Writing about the AV Club

The AV Club at Santa Fe Community College was honestly very successful for its debut showing last Saturday. I was gifted with an inside look at the process of how the show was set up, and can say that a lot of hard work went into the preparation for the show. Beyond that thought, I won’t say anything more about my experiences behind the scenes the event. I intend that this blog post in going to come from the perspective of an attendee rather than as a post mortem to the event. With that being said, let me get on with my review. The selection of artists covered a wide array of styles. From the distinctive, native sounds of the “Hear Hums” to the relaxing, melodic tunes played by Nicole Miglis on the piano, there was definitely a big sampling of musical tastes. From a continuity standpoint, the event was well divided and pretty balanced overall with the way the AV Club dispersed the acts. The electronic music artists, DJ, and VJ sets (Hear Hums, Euglossine Industires, Ghost Fields, DJ Adrian Villaverde) were all framed by more traditional acts involving pure lighting (and occasionally some projection) work like Nicole Miglis’s piano pieces, the Infamous dance team of Santa Fe College, and UF’s hip-hop poetry group, Signs of Life. Regarding the VJ sets for each artist, they were amazingly well done, and really helped to augment the experience of audience members as the artist played their music. I personally thought that the best sets were the VJ sets for Ghost Fields and DJ Adrian Villaverde, which were just mind-blowingly spectacular. While there were some hiccups at points, considering that it was all done real-time, the VJing was very well put together. The lighting also worked out extremely well, and was excellently cued for the most part, as well. The only criticism I can say about this event was that the spare DJ playing during the break-times really didn’t have much to work with, as moments between acts varied between long and abrupt starts. At times it left me wondering, “Why bother having the DJ anyway?” “Why not just play a prerecorded intermission track?” Nevertheless, like I said before, the event, overall, was just plainly awesome, and I’m definitely looking forward to the next one whenever that may be.

-Nathan D.