Audio Verite

2016 in Review: Stuff I Wrote

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river-city-magazine

So I’m going to attempt to end this jerk of a year with five wrap-up posts in five days. Fingers crossed this works. I tend to overwrite these things until they become albatross-y, so I’ll try to keep things snappy, starting with a quick list of links to music writing I did in 2016. Add in weekly contributions to the Off Your Radar newsletter and an August appearance on Sound Gaze and I can definitively say that this is the most blabbing about music I’ve done in a year.

Many thanks — seriously, too many to mention here — to the people I interviewed and the people who made what I wrote sound better and look prettier. Y’all know who you are, and I hope you also know how awesome and appreciated you are. Lots of fun stuff in the works for 2017. Until then…

Featured Off Your Radar weeks:

For Boomer Magazine:

For Richmond Navigator online

For River City Magazine

For RVA Magazine

For West End’s Best

 

RVA Magazine

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rva-magazine

It’s been a hot minute since I was in the print edition of RVA Magazine — the last time was in 2012 — but I’m happy to say I have an article in the new issue, which sports a truly gorgeous cover. Look at that thing. Greg Simkins, y’all.

I wrote about recording studios in Richmond, spending the first half my 2,000 words surveying options and the second half profiling the studio I’ve spent the most time in — Pedro Aida’s Audio Verite. Aida is a talented dude, and interviewing him gave me an opportunity to dig deeper into his relationship with music and how he got his start as an engineer/producer. It strikes me now that the reason that conversation was so rewarding and the reason Aida finds recording so rewarding are one in the same: It’s all about connecting with people. Finding the right studio… helping people make albums… writing… performing… at every stage, your success and your ability to connect with people are intertwined, and I feel like I now have a fuller understanding of that than I did before I started working on this article. Thank you, Pedro.

You can read the article here (I also have a few album reviews/blurbs in this issue) or find free hard copies around town. I found a stack at Belmont Pizzeria while out for a run and managed to tuck two into the front pocket of the hoodie I was wearing. They bounced around a bit on the way home, but it was worth it.

I’ll close by re-posting “Reinvent The Space,” which Positive No recorded with Aida at Audio Verite. (Click here for more info on the song and the great cause you can support by buying it.)

Positive No — “Reinvent The Space” [Bandcamp]