from RVA Magazine, September 20, 2011

Hose.Got.Cable, “Chevy Chase Motherfucker,” Antidisestablishmentarianismesque
1994 Tenderizer Records

Sometimes lumped in as a proto-mathcore band, Hose.Got.Cable were responsible for bringing new types of rhythms into punk. On their retrospective disc, Discography 1992-1995, the group collects their first 7”, their Doubt 7”, their LP, and some tracks from compilations. Throughout the disc is a blatant disregard for standard song structure, which surely is as refreshing now as it was in the mid-`90s. Sometimes the band ends a song at a seemingly early juncture, leaving your ears about three seconds past the track change. And sometimes one wonders, why didn’t the band end a particular song 40 seconds or so earlier. But, this isn’t a bad thing. To the contrary, these strange configurations allow contemplations such as “why did they do that here” or “I think this song could have had three times as many sections!” These puzzles, which were definitely created from deft skill and a highly attuned ear, afford the discography multiple listens with each spin adding new questions.

Sure, these guys could make one heck of a racket. When they smash it up, boy, do they smash up! But then again, so can a thousands other bands. Where Hose.Got.Cable truly excels is their ability to back off at just the right time, and sometimes seemingly just the wrong time, and let smoother and gentler sounds take over. But these smooth passages are even more dangerous than their nasty ones, because it’s unclear just when they will strike back with a pummeling onslaught of highly technical, but sloppy, thrashing guitar and screaming. –from PunkNews

The Hot Seats, “Peaches,” Feel
2012 Self-released

Hot on the heels of their live album recorded at a coffee shop in Ashland Virginia last year here’s a new studio album from The Hot Seats. They unveiled several of the songs and tunes on the album when they played here in May and anyone who knows the band will know what to expect here. That’s not to say that they are repeating themselves or going through the motions. Rather it’s another opportunity to marvel at their musical dexterity and to revel in their essential mixture of reverence and goofiness. Driving string driven workouts such as No Plans and Here To Get My Baby Out of Jail swing like hell and allow for plenty of inspired fiddle, banjo and guitar licks while the instrumental interludes (Rattletrap, Mineola Rag, Beasties In The Sugar, Hell and Scissors) almost inspire one to start a barn dance in front of the old desk. While the sheer vim and vigour of this whirlwind of plucking and picking makes The Hot Seats a must see live attraction their more restrained jug band side excels on the recorded medium. The rather risqué Peaches (unofficially accorded the title of the top song of the Shetland Folk Festival they recently played) allows Josh Bearman to fully wallow in the potential lasciviousness of this entendre laden ditty while the band slink along with a devilish mischievousness. –from Blabber n’ Smoke

Houdan The Mystic, “Chasing The Strobe,” Archer’s Jamboree
2012 Self-released

Swirling eerie sevenths open, taking you somewhere into a vortex… deeper… deeper… then, BAM! You are smacked in the face with a spastic explosion of strings and beats, which quickly shapes itself into a thoughtful head-bobbin’ jam. This is the opening track of Houdan The Mystic’s first release, Archer’s Jamboree. The Richmond band, which contains two of the members of Night Idea, has been making waves around town since their formation. Their tasteful and extremely tight blend of experimental-technical-melodic rock, heartfelt lyrics, and large beards puts them into a category they can truly call their own.

It’s always great to hear music that both sounds like nothing ever created before, and avoids being bad. I like bands that accomplish this feat even more if they hail from my hometown. Archer’s Jamboree, which was recorded and mastered by friends for under $50, lands on the sonic spectrum somewhere between American Football and Tera Melos. Being a three piece, Houdan The Mystic relies heavily on the melodic bass and intricate guitar and drum work to fill out the sound.

The album manages to pull off a fun and oftentimes humorous vibe, while remaining equally mature and sincere. Tracks like “Chasing The Strobe” start with complicated, proggy jams, but smoothly work their way into catchy as hell loops, which can get stuck in your head for damn weeks–trust me. –from RVA Magazine, April 3, 2012

Illa Styles, “Long As The Villian Wins,” A Quarter Til A Mil
2019 Self-released

With a gritty sound and life instruction manual-style lyrics, A Quarter Til A Mil finds Illa Styles rapping over high-energy jazz and carefully-crafted production from Michael Millions, with skits and features as versatile and well-made as the album itself.

Styles isn’t new to the game. Much like a carpenter goes to trade school to learn their craft, he graduated from the school of hard knocks in order to create this new record. It’s a refreshing guide to navigating street life while maintaining personal growth, and even when it comes to the dirty details, Styles doesn’t shy away. If anything, it is through his transparency that he finds his power.

“I am not glorifying this,” Styles said. “I am just documenting things that went down during the course of my time here.” —from RVA Magazine, December 9, 2019

Immortal Avenger, “Sound The Alarm,” Sound The Alarm
2006 Self-released

Old School Metal from Richmond, Virginia’s very own Immortal Avenger! This 5-song EP is the bands` much anticipated follow up to “Valor and Justice”, and while that was a fine effort, “Sound The Alarm” is leagues above it in every respect! On this one, the band manages to retain the classic Metal sound that has always been their stock-in-trade; think early Lizzy Borden, Mercyful Fate, Maiden. In fact, this EP even has echos of “Wheels Of Steel”-era Saxon, particularly the vocals of Johnny Throckmorton. It all kicks off with the rousing title track, and a finer opening salvo could not have been chosen! [haven`t yet had the pleasure of seeing the lads live, but I hope they start off their shows with this song; if not, they SHOULD!]

The whole EP displays all of Immortal Avenger`s best qualities; killer riffs, melodic solos, clever time changes, tighter-than-a-ducks-ass rhythms and hummable choruses. Nope, it definitely does NOT get any better than this. –from West Side Dave

Jack Rose, “Cathedral Et Chartres,” Kensington Blues
2005 VHF Records

Kensington Blues is derivative and at the same time nearly brilliant. The styles Rose employs are diverse: twelve-string virtuoso shows, a slide guitar that alludes as much to the sitar as to the blues, solid traditional Takoma ragtime and folk. Out from latter comes a Fahey cover, “Sunflower River Blues”, which (not surprisingly) works as the soil from which the rest of the record grows. The original was predicated on Fahey’s impeccable timing; Rose’s take amplifies the feeling and melody, and then runs with it. Hence the stunning “Kensington Blues”, a song full of clarity and syncopation, elegant and well composed. Two others, “Rappahanock River Rag” and “Flirtin’ with the Undertaker”, are less weighty, more jaunty deliveries of Rose’s signature modern ragtime.

But Rose is more than a traditionalist, and the other tracks on Kensington Blues veer sharply into newer territory. “Cathedral et Chartres” uses twelve strings to abstract the melodic clarity so abundant elsewhere on the record, speeding it up and then sending it into a droning, buzzing finale. This idea is fully worked out in his closer, “Calais to Dover”, in which Rose transfigures the raga into a kind of Dream Music, deep listening project, vibrating his way past individual notes and sequences and arriving at something more akin to pure tone and texture. The minimalist affinity is no coincidence: Rose’s folk is not the least bit free, even as he explores freak sonic terrain, and control is his technique, no matter how many notes he stacks. —from Pitchfork

Jazz Poets Society, “Aboriginals,” Poets Lounge The Show
1998 5th Child Records

A phenomenal blend of jazz, spoken word, and hip-hop, Jazz Poets Society dazzled and titillated minds in a short time. Unfortunately the group is so underground that either you’ve heard of them or you never will. Personally, it was a good few years before I was able to finally safeguard a copy of their Poets Lounge; a CD so good and rare that you wish you could take over a radio station and play it for all to hear. Or, maybe invest one’s own funds to get it widely distributed and promoted like it should have been originally. Alas, those without it will be left to the same 5 songs on the radio and the most sincere sympathy of audibly weary everywhere. –from Amazon

Jeremy D. Simmons, “This Time,” Pie In The Sky
2015 Low Blow

Jeremy D. Simmons is one of the strongest musicians in town. On his debut solo album, he evokes a sonic piecemeal of sorts and the results are stellar. Pie In The Sky is the result of years crafting a musical identity beyond reimagining of influence. Simmons stands out as a unique voice in a city with a wealth of them. –from RVA Magazine, December 1, 2015

Jettison Charlie, “Hitchhiking To Budapest,” Hitchhiking To Budapest
1994 Turn Of the Century Records

Richmond’s Jettison Charlie comes up with some infectious bass grooves and serious slammin’ riffs on their latest release. The music stomps, makes me want to rev up a 78 Ford and tear up and down Franklin County runnin’ shine. However, Bob Massey’s voice sounds at times like he’s gargling with kerosene. Chris Adler lays down some really impressive thump on songs “Rusty Nails,” and the title track. Hitchhiking to Budapest has the power to make it all the way to Everest (or at least from Powhatan to 2nd & Grace). —from Throttle

Joe Threat, “Attic Addict,” Sinister Circus
2013 Self-released

I’ve heard about Threat for quite some time in RVA and have kept up with him and his website and see the random posts about hip hop and crazy stories he has for people, but this album really defined him in a way that I wasn’t expecting from him. The production is crazy, and Threat lyrically brings his A-game. As you press play, he starts the mixtape on a very somber note with tracks like “Conflict Within,” where he talks about the conflict he feels dealing with trying to be accepted. My face twisted as the drum pattern of “Drop The Beat” played through my headset. The 808s thumped on this hype party track, which is produced by Photosynthesizers’ own Dr. Data. Throughout the mixtape, you hear production from Fan Ran and many other local producers, which in my eyes made this a classic, and could possibly catapult Threat’s buzz in RVA. —from RVA Magazine, August 9, 2013

That’s it for this installment of the Richmond Music Catalog. Check out Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5 if you haven’t already. We’ll be back next week with Part 7. Stay tuned.

Tommy John Don’t Care: A Conversation With Adam Kravitz Of Future Projektor

Ryan Kent | January 24, 2022

Topics: Adam Kravitz, Eddie Van Halen, Future Projektor, Gritter, Jimmy Bower, richmond bands, richmond music, Terma, Tommy John

He pulled his Ford F-150 in front of the Starbucks on Robinson Street like it was some kind of mobile command unit. Loud music getting louder from a few blocks down. I knew who it was before he got there. We’ve acted this scene out more times than I could try to invent for an article.

You can almost see it: Adam pulling up in front of wherever, playing something really loud, while I’m smoking cigarettes somewhere I shouldn’t be smoking cigarettes. This probably happened for the first seven years we knew each other.

“Have you heard this?” his voice shot out the window.

Per usual, I hadn’t.

“You should,” he said.

I climbed into the passenger seat of his truck, and we sat there, as we’ve done for over a decade, and listened to whatever it was he was tweaking out on at the moment. This time it was Infant Annihilator. The song was “Soil the Stillborn,” and it sounded like a helicopter singing through a machine gun.

When you’ve been pals with someone for a long time, usually the conversation doesn’t need to pull over for gas. Either it begins where it left off or it hovers above, waiting for the right place to land or drop something hot. This normally doesn’t take long.

“What was the movie with the guy and the puppet opera?” he asked.

“John Cusack? Being John Malkovich?”

“No. The movie with [Jason Segel] in it.”

“Oh, Dracula musical [Forgetting Sarah Marshall].”

“That’s the one,” he said. “I love the idea of having an event. A one-time, real deal. If I’ve got to pay to do it, so be it. The thing would catch the eyes of the 17 people who would show up. I’d probably just give the tickets away and make it free. Would probably cost me 40 grand to put it on, and I’d lose money, but I don’t really care.”

This is Adam Kravitz. He doesn’t have 40 grand or a puppet opera somewhere in his truck, but at least 17 people would show up to whatever his thing was.

“I am a 49-year-old, Jewish heart attack survivor.”

He’s also a very loud guitar player. His past metal band, Gritter, released five loud metal records from 2008 to 2018. They did regional tours, and toured some of the US, but mostly Gritter played shows here in Richmond. Sometimes opening for marquee names like Children of Bodom, The Sword, Eyehategod, GWAR, Royal Blood, and so on. More often than not, people showed up after Gritter played.

Maybe you’ve recently stumbled upon his instrumental band, Future Projektor. They’re a raucous blending of doom-metal and psychedelic rock, synced with rolling, abstract film scenes. They’ve been double-dosing willing ears around town ever since dropping their first album, Terma, in 2019.

“Doom soundscapes,” Adam said.

Yep. Doom soundscapes. Played real fucking loud.

As luck would have it, a week after Adam’s 48^th birthday in May 2020, he got that “one-time, real deal” thing, but naturally, it wasn’t part of the original plotline. Life wrote a few paragraphs of its own, adding in a non-ST segment elevation myocardial infarction (NSTEMI) into his story for spice. This means three of Adam’s arteries were partially blocked and his cardiovascular system panic-dialed in a heart attack. He was taking a shower, stepped out, called 911, and collapsed on the floor.

The rest is doctor-speak, involving stents and an angioplasty. A conversation which took place with a newborn pandemic screaming down the halls of every wing everywhere, just a day after George Floyd was murdered on camera. A new hospital drama, it would seem. Taped in front of an empty studio with no audience.

However, this wasn’t the pilot episode for Richmond Med, and our lives aren’t a Dick Wolf production. People passionately marched in defiance of law and order. Helicopters. Fireworks. Gun shots. Hundreds of voices. Thousands of clenched teeth. Bedlam unfolding outside of Adam’s hospital window and across the country. A deadly virus doing pushups in the middle of all of it.

Who wouldn’t fear what 2022 had waiting just outside the shower curtain?

“I think, everything everyone’s ever been through is why they’re where they’re at today. [Having] gone through too many different things. Just like the heart attack. I think that’s the one that aged me. I [went] from feeling 33 to 50 in a day.”

“What’s the difference between 33 and 50?” I asked.

“You start seeing your own mortality. Timelines. You start seeing everything how it is, not how you interpret it. The pandemic, the way it all worked, [and how] everything hit at the same time. It made me see myself for who I truly am. I [had] lived in a clouded haze of pills and drinking, somehow skipped 40 and went straight to 49. Like, I’m missing almost a decade. That’s a mindfuck.”

*Adam in the hospital, post-heart attack.*

“Have you seen it translate into your music? Was there a change?”

“Yes. Also, a sense of urgency. [Having] a life altering scenario like that, it just made me really want to push forward. Get the ideas organized and together. So, I stopped fucking around. If we needed something, we’re gonna go get it. We needed to get this set up. Go do it. Needed to write this stuff. Go do it. Needed a graphic design. Go do it. I mean, not that much different than what we did in Gritter.”

“I think there’s far more maturity in the songwriting of Future Projektor compared to Gritter.”

“More or less, when in-comparison to being fucked up for a decade versus only the last few years. We started Future Projektor in 2019, but we didn’t play that many shows in the first incarnation of the band. COVID-19 shut it down. The last show we played was with Weedeater at The Camel. Two weeks later, [Seth Harris, drums, formerly of Honor Role/Kepone] told me he was quitting and [Brian Metz, bass, formerly of Bowl Ethereal] eventually lost interest. So, I went from playing in a band, to the pandemic, to almost dying. Funny thing is, fast-forward a year later, I had [new band members] working on new material. That’s pretty incredible. What did it though, for me, was jamming with you and Jimmy Bower [of Eyehategod/Down].”

“The heart attack jams!”

“Yeah, he was amazing. It was surreal. He would call me like, ‘Let’s fucking play, man. Come on, dude. Let’s do this shit.’ We had just started jamming before he moved back down to New Orleans. He was gonna be the [new] drummer in Future Projektor.”

“Always so close, Adam. Why haven’t you stopped playing music?”

“A lot of people ask me that. They’re like, ‘Why would you still play music? There’s no money in it.’ Let’s look at all the other ‘old guy’ bands out there playing. They’re not trying to play incredibly heavy, intense music [anymore]. They’re going softer. But me, I want it to be heavier, louder. It’s not loud enough. I want it where your taint and your balls shake. Then it’s loud enough. That’s when it’s right.”

“That sounds like your mentality with most things,” I said.

“Exactly. I think my allure and attraction to heavy music is that it drowns out everything else. I don’t listen to music for the lyrics. I don’t get any lyrical attachments to things. I don’t connect that way. I connect over sound. The feeling and sensation when it shakes your bones. You feel it in your core. That’s the reason I play. I love the way it feels. I saw PJ Harvey once, and [some] girl did nothing but talk loudly for twenty minutes. For me, I want it to be so fucking loud that [people] can’t talk. I know what I’m feeling onstage feels awesome. It’s always been about metal.”

I decided to go to a Future Projektor practice. The setting was familiar. I’d spent ten years playing music with Adam Kravitz in Gritter, six of them with Kevin White (also of Throttlerod), who was behind the kit again. Sean Plunkett (ex-I Am The Liquor) was newer to the fold, being tapped to lug around the low-end after the “heart attack jams.” It almost felt like Gritter, but it wasn’t. Even still, with four years gone, the sound still shook my balls. My taint.

In 2022, Future Projektor is slated to play The Maryland Doom Fest near the tail-end of June at Café 611 in Frederick, MD. Before then, Adam and Co. will be entering the studio to record their follow-up to 2019’s Terma. Local and regional shows will be dripped like napalm throughout the remaining winter months into Spring, slow-burning audiences each and every night.

I watched my friend play his baritone Schecter during the band’s rehearsal, and I remembered the heart attack conversation we’d had earlier. It made me think of the many things I’ve given up on in my life and how my reasons were growing thinner with each song Kevin counted off. What right do I have to complain about anything? Complain when it’s gone.

“Tell me the Van Halen story,” I asked on the way back to the Fan.

“I worked up in the Hollywood Hills on the backside, in Studio City,” he began. “My boss [at Good Guys] was like, ‘Adam, go help that guy out by the camcorders.’ In L.A., even the most homeless-looking person probably has a black American Express card. You can never judge anybody on how they look out there. The richest of the rich look disgusting because they’re fucking insane. Anyway, this guy looks a little dirty, a little hippie-ish, and everything he’s got is in a little necklace pack. Some little stoner pack or whatever.”

“Was it Andy Garcia’s brother, Barry Garcia?”

“Haha. No. The guy turned around and it was Eddie Van Halen. [He’s] literally on a shortlist of three people I’d ever want to meet. My first concert was Van Halen [at the Richmond Coliseum] in 1984. My dad took me, and that’s the reason I play the guitar. That shit was fucking incredible. I helped him [in the store] for a solid hour. Finally, I was like, ‘Look, the chances of ever meeting you again are zero. I just want to [tell you] the first concert I ever saw was Van Halen in 1984.’ He’s like, ‘Oh, that’s great. You know, I remember that.’ I was like, ‘There’s no way you remember 1984. I don’t remember three weeks ago but, thank you.’ I said, ‘I just wanted to tell you, that watching you play ‘Eruption’ and getting to see what you do live, you’re the reason I wanted to play the guitar.’”

“What did he say?”

“He looked at me dead in the face. [He said], ‘It’s not because of me that you play the guitar. It’s in you. You play guitar because that’s what comes out of you. You just liked what I do, and I influenced you.’ Then he turned around and started looking [at the camcorders] again. I was dumbstruck. I’m like, Eddie Van Halen just told me it’s because of me that I play the guitar. He could have had 100 million rehearsed, generic statements, and maybe that was one of his rehearsed statements, but it doesn’t matter. [What] he said seemed genuine. It wasn’t condescending. For like, 18 seconds on this Earth, I felt like an equal musician. Not equal as in playing ability, but equal. That was the single coolest fucking musical story [for me] ever.”

For me, somehow, the metaphor usually comes back to baseball. I romanticize old baseball stories, no differently than whatever it is you romanticize. Maybe your thing is the Fox Fire book series. Maybe it’s cannabis. Maybe it’s Carrie Bradshaw. Maybe it’s the Old South. Maybe it’s metal.

Adam Kravitz reminds me of Tommy John, the Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher who tore his ulnar collateral ligament in 1974. At the time, this injury was a career ender. Dr. Frank Jobe, an orthopedic surgeon and the Dodgers’ physician, performed this experimental “ligament replacement surgery” the same year, in which a ligament is chosen from somewhere else in the body (or from a donor) and replaces the damaged one.

Jobe said, “Tommy’s attitude was the special thing. He didn’t hesitate. He said, ‘Let’s do it.’”

Sound familiar?

John was the first player to ever receive this procedure, which eventually was named after him. In 1976, John went 10-10. The following year, John recorded his first 20-win season, won the pennant with the Dodgers, but lost to the New York Yankees during the Fall Classic. He appeared in two more World Series during his career (losing both), finally retiring in 1989 as the oldest player in baseball, tying the record for most seasons pitched with 26 (broken by Nolan Ryan in 1993), and ending with 288 Wins and 46 shutouts. Forty-eight years later, over 500 players have undergone this same surgery.

Nice. What does any of this have to do with Adam Kravitz?

Like Tommy John, Kravitz didn’t quit, even though he also had a legitimate excuse. It wasn’t ligament replacement surgery, it was a severe heart attack, and the dude almost died. Yet nearly two years after the NSTEMI, Adam is creating the best music of his career, and he’s going to play that music whether Future Projektor is a marquee name or not.

The best part is he doesn’t give a shit. He gets to play.

Tommy John wasn’t a marquee player and he’s not in the Hall of Fame. Standing behind big names like Don Sutton and Steve Garvey during his years with the Dodgers. Reggie Jackson and Thurman Munson with the Yankees. Rod Carew and again Reggie Jackson during a short stint with the California Angels.

Tommy John didn’t give a shit, either. He got to play.

Sound familiar?

I think that mentality is something to admire. It doesn’t make me want to pick up a guitar or play baseball again, but it inspires me to keep doing what I’m doing. I get to play.

For the bulk of the last decade, most things seem to have taken on the dense smog of superficiality. Relevance being attached to constant social media presence, faux corporate enthusiasm, performative activism, lots of finger pointing, and almost zero accountability. Listening to Future Projektor feels like breathing in pure air for the first time in a long time.

It makes me thankful my friend is still here to make real music. There’s nothing fake about Adam Kravitz.

Hopefully, his mentality resonates with you, but just like this article, it’s here whether people bother to read it or not. I think that’s a fine mantra to have.

Tommy John don’t care.

Top Photo via Future Projektor/Facebook

Hip Hop, Battle Rap, and Surviving COVID: Talking Rap Elite 2022 With Radio B

RVA Staff | January 21, 2022

Topics: Ant The Symbol, battle rap, Bravo, Easalio, Geau Lagoon, League of Champions, Lyricist Lounge, namebrand, Nickelus F, Radio B, Richmond hip hop, richmond music, RVA Rap Elite, Skinny Hendrixx, Southpaw Battle Coalition, Stat Central, Tang & Biscuit, The Dark Room

Hip hop is the only genre of music you will ever hear described as a game. The way people talk about “running the rap game,” you’d almost think it was a sport. Here’s the thing: it is, kind of. Or at least, it kind of started out as one. And here in Richmond, some of the most talented artists, creatives, movers and shakers are working together to keep the competitive side of hip hop alive and well in the central Virginia rap scene.

Radio B is the founder of RVA Rap Elite. The group, which started a few years ago under the name Lyricist Lounge, includes a whole passel of Richmond rap leaders. They all come together to put on events that feature the most talented emcees and producers in the city, competing through things like ciphers and rap battles to impress a tough crowd and prove who has the skills necessary to get the acclaim as the best in the city.

The first big event of RVA Rap Elite’s 2022 season will be taking place this Sunday, January 23, at Tang & Biscuit. Not only will it feature a headlining set from Norfolk-based hip hop collective Geau Lagoon, it will see teams led by local hip hop luminaries — in this case, Ant The Symbol and Skinny Hendrixx — battle it out in a team cipher. Plus, there’ll be an open cipher featuring over 20 emcees, and a producer’s lounge hosted by Radio B’s AGM compatriot, NameBrand.

But let’s say not all these terms are familiar to you. Let’s say you’re not even sure what is going to be happening at this show on Sunday. If so, don’t worry — you’re not alone. That’s why RVA Mag’s John Reinhold sat down with Radio B for an extended conversation recently, to learn all the ins and outs of RVA Rap Elite, from the basic rules of the game to the intricacies of keeping what amounts to a citywide sports league made up entirely of musicians on track in the midst of a global pandemic. Read on and get informed.

John Reinhold: You’re a busy man, I know you have your hands in a lot of different things and moving parts. I figure let’s start at the beginning. How did RVA Rap Elite start?

Radio B: Rap Elite originated at Strange Matter, I believe in 2017. It started out as RVA Lyricists Lounge, in honor of the elements of the original Lyricist Lounge, started by [Anthony] Marshall and company in New York. [It] was created to honor MCs, lyricists, and people that really cared about bars and the elements of rap that we came up on: the cypher and the battles. The competitive aspect and spirit of hip hop. Wanting to not only give a voice to those MCs, but also reinvigorate that element and that energy.

I felt that we had gotten to a point in hip hop, as a whole but especially locally, where artists, just because of social media, the internet, artists were taking a quicker route to becoming rappers. The title of MC was just not relevant. And that bothered me. There was a time when I was coming up that you really had to go out in public to prove yourself. It wasn’t just image. You couldn’t just create a persona or social media handle, take some pictures, shoot a video, record a song in your house, and say, “Hey, I have a SoundCloud, I’m an artist now. I’m a rapper now.” That was impossible then. That’s just not how you did that.

You had to first establish the fact that you could rap. You had to go out in front of someone who would be typically critical of you, if you were not good. You had to impress upon them that you, in fact, can rap. And then they would validate that. That could be the barbershop, it could be the school cafeteria, it could be the football game. It could be a cipher, an open mic. It could be anything where hip hop was, where the culture was. You would have to go out there and brave that insecurity, have your voice heard. And in that process, something would happen within you, as you got that validation from the people.

John: So you wanted to bring it back to almost like a workshop.

Radio B: Yeah, to the grassroots element of it all. And I say all of that to say that is how we got the biggest superstars in rap that we’ve ever gotten. The Jay-Zs, the Nas’s, the Eminem’s, the DMX’s. The reason we got those artists was because they came up in that environment, where you had to repeatedly go out in public and impress crowds, groups of people that were not easy to impress! And win them over, and make them react to your bars. What you wrote, how you rapped it, how confident you were when you rapped it, what you looked like when you were rapping it. All of that mattered.

Every time that you went out and did that, your confidence grew, your chip on your shoulder grew; you were becoming somebody, as far as the craft is concerned. That’s what you took into the studio as you began to become a recording artist, that level of confidence. That you knew, like, “I’m that guy.” That’s what being a rapper, being an MC, was. Once these artists got into the studio, they started to make these incredible songs, they had this longevity, and such layered amounts of talent in the music. It was because they went through that process. It’s a hardening, it’s a crystallization of the craft. I wanted to bring it back to having to go through those rites of passage, go through those trials, go through that criticism. Having the determination to come out and prove yourself.

John: So it started at Strange Matter in 2017, and then evolved into Rap Elite?

Radio B: Well, it probably would still be at Strange Matter if it never closed. We have become a gypsy platform — not by choice. We’re pretty loyal; as long as you’re loyal to us and you’re open, we’re gonna be there. If you’re good to us, we’re going to stay. We brought something valuable to every venue, but we had to move around. I would say if anything, we’ve had tough luck, but we’ve been pretty resilient. One thing that I knew about trying to create a platform like this in 2017 was that you couldn’t just have an open mic, like back in the day.

John: It needed some more structure in order to move it forward?

Radio B: It needed to be modern. There was a reason why that type of rap wasn’t being preferred. You weren’t going to say, “Hey, come over here and rap now.” How do you make this appealing to a newer generation that never experienced this? That was one of the things with Southpaw Battle Coalition, [which] preceded RVA Rap Elite [and] RVA Lyricists Lounge — everything gets filmed. All the battles get filmed, [and] you distribute them on YouTube to promote them. So having gone through that process repeatedly through Southpaw, it was like, “Oh, if we add that element to the ciphers, to the live performances, we can provide that video content.” When people need to see themselves perform, have that footage to do with as they please through their social media. Everybody wants content in 20-whatever, right? So that was kind of my hook for this generation, to bring the old to the new. I think that’s one of the things that has helped us be able to bridge that gap.

John: Can you tell me a bit more about Southpaw Battle Coalition, and the difference between Rap Elite and Southpaw?

Radio B: Yes. They are two different platforms. Southpaw Battle Coalition started in 2016. It is a traditional battle rap platform: no beats, just like you would see on Smack/URL: one MC versus another, head up, for one or three rounds. It’s pure battle rap: no ciphers, no music, just bars. Just straight “I’m at you, you’re at me” dog bite type of situation.

We’ve had some of the biggest battle rappers in the world grace our platform. We’ve done hundreds of thousands of views on that, on [the Southpaw Battle Coalition] channel. It’s definitely been culturally impacting; it’s changed battle rap culture in Richmond. It’s exposed it and bridged it to the music scene. When I first came upon the battle rap scene in Richmond, I was kinda astounded by the fact that the hip hop scene and the battle rap scene really knew nothing of each other. A lot of the battle MCs really weren’t involved in the hip hop scene, and they didn’t really know many people, even myself, moving around in those events. And no one in the hip hop scene knew that these battles were even happening. I’m just like, “Wow — this is not something that should be.”

John: So how do you even bridge the gap between them, to get them in the same room and exposed to each other?

Radio B: The first thing that I did… Well, I wasn’t going to start a league. I had an itch to battle in this format. When I used to battle back in the days, it could happen any time. Like, you rapped, I rapped; somebody is going to be like, “Yo, y’all should battle.” It wasn’t planned, it wasn’t filmed. You didn’t prepare for that. You rap with what you had, or you freestyle, you know what I’m saying? Whoever was there to see it saw it. That’s how battle rap went when I was coming up. I really wanted to try my hand at that element of battle rap, because I’m a very competitive rapper. I started rapping because of the competitive aspect of it. So I’m like, all right, I’m in — shout out to LOC, League of Champions. They were the league that was going on originally in Richmond battle rap. I was going to the events and I was just like, who is “the guy” over here? The guy, the man, you know. Whoever that is, that’s who I want to battle. That was my thought process at the time. I wanted to be that one time, but it needed to be the best guy.

John: So you’re going to the top, and you’re pinpointing the top. You’re like, “I’m gonna take the head off the top.”

Radio B: And [then] I’m out! That’s that. “I’ll help y’all bridge this gap to the hip hop scene, because I feel like you all should know each other.” That was my goal. But when I got there, there wasn’t somebody specifically that was that person. Everybody was good, but there wasn’t somebody that was head and shoulders [above the rest]. You know, battle rap is just getting to a point where we’re doing a lot of judged battles. Back at that time, MCs battled, and the audience, or whoever watched your video, decided for [themselves]. You could tell who won by reactions, but it wasn’t a “crowned-winner” type of thing. You couldn’t go by a champion or anything like that. It didn’t exist.

The league owner, though, was Bravo, and Bravo is a legendary MC from our city as well. I was very familiar with him. I knew that he had the chops to probably be the best guy over there, but he wasn’t an active battler. He was the Vince McMahon, so to speak. But when I was at the event, he put a challenge out: he wanted to battle.

John: That’s like the sensei. The sensei goes, “Who’s stepping up? Who’s going to step on the mat and do this? Who wants to be the first?”

Radio B: And it wasn’t like he was saying that day or anything. He was just saying, in general, he’s ready to come back. And no one seemed to be the first, right? No one seemed to be too antsy about that. That struck me as, “Oh, that‘s ‘the guy’.” So I set my sights on Bravo, and I let him know that that’s what I wanted to do. And we’re friendly, you know. He’s like, “I don’t know, do you want to do that?” I’m like, “I am so sure of this.” But it took a lot to convince them to do it.

We ended up doing it. We ended up calling it Legends Never Die. We didn’t have an undercard, anything like that. It was literally the biggest battle in Richmond history. I mean, we probably put like 300 people in there in one battle, you know what I mean? We ended up putting a couple other battles on it, but we didn’t promote them. It was literally one battle promoted: just me and him. But it was promoted for a good eight, nine months.

John: There’s a lot of lead-in time for that one, then.

Radio B: A lot of lead-in time. it was huge. It was an amazing battle. Definitely go check that out. Ultimately he ended up leaving LOC, and I was still very focused on wanting to make battle rap, and Richmond, better. We decided to come together — myself, him, Nickelus F — and create The Southpaw Battle Coalition. So our first event was Legends Never Die Two, in which I battled a super legend in this game named JC. Nickelus F had his return battle to battle rap with Danja Zone at the Broadberry. That was the beginning of what is the Southpaw Battle Coalition. And RVA Rap Elite rapidly came down the line.

John: So Rap Elite is much different; it’s not based on the battle, it’s based on the ciphers and the judging, correct?

Radio B: Yeah, it’s more cipher-focused. The live events are a mixture of the group cipher battles and one-on-one battles. We do have one-on-one battles..

John: But those events have music with the cipher?

Radio B: The cipher battles do have music. Sometimes we do have Southpaw battles at those leagues. It’s the same culture. We also have live performances, where people come in.

John: Yeah, I noticed you have an element of the live performances mixed in with the ciphers to make it a full event.

Radio B: We have the Producer’s Lounge and all of that. We consider Rap Elite a live, variety hip hop event. You’re going to get a little bit of everything from the culture.

John: So what year are we on now?

Radio B: We are on Season Five, starting January 23rd.

John: How did COVID affect it last year?

Radio B: When COVID hit, we were coming out of season two. We just got into The Dark Room [at the Hofheimer Building] towards the end of season two. We were selling out The Dark Room every month, faster and faster. Our show would start at 6:30, and like by 7:30, you’ve got people on Facebook like, “I can’t get in.” We were in the conversations about moving to the larger room at that point, The Loft. My whole thing was, “Just let it keep packing out for a couple months, and then we’ll move to the larger room. Because we were really enjoying it.”

John: There’s like an intimacy in that room. Like, you’re a part of it.

Radio B: Yeah, the intimacy. I love the aesthetic inside the Dark Room. And also, it’s supply and demand. You want that demand.

John: Yeah, I get it. You’d rather have a room that can fit a hundred people packed out than a thousand-person venue with a hundred people.

Radio B: And you’re like, “By the time we move in there, everybody will be ready.” That was what I was looking for. And the shows were getting crazy. The energy was just unlike anything that we had experienced up until that point. We were just coming into a new space with that, and COVID hit. Shut everything down, just like everyone else.

We were one of the first people. I was probably the first promoter to shut the show down for COVID. When we canceled our first show, I think there was only, like, one person in Virginia that had COVID. I could see the writing on the wall, and at that point, it was so scary. We didn’t…

John: Yeah, we didn’t know. Like, is this the end of the world?

Radio B: Literally! I didn’t want nobody getting sick and dying because they came to my shit. That was my thought process. I knew people were having events for weeks and weeks after me shutting my event down, but that just wasn’t… you know, it wasn’t all going to be on my conscience. So that was very, very difficult.

John: It’s like, you built up a head of steam, and then here we are.

Radio B: We worked hard for that. We were already on our fourth venue by the time that happened, so for us to build that momentum and go through the closing of two venues and one not working out, and still being able to maintain momentum.

And a name change, mind you. Because we changed the name in the second season, that stunted our brand for a second. I didn’t think it was going to be that… you know, it’s the same Instagram. I didn’t get it. People didn’t automatically transition to it. It was interesting. We had to clear up some confusion around that.

So between the venue changes, the brand changes, to get to that point of that momentum and then to have it halted at that particular moment? Because there were some other opportunities that were coming around at time with Something in the Water — a lot of things were going on. Yeah, it was tough.

We did this thing called Rap Elite Madness. Right as COVID was kicking up, maybe the first month, this was the first show we were going to have when we started the first event back. [It] was an online battle tournament. We did a signup for 64 MCs to do video submissions.

John: Well that’s pretty cool. It’s interesting, the way that COVID made you switch gears, and then find new elements by need.

Radio B: Right? The social media behind it, the video content. Zoom. There was no fucking Zoom we knew of. We didn’t use it. It was like, Twitch and all that.

John: Twitch went through the roof. It became a thing for many.

Radio B: And IG live, you know. It took the surge in those things, and we’re like, “Damn, if we already used some of these tools, wow!” Shit was still live. It would have been crazy to have, promotion-wise. But it was like hindsight is 20/20, you know? A lot of the things that came about, even Producer’s Lounge, because we started this Rap Elite Live, and we were doing different types of content every day. But man, it gave a huge energy. It saved us, you know? We would’ve been like every other platform. Nothing would have been going on.

John: Do you think COVID forced anybody, artistically, to be better? How do you think that affected the art for people?

Radio B: I don’t know, man. There was so much jarring shit that occurred in that space. There was a lot of spiritual shit that went on with folks. Emotional reckoning and identity crises.

John: And of course we had the monuments and the marches and everything as well.

Radio B: Yeah, and then we went right into that. It just was one of those times. It got real. It was real crazy.

John: It felt to me like a reckoning, where it’s like, “We’re going to deal with this.”

Radio B: Yeah, because there was never, ever anything that affected everyone at the same time. There had never been in my lifetime. Nothing that made everyone sit down. I don’t care if you’re rich, you’re poor, if you own the planes or you fly on the planes. All of you guys sit down. You gotta deal with it. It’s affecting you. Not something you know about, this shit. We all knew about 9/11. We might’ve been emotionally affected; some people weren’t. Some people were like, “Fuck it. I went to work today. Damn, that sucks that happened.” And they went about their business. They could do that. This? You couldn’t do that. You can’t just go about your business. That was impossible. That’s dead. A lot of things had to stop.

So it definitely simplified life. And those that could adjust to that simplification found peace. Those that were running from that stillness had the biggest problems. I was used to stillness. I was my mom’s caretaker. So what I realized was, I had already become a recluse. You know, for me and my mom, that was like, oh shit…

John: Yeah, we have that in common with moms. We’re in this already, we’re just going to have to change a couple things.

Radio B: Everyone else is having this crisis. It’s like, “Shit, I want to go outside.” I’m used to only going outside for events. Like, my shit, the work, every now and then I got out, but it was difficult. I always had to make reservations to get out. So it was jarring, because I’m like, “Damn, my life has not changed that much.”

John: For me, it was almost like a realization: maybe I’m not as social as I act like I am. I can be social at the right moments, I already kind of knew that about myself, but COVID made it more real.

Getting back to Rap Elite: can you explain the way that the ratings for individual hip hop artists’ ciphers are done? Also how are rankings calculated month to month heading into the final, to the top 20?

Radio B: We have what is called The Road to MVP. All the tracking is done using Stat Central, which is tracking stats for MCs month by month, as they progress through each particular season. Those numbers come from their individual scores each time they perform in a cipher. For instance, in episode 35 an MC is Mila Mansa. So she goes up and she wraps her two minutes in the cipher. At the end of her performance, she gets a score from three judges: myself, Nickelus F, and either Easalio or Spielburg, depending upon who our third judge is at that particular moment. That score is between one to 10, with the option of point fives in between, or whole numbers. The collective score of the three judges is what is that MC scores for that episode.

The MC with the highest score for that episode is that episode’s champion, [unless] an MC is less than a full point ahead of any MCs behind them. A 0.5 or less difference sends them to a sudden death. That sudden death round is a one-minute a capella verse from each MC. They get scored again. And any difference from the top point, that top MC wins. Whether it’s 0.5 or anything, if their ahead there, they win. If there happens to be a tie again, they rap again and get judged.

John: Where did you get the point system from? How did that get decided?

Radio B: The concept of the scoring came from myself and my cousin Frank, who runs Stat Central. What we’re looking for is something that’s been generated between myself, Nickelus F, and the other judges. That’s really based on all around performance from that particular MC. We will take into account things like moments. So for instance, if an MC does have a freestyle moment where they capture something that occurs and it really moves the room, those are things we take into account. But overall: lyricism, cleverness, performance, uniqueness, style, confidence. Everything that you’re looking for from an MC, everything that you’re looking for from a dope verse. You know what I’m saying? How did you command that cipher? That’s the framework of what we’re looking for when we give those scores.

John: So how many months does a season last?

Radio B: Most of our seasons are somewhere between 8-10 episodes. This season, season five, will be from January to October, so it’ll be a 10 episode season. It might be our longest.

John: So at the end, you tally the scores and start announcing your placements?

Radio B: Yeah. So each episode, there’s a champion, and that champion receives a custom hoodie with their name and the number of the episode that they won. They also receive a free item of their choice from Mama Jo’s Collection. Then they also receive a free studio session with Michael Millions, where he records, mixes and masters one song for them. They also get a free pass to the cipher for the rest of that season. And of course, a win tally in the season so far. The first element of who would be the MVP would be who has the most wins, if those wins are close, and there’s other [related] stats. Then we started to look at other statistics and rankings…

John: I watched that full video and it was fascinating to me because I watch fantasy football articles out the wazoo. I hear people discussing placement of athletes and why they’re ranked here and it’s because, well, they did this well. I already geek out on that kind of stuff, so watching you guys go over the ciphers and talking about moments, I thought that was really dope. I didn’t necessarily understand the point system, but I thought it was cool to see the discussion of it.

So wins is obviously the most important statistic, but the content and moments also matter.

Radio B: Right, right. We have point average. What was your point average for the season, per cipher. [There’s] your total points, but then also things like how many ciphers were you in. Someone’s point average could be high [but] if they were in three ciphers, you were in nine, your degree of difficulty and ability to maintain that average is probably a lot more challenging than someone did three times. We take all of those different things into account, different moments, and impact. Impact is a big piece of where your placement is. Like, how does it impact the platform? How long did we talk about that particular performance? Stuff like that.

John: It’s 2022 and the new season is starting. Tell me a bit about the kickoff show on Sunday. Give me a quick rundown for people.

Radio B: You brought the fantasy football thing up, so it’s a good segue to talk about the draft. [We had] our draft live at Brewer’s Cafe on January 18th. We basically have 10 influencers from the Richmond hip hop community, those are the team’s GM’s [general managers]. We have seven returning GMs and three new ones. The GM’s draft different MCs for every episode. So therefore, you know, sometimes you may have the champion on their team, or may not.

John: So they draft for every episode. Gotcha. Who gets the first pick?

Radio B: We do a lottery, because different MCs sign up every month. So they’re pulling from the 30 MCs that have signed up, once the cipher maxes out. In the past, the cypher was maxed out usually within a matter of days. This one’s taken a little long, but I think it’s just so much going on slowing people down. We got about five slots left as it stands right now, [but] by the time this airs, it’ll be maxed out.

This first event is going to be on January 23rd. We have our open cipher, the Producer’s Lounge segment with NameBrand and the different producers that are highlighted for that particular month. Also our season finale champion — not our MVP, but our returning champion from the last episode that we had last year — his group will be performing live. We’ll go from there to the cipher. Before it was like five on five MCs. One thing that is different about this one is the captains of these teams are actually producers. So the producers themselves will be producing with that cipher, assembled their own team of MCs to basically rap over their production. We have Ant the Symbol vs. Skinny Hendrixx, and they’ll produce their ciphers. I’m extremely excited about adding that element to the cipher. Ciphers usually are captain MCs picking other MCs, and other characters. [This] gives the producers an opportunity to show their range. Not only their production, but in going head to head, how they pick the MCs and what pull they have with artists to be able to come out and represent them. It’s a very stylistic thing, because everybody’s gonna have their own style, and each producer is going to like a certain style.

RVA Rap Elite’s Season Five premiere, featuring a performance by Geau Lagoon, cipher vs. cipher competition between Team Ant The Symbol and Team Skinny Hendrixx, and an open cipher featuring over two dozen rappers, will take place on Sunday, January 23 at Tang and Biscuit, located at 3406 W. Moore St in Scott’s Addition. Tickets for the event are $15 and can be purchased here or by going to rvarapelite.com.

Interview by John Reinhold. Intro by Marilyn Drew Necci.

Photo’s by https://www.tillinfinitymultimedia.com/

Stretched On A Rack

Marilyn Drew Necci | January 20, 2022

Topics: 3:33, Adolph Coors, Albert Fish, Jaws Of A Wolf, Miranda Young, Moon Maniac, richmond music

On their latest EP, Moon Maniac, Richmond metallic punk quartet 3:33 explore the horrors of modern life between falling down Wikipedia rabbit holes about true crime, serial killers, and beer. Always beer.

There used to be a crew of hardcore kids around the central Virginia area who called themselves the 333 crew, by which they meant they were “halfway to hell.” I don’t think those guys had anything to do with Richmond quartet 3:33 — they were metalcore dudes; 3:33 are more like metal-tinged hardcore punk — but I do think they’re both on the same page with the name they chose. With their new EP, Moon Maniac, 3:33 show that they’re at least halfway down the highway to hell; but, as AC/DC themselves will tell us, hell ain’t a bad place to be. At least, not when the music sounds like this.

The name of the Moon Maniac EP comes from one of the many nicknames given to early 20th-century serial killer Albert Fish, whose notorious crimes likely included many murders besides the three he was officially executed for, as well as rape, child molestation, kidnapping, torture, and a whole bunch of other horrible depraved things. 3:33 have long focused their lyrical themes on horror-related subjects, from their Swamp Cult split with Cremains back in 2017 to 2020 EP Jaws Of A Wolf‘s leadoff track “Curse Of The Devil.” However, this is the first time I’m aware of that they’ve focused their theme as directly on a real-life horror as they have here.

That horrified fascination with a particular real-life murderer shows up in the cover art as well, which was created by a local artist, Miranda Young, who shares the band’s interest in true crime. It also carries over to one of the songs on the EP, “Peanut Butter And Cider.” As drummer Palmer, aka Herb Grinder, explains, “The name ‘Moon Maniac’ was one of the several nicknames given to Fish. This song is a tongue-in-cheek narrative of the depravity experienced by one victim in particular that Fish had locked up and tortured for two weeks.” Palmer explains that the title comes from a euphemism Fish used to refer to urine and excrement, which Fish would feed to his victims. And yes, that’s a colorfully foul factoid, but the band credit Timesuck and Last Podcast on the Left as the sources for their info, so it’s not like they’re making any of this up.

This EP definitely sounds like it was written after a deep dive down a Wikipedia rabbit hole — and who hasn’t been on a few of those? “The Dark Side Of Light Beer” delves into the history of the Coors family, whose founder, Adolph Coors, either leapt or was pushed to his death from a sixth-floor hotel balcony in Virginia Beach. “Upon researching that event I found a few more black marks in the family,” Palmer explained. “Adolph Coors III, grandson of AC, was murdered in a botched kidnapping attempt in the 60’s, and in the 80’s a distant granddaughter of AC jumped naked to her death from a NYC apartment.” Not exactly a love train, am I right?

The punk rock side of 3:33 shows up on opening track “T.I.T. (Trust In Technology),” in which singer King Gilbo screams furiously about a variety of atrocities foisted by the powers that be onto a sadly apathetic public. Following in the footsteps of Jaws Of A Wolf‘s “No One’s Taking Your Job, Stupid” — my personal favorite of 3:33’s prior material — the lyrics to “T.I.T.” are a laundry list of terrible things about western civilization circa 2022. “Victimized by possessions we prize, products advertise nothing but lies, addicted — keeping up with the neighbors, algorithms track our behavior,” proclaims Gilbo, and I mean, where is the lie?

Musically speaking, this record follows in the pattern of previous 3:33 releases, in that it walks the line directly between raging hardcore punk and the sort of political death metal that was much more common in the dawn of the 90s than it is today. My immediate comparison points, befitting one of my advanced age, are Portland metallicrust legends Tragedy and death metal pioneers Napalm Death circa their career-defining 1991 masterpiece, Harmony Corruption. These days, it might make more sense to reference bands like Gatecreeper or Toxic Holocaust (whose frontman, Joel Grind, mastered this EP), but to my ears, there’s a raw garage-band energy here that takes me back to an earlier era. Considering I come from that era myself, I certainly can’t complain.

Moon Maniac is available now on a variety of streaming services, and can be purchased in digital form on Bandcamp.

Top Photo via 3:33/Facebook

Ghosts In The Machine

Anais Stewart | January 18, 2022

Topics: 204863, Bleeding Virginia, Digital Hell, DuctTape Jesus, hauntology, itslolita, Lil Ophelia, LP2, richmond music

Richmond duo Digital Hell makes distorted, foreboding noise and discusses heady philosophical concepts, but if you ask them, they’re really just making pop music.

I was greeted by a joyful character with a teddy-bear beanie covering her long black locs. “What’s good!!! You’re finally here!” she said, as she gave me a friendly hug.

This is Chay. You can call her Lil Ophelia, the name she works under as a solo artist. She’s half of the group Digital Hell; the other half awaits us in the apartment up the stairs. I follow her through the dimly lit hallway into the living room. There I’m greeted by Jimmy aka itslolita, the other member of Digital Hell. He sprung out of his chair, shook my hand, which turned into a nice hug. Carlos, who records as DuctTape Jesus, was also in attendance, along with Chay’s younger brother Twan. A YouTube compilation of Family Feud clips was playing, and all of us started making guesses and throwing out jokes.

“What if purgatory is just a repeating, long-ass game of Family Feud??” Chay asked.

“That would low-key be kind of scary,” I said as Steve Harvey’s voice cut me off by asking a new question. “What animal do women like being compared to?” I blurted, “Vampires.” Chay began laughing, hard. “I love that! Vampires are my favorite animal now!” Chay laughed.

Jimmy grabbed a huge mason jar full of weed so that he could roll the next blunt, which was huge. We continued watching Family Feud as the blunt passed around. “Would it be better if we did the interview in the studio?” Jimmy asked. “It’s less space but it is quieter.” With that, Chay, Jimmy, Carlos and I gathered our belongings and left Chay’s brother to enjoy Steve Harvey’s voice.

*Cover of Heaven Is A Traffic Jam by Digital Hell, via Bandcamp*

The studio was less spacious than the living room, but felt entrancing nonetheless. Different types of musical hardware were scattered near the computer and microphone that made up the focus of the room. Posters, books, and random items were scattered across the shelves. I sat in the middle of a faded green couch against the wall, with Chay to my left and Carlos to my right. Jimmy scrolled around on Youtube until he found jazzy/classical music perfect to keep everyone at ease and of course, background music. I opened up my journal and examined my notes, flipping back and forth between two pages in my notebook. I felt a tad nervous, but tried to act cool.

I’ve always wondered how the dynamic of Digital Hell worked. As Chay and Jimmy explained, it began over social media. In March 2018, someone retreated Chay’s artwork onto Jimmy’s Twitter timeline. He was interested enough to buy some art from her, and that led to them talking more. After listening to some beats he’d uploaded to Bandcamp, Chay asked Jimmy to produce her first EP. This eventually turned into Digital Hell’s first demo, which actually came out before they had even met in person. When they needed a name for the demo, Jimmy texted Chay, who was playing a Silent Hill game. She was stuck on a level, and needed a sequence of numbers to get to the next one. When Jimmy texted to ask her what the name of the demo should be, she texted that sequence of numbers back to him. The result was Digital Hell’s first release, 204863.

The name of the group came about as an expression of their mutual interest in post-capitalist thoughts and ideas. Chay mentioned the work of English philosophers Mark Fisher and Nick Land, particularly their ideas about and use of the concept of “hauntology.” A term originally coined by Jacques Derrida, Fisher modified Derrida’s original concept of “hauntology,” in which present-day culture is unable to escape ghostly elements of our socio-cultural past. To Fisher, the most prominent form of hauntology present in our current culture is the ghost of futures that were foretold in the media of decades past, but never actually happened. It’s this sense of lost futures, ghosts of an era that never actually took place, that pervades the music of Digital Hell.

“I didn’t even purposely do that,” said Chay. “It just fits with that philosophy. When I started reading that type of stuff, I realized, ‘Well damn, Jimmy and I have been making music that’s based on hauntology.’ The philosophies just went with the name Digital Hell. It’s because we’re living in a literal digital hell. It’s like a hellscape of fucked-up technology and cryptocurrency, crypto-fascism, mixed with this electronic industrial dive.”

“Product of the digital environment,” Jimmy added.

Trying to describe Digital Hell’s music is interesting. When people make flyers for their upcoming shows, they try to fit them into set genres, or come up with crazy descriptions for them, but you can’t capture Digital Hell that way. They’re a dynamic group that does lots of different things, both stylistically and production-wise. “I think of it less as a specific kind of music, but more so about the creative movement,” Jimmy explained.

All the hardware in the studio makes it clear that they really get into working with every point in the creative process. They strive to make their own music and see how they can push the sound further than what’s currently always available to people. For Digital Hell, taking their time with music is the point. “Creating a song is a process,” said Chay. “It’s good to come up with songs on the spot but you should definitely continue working on it for a couple of weeks, before you even drop it.”

Jimmy agrees. “I think there’s something to be said about the quality of recording you get when you spend the time to make a demo of the song before it’s finished, take time to listen to it, then come back and finish up,” he said. “Because you’re going to hear stuff that you’ll want to change.”

Their music is catchy but in a way that defies the rules capitalism imposes on musical consumption. You might start to get into it, but then the capitalist in your head will have you thinking, “Actually, this is pretty weird.”

But weirdness is not all Digital Hell has to offer. “The songs start off with a wall of feedback and a bunch of crazy distorted bass. People listen to that, and they’re like, ‘What the fuck?’” Jimmy said. “Then if you give it a chance, you’re like, ‘Wow, this is actually a pop song.’”

Chay giggled. She’s the one who brings pop to the group through her melodies and catchy harmonizing. She enjoys listening to artists like Taylor Swift and Olivia Rodrigo. Jimmy on the other hand finds sound itself interesting. He feels easy connections with the instruments they use, the guitars and drums. The pop melodies he works with come through in the production. Jimmy often samples, then distorts pop and contemporary music. “It’s a way to make the music resonate more with people by sampling contemporary sounds that people are familiar with,” said Jimmy. Chay and Jimmy are really just music nerds, which is a big part of their music and their friendship.

Digital Hell · 1612 Havenhurst

A good example of the way they work comes from “1612 Havenhurst,” a 2021 single. It has a beat that Chay and Jimmy collaborated on. Chay says she was listening to a lot of Project Pat at the time, which helped out with her flow on this song. The beat started with one that Chay had been working on previously, but ended up sampling that beat and slowing it way down. They were also playing around with a bunch of different instruments, and ended up recording the song onto a cassette. They actually can’t perform it live now, because they didn’t save the beat. If they wanted to play it live, they’d have to make a whole new version of it.

Another fan favorite “Cleo From 5 To 7,” the closing track on their 2020 EP, Bleeding Virginia. They’ve recorded it in several different versions. At the time it was written, Chay was obsessed with the 60’s French film, “Cleo From 5 to 7,” and was watching it constantly. This Agnes Varda film focuses on a singer, Cleo, during the hours that she waits to learn whether she has cancer. The dragging beat and wavery sample (Jimmy can’t tell us the source, for fear of lawsuits) capture the ominous lyrical mood.

When asked how they feel about today’s music, there is a long pause, followed by Chay saying, “Uhhhh…” To Chay, her is extremely commodified. The sounds and artists all sound the same and blend together. Everything now is consumed so quickly and barely thought of again. This concerns both members of the group. “People can’t even be schizoid in the way they consume media, so how are they going to be schizoid in their daily lives to beat capitalism? People can’t think critically or nuanced about things,” Chay said. She looked at Jimmy.

“Unfortunately, the state of music in general is tied in with the state of consumer culture,” said Jimmy. “The easy access, Amazon Prime, Spotify age turned the way people consume any form of media into something they can digest in 30 seconds, [with] no real thought. If you’re listening to a song for like 10 seconds to see whether you are going to like it or not, you’re going to hear our song and say no. You’re not even going to bother listening to it.” Digital Hell does believe that’s slowly changing, though. More people are starting to stream music independently from streaming sites, or going back to their iPods and MP3 players, which they see as a positive thing.

Last February, Chay and Jimmy posted up in a creepy, slightly dirty motel in Richmond to record an album they finished in two nights. They’re currently planning the rollout for that album, as well as some related t-shirts. They work on music separately as well. Chay is working on projects with other local artists, and Jimmy is constantly dropping beat tapes.

They’ve also got an as-yet-unreleased collaborative album with DuctTape Jesus, which Jimmy offered to let me hear near the end of the interview. He put the album on and I could tell my ears were in for a real treat. Chay’s flows were very poppy and straight to the point, while DuctTape Jesus complimented her flow with vivid metaphors and melodic ad-libs all across Jimmy’s unorthodox, experimental beats.

At the end of the interview, an impromptu session broke out. Jimmy began playing beats. Chay and DuctTape Jesus freestyled back and forth. “I think I’m going to hop on this beat. Are you hopping on, DuctTape?” Chay asked. “Hell yeah!” he confirmed.

Then Chay turned her gaze at me. “You want to hop on it too?” I responded nervously. “I like this beat… I think I could come up with something.” And with that, Carlos and I got to scribbling bars in our journals for our verses. Chay was already repeating the chorus she was about to lay down. We all laid down our “skeleton” verses, as Jimmy would call them. Just the outline of the song basically. It had a smoking blunt in a dark alley kind of vibe to it.

A lot of elements go into making Digital Hell what they are. Sonically pleasing sounds interjected with hauntology. Aesthetics of the cultural past, mixed with pop melodies. Staying ahead of capitalism, and enjoying the fun of creation without being boxed in. They are constantly expanding, pushing their creative mindset. The cutting edge of music is sharp, but if you’re tough enough for it, that’s where you’ll find Digital Hell, lurking and creating.

Additional reporting by Marilyn Drew Necci. Top image from cover of LP2 by Digital Hell.

Everyone’s Got A Price

Marilyn Drew Necci | January 14, 2022

Topics: black liquid, Blackliq, Mopes, Richmond hip hop, richmond music, Strange Famous Records, Time Is The Price

On Time Is The Price, Blackliq’s first release for Sage Francis’s Strange Famous Records, the veteran Richmond MC lays out his dark history, his bright future, and his methods for hacking life — all overtop of the best production he’s received in his career thus far.

I’ve always enjoyed the work Blackliq, aka Black Liquid, does as an MC. I’ve been following his work since he was dropping 16 albums in the space of three or four years — and he’s made some incredible music over that time. I loved Anti and Title in particular. But listen: I have never heard Blackliq sound this good on any of his previous releases. Time Is The Price is the dawn of a new era for Richmond’s hardest-working MC, and all it takes is one listen to know that.

The production is pretty clearly part of that. Time Is The Price is a collaborative release between Blackliq and Mopes, both of whom signed to Sage Francis’s label, Strange Famous, during 2021. Mopes was previously known as Prolyphic, and under that name he was part of a duo called Stick Figures and made records with Sage Francis, as well as producers Buddy Peace and Reanimator, among others. So like Blackliq, Mopes is a veteran of the hip hop grind, and he’s picked up a few tricks of the trade, which show through not just in his beats but also in how good Blackliq’s voice sounds here. He’s always had a harsh, throaty edge to his sound, and some productions in the past haven’t exactly showcased it in its ideal light. Here on Time Is the Price, though, Liq sounds better than he ever has before, and the edge in his voice is a scalpel, slicing through the layers of scratchy soul samples Mopes layers over it to drop lyrics that cut your throat.

Case in point: this record starts with “Endtro,” and the very first thing you hear Blackliq say is “I write rhymes for the reasons that you don’t, you fuck. I did shows with major artists and realized that they suck.” Overtop of an ominous beat featuring wah-wah guitar samples reminiscent of classic Blaxploitation film soundtracks, Liq drops other gems like “I know a whole lot of bitches, and ain’t none of them women” and “God don’t make mistakes — but I do, and I wouldn’t have it no other way,” before finishing the track with a spoken passage that sounds like it was lifted from a live performance, in which he declares that all of the adversity he’s faced in the past just gives him more strength to keep moving forward.

You hear both sides of that statement — the adversity and the strength — over the next seven songs. On “Don’t Ask Me,” Liq talks about how in order to survive, he has to look out for himself. “There’s a long list of people I knew and outgrew… and that might be you. If it is, what it is, if it ain’t, what it ain’t. If it was what it was, then it may need to change. You don’t even know my name… so fuck ‘back in the day’.” At other points in the album, he shows vulnerability. At the beginning of “I’m Not Right,” Liq tells a story of his drunken father cooking dinner for him when he was a child, and pouring beer into the sauce — followed by another story from a few years later of his dad being arrested on his front porch while he watched.

Indeed, dark stories of Liq’s past proliferate on this album, and the soundtrack Mopes sets to them are perfect, keeping the hard-hitting, soul-inflected boom-bap sound of classic New York hip hop while updating it for the 21st century with wavering drones that at times border on wavy — but instead of sounding high and blissed-out, these tracks sound spooky. They’re clearly intended to be the sound of shit going down, and BlackLiq delivers on that possibility in his lyrics, especially on “Guilty.” It’s the tale of his father’s jail sentence, what it was like to see that happen, and the effect it’s had on him throughout his adult life. “The hardest part was looking into his eyes knowing that, where he sat, we didn’t stand no chance,” he raps. “He said, ‘I’m not guilty’… but why am I?”

“Take Your Time” ends the entire records with a lyrical summation that acts as a manifesto for the next phase of Blackliq’s career. He talks about a woman confronting him, asking if the reason he’s still putting all his time into being a hip hop MC and generally creative person means he has a Peter Pan complex. Over Mopes’ most uplifting, vibed-out beat on the whole album, he gives his answer. “First off, I’m not broke, I’m not unemployed. I work hard to afford the things that I enjoy,” he explains. “I quit the drugs, quit the drinks — I’m on my shit. And most of my friends wish they could live like this.”

Your answer in this life might be the same as Blackliq’s — putting everything you’ve got into defeating your demons and creating a better future for yourself through art. Or it might be something completely different. What’s inspirational, in the end, about this album full of dark beats and hard stories, is the way Blackliq lives his truth. He’s a writer, an MC, and a storyteller, and we’re all able to benefit from the way he tells his stories. All you’ve got to do is listen.

Time Is The Price is out now and available on all streaming services, and as an mp3 download and merch package from Strange Famous Records.