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Wed, 29 Aug 2012 12:53:27 -0400

Mighta had something to do with this. scarygoround: I didn’t...

Wed, 25 Jul 2012 15:52:25 -0400

Mighta had something to do with this.

scarygoround:

I didn’t come up with this idea but I brought the full weight of my seal drawing powers to bear on it.

Charlie Lyne: assorted Ultra Culture

Fri, 02 Mar 2012 05:46:55 -0500

December 2009 - Ultra Culture Review of the Year 2009

First off, I should point out that the following zines were produced during the tail end of my teen years, and that sufficient time hasn’t really passed to start being embarrassed by them. Come back to me in five years and I’ll probably be more mortified by some of my wildly obvious pretensions; for now, I’m still unapologetic.

I started a movie blog called Ultra Culture when I was sixteen, and after consistently failing to get any work printed in a real magazine (damn you Little White Lies!) in late 2009 I decided to make my first zine. I roped in some friends to contribute, as well as reaching out to a few people I idolised at the time (and still do in fact), many of whom were lovely enough to offer up a little something. I was so proud of the roster that it ended up boastfully filling most of the front cover, partly because my original idea — to get all the contributors to hold up a single word from the title of the zine — fell apart. On the bright side, I am now the proud owner of this photograph of Simon Pegg holding up the word “THE”:

The quality of writing on my part was quite low (although I did coin the portmanteau word ‘crapbucket’) but all the amazing help I had with it (not least from the BFI Southbank, who agreed to sell it in their shop) made the final product worthwhile, even if I had to make six trips to a grotty warehouse in Farringdon to get it printed and ended up losing about £100 because I priced it too low.

One feature I was particularly proud of was this collaboration with photographer Katy Dillon, in which we traipsed around Central London taking pictures of me with various celebrity masks on:

We did half of them at 5am on a Monday morning on the way to our respective art schools; it was a fucking nightmare.

16 December 2010 - Ultra Culture Review of the Year 2010

It was a year before I attempted another zine, and only after I realised that I could save a lot of time and money by printing it on folded A4 paper rather than folded A3. Since May 2010, I’d been running a series of events at the beautiful ICA cinema under the banner of Ultra Culture Cinema, and our fifth event (a screening of the amazing documentary Catfish - see it asap if you haven’t already) was scheduled for mid-December, so I decided to do a follow-up zine to distribute at that.

The lead interview was with Sandra Hebron, the then-artistic director of the London Film Festival, who’d become something of a running joke on my blog (for reasons too convoluted to get into here). Sandra sees more movies in a given year than anyone else I’ve ever met, so her segment of the zine quite rightly exposed my contributions as the uninformed messes they really were.

Again, some awesome people very kindly leant their time and effort to the zine, not least my all-time hero Harmony Korine, who agreed to do a short interview about Christmas. It made all the hours spent screaming at the 18th Century photocopier in the ICA’s basement worthwhile.

4 March 2011 - Submarine

It was three months before the next Ultra Culture Cinema event: a preview of Richard Ayoade’s killer directorial debut Submarine. Again, I made a short zine to give out on the night, and thanks to the film’s distributor Optimum Releasing (now Studio Canal) I managed to get some proper access to the cast and crew (no more trying to get in touch with people via Facebook — hooray!). Stars Craig Roberts and Yasmin Paige both contributed portraits of one another, and Joe Dunthorne (who wrote the sublime novel on which the film is based) wrote an introduction from Oliver Tate, the film’s lead character:

I also sent off some questions to the notoriously shy Ayoade, but in the end I only got one (admittedly very good) answer back:

“Has the reaction to the film been as you expected?”

“Yes and no. I’ve been moonlighting as a freelance journalist to various publications. I like some of the reviews I’ve written, but in others I was a little harsh. I think I have self-hate issues.”

(That lovely illustration is the work of Alix Holden, incidentally.)

17 June 2011 - EuroTrip

The proudest night of my life came on the 17th June 2011, when I managed to persuade 150 people to pay £10 each to come and see the 2004 teen classic EuroTrip (one of my favourite movies of all time) at the ICA. It was the first time a print of the film had been shown anywhere in the world since its original release in 2004, so I decided to make one last zine to celebrate.

It was laid out (in hindsight, somewhat pompously) as a sort of academic study, complete with a double page spread of excerpts from original reviews of the film (Sight&Sound were a bit sniffy but did praise its ‘gleeful bad-taste energy’) and a 2500-word essay on the film’s merits by yours truly.

Thanks to the magic of the internet, I also managed to get interviews with some of the supporting cast from the film, including J.P. Manoux (who plays the dancing robot guy) and Jessica Boehrs (who plays the hot German girl Mieke — her nude scenes were somewhat formative for me back in 2004, I seem to recall). On the off chance that any of it is of interest to anybody but me, most of the zine is now available online.

Anyway, that’s enough self-indulgence for now. They’re all going back in the box until such time as they have amassed immeasurable value. I fear it may be a while.

Alec Hanley Bemis: Jaboni Youth

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 19:36:40 -0500

These days, Alec is best known for running Brassland Records alongside Aaron and Bryce Dessner from The National, in addition to managing Chk Chk Chk. In the past, he managed Dirty Projectors, and wrote some incredible articles for LA Weekly (including this key piece on Elliott Smith). Prior to that, in the year before he started studying at Yale, he ran fabled fanzine (and cassette label, the nascent Brassland) Jaboni Youth, which counted The Mountain Goats’ John Darnielle amongst its contributors.

Here, Alec talks in-depth about the fanzine’s inception and lifespan. And in honour of his fine work, I vote we try our utmost to get the term “jaboni” back into common parlance as soon as possible. And bookmark his blog, it’s excellent.

Where did the name come from?

Throughout high school, my best friend was a dude named Mark Ospovat. Mark was a few years younger than me, but his father had had him very late in life — I believe Mark’s dad was in his 70s by the time we met. Therefore, the words that sometimes came out of his father’s mouth were a snapshot of an earlier time. At one point, after some youthful idiocy, as Mark and I sat in the in the driveway preparing to get away in whatever vehicle we had convinced our parents to lend us, his father stood in the archway of the front door, shaking his fist at us and screaming “You stupid jabonis!”

What was that youthful indiscretion? Maybe we had stayed out way too late the night before? Maybe we’d spent the afternoon polishing off a dozen donuts and gotten sick all over the guest bathroom? Maybe one of us had burnt a hole in the kitchen sink after setting a titanium ribbon aflame? Maybe one of us had used up all the toner in the family’s home office photocopier?

It’s hard to say. It was a long time ago.

In any case, the name was warranted & appropriate.

When and why did you set the zine up?

I believe I started it during a gap year I took — after I’d graduated from high school but before I began college.

Jaboni Youth was the expression of three conditions. (1) I lived in the suburbs and I was bored & longing for human connection. (2) I was excited about underground music & culture. And I was (3) even more logorrheic than I am today.

I continued it throughout my four years of college. It fulfilled the role of introducing me to a world beyond the world I lived in at the time. I hope and expect that desire to interact with other people through culture will never change.

You told me previously that you had “no friends” when you were making it. Is that really true?! Some googling would suggest that it led you to now-Pitchfork writer Brandon Stosuy, who you still appear to be good friends with - did it help foster a community at school/college for you?

Geez, Laura, “No friends” is a rather extreme way of putting it! I definitely had a posse of boys & girls I hung out with — mostly local misfits & participants in the emerging alternative culture of the day. (The scene I was involved in back then played out pre- and post-Nirvana, who were a real & significant mile-marker at the time.) These people were the rebel children of various first generation immigrants; dissatisfied scions of the Scarsdale, NY, bourgeois whose hatred of their upbringing mostly expressed itself in subcultures like skateboarding and punk rock; and various troubled street urchins who we were drawn to & who were drawn to us. Actually, I’m not sure who I’m referring to with that “us”; I might have been one of the urchins.

We were united by a common interest in what we called “ruckus” & other forms of beautiful noise.

What kind of distribution and reputation did the zine have (or in the case of the latter, did you think/hope it had)? How regularly did it come out, how did you get it out to the public?

I can’t answer the question about reputation authoritatively as it’s somewhat lost to the mists of time. Once or twice, I have bumped into people who remember it fondly. I half-recall a famous Riot Grrrl asking me about it when I was interacting with her as a “real” journalist many years later. (I think it was Molly Vail or, heavens to betsy, maybe it was even Tobi asking me if I was the same Alec that did Jaboni Youth?)

In terms of getting the thing out into the world, I remember that at the time the paragon of successful zine publishing was to gain distribution in the Tower Records chain, who would take (and sell!) upwards of a thousand copies of a good zine. By the third (or fourth?) issue I think I achieved that distinction. There may have been some smaller distributors as well. The last issue also had some free distribution around the college town I was living in.

The early issues were distributed to a few dozen people by mail. I think the zine “sold” for however many stamps it took to send it. By the end of the zine’s run, I remember being pretty fed up with the tedious demands of mail-order and I’m not sure it was available anywhere but in stores and newsstands.

I managed to publish about an issue a year for about five years time.

Was it a DIY photocopying job?

Yep, at first. I made copies at my mother’s place of business. Later on the aforementioned home office photocopier of Mark Ospovat’s father. By the third issue, I think I’d graduated to an advanced photocopier at my university’s print shop, an early example of “print-on-demand” technology. Later issues used regular offset printing. I think I managed to produce two issues that way.

The design of the few pages I’ve seen is pretty great - did you do that too?

Well thank you, I don’t remember it being nearly as great as you do! Since I’m not quite sure where I’d find any copies of the thing at this point, I’ll let your memory supersede my own, less glowing reminisce.

In any case, I can’t take all the credit for the design. I believe the later issues were designed by (or at least heavily enabled) by my housemate throughout college Gabriel Snyder.

Did you have a particular remit, a swathe of music that you covered?

As the Californians I was being introduced to throughout college might have put it: “Hells no.”

The zine was really an exploratory device. I’d say I mostly covered what you’d broadly term “indie rock” — punk rock, singer-songwriters trying to mask their identities, and some weirder experimental noises. I remember a kind of music that was “lo-fidelity” being given a lot of attention. At the time that included singer-songwriter savants like Elliott Smith and Smog. The only genres that I don’t think I touched upon all that much was electronic music and classical (unless you’d consider Rachel’s classical). And, of course, anything R&B and hip-hop-oriented was probably given short shrift. In retrospect it makes me really, really really sad I did not capture my 20-something musings on Biggie Smalls.

Which features/items that you ran do you look back on fondly now?

I honestly don’t remember most of what was in the zine so it would be inaccurate to say I think back on anything in it with fondness! I do remember being excited at having the chance — however briefly or shallowly — of connecting with some of my favorite musicians. I also remember being intently focused on reviewing every piece of music I managed to get into my collection, back when having a record collection was a real badge of distinction. (What kind of distinction I’m not sure.) However, the fondness I feel isn’t for the reviews themselves or the task of writing; it’s for the purchase of the albums themselves. Back then there was a real joy in blowing $100 on a compact disc shopping spree, coming home with ten or twenty discrete objects to be unpacked and absorbed over the weeks and months to come. Nowadays it’s hard to imagine being so excited about a compact disc (and occasional 7”)!

It took a long time for me to figure out that this was the exact wrong way that a listener should experience music. I know I’m sort of hinting at a fuller response here, but I’ll let this incomplete answer just hang in space…

What was the “Funny Faces” item?

I think that was a feature that ran in one issue. It was photographs of musicians making funny faces. The only explanation I can come up with for why and how it happened is that it was a good way to break the ice with musicians I wanted to meet.

Was it a solo project? Who did you collaborate on it with if not?

I guess I could call it a solo project, but I definitely published a fair bit of work by other people, especially in the later issues. For example, John Darnielle from the Mountain Goats, the designer Andrew Kuo who has gained some renown for his music-related charts in The New York Times, this brilliant fellow named Jason Morphew who I fall in and out of touch with, and this dude Brian Doherty who (after Googling him) is apparently a senior editor at the libertarian magazine Reason.

Am I right in thinking it was also a cassette label? If so, how did the two relate? I remember you saying that somewhere along the line, Jaboni Youth became Brassland, or at least sowed the seeds for it - how did the transition happen?

In high school I ran a cassette label with Mark Ospovat, the friend mentioned earlier in this interview. I will leave it to you to try to find the original name for it (while secretly hoping that it is lost to the vagaries of a pre-Google universe). [I tried, and I can’t find it. Your secret’s safe - Laura]

When I moved away to go to college, Mark and I weren’t collaborating anymore so I renamed it Brassland and kept some of my favorite cassettes in print. When I graduated in the late ’90s, I embarked upon a few years of typical post-collegiate searching and that name lay dormant for a few years.

I’m sure what I said about the evolution from zine to label is true — but I’ll be damned if I can recall the details. Doing this interview prompted me to read an old interview I did in my college newspaper at the time I published Jaboni Youth’s last issue. In it, I said “I might be helping some friends of mine start an indie record label.” But in terms of the timeline I have in my head, that seems too early for me to have been considering a label with Aaron and Bryce Dessner because The National and Clogs hadn’t even formed yet.

Explain John Darnielle’s involvement with the tape side of things, what did he write for you?

One of the later issues of the zine included a tape compilation. John contributed a song from a side project of his called the Bloody Hawaiians and, in the zine itself, I published a short essay of his called ‘The Value of Overstating the Obvious’. I’m not sure if he was doing much writing at the time, but I remember it being good enough that, should he ever win the MacArthur Award he is destined for, I hope that whoever edits together the inevitable ‘Collected John Darnielle Anthology’ manages to dig that essay up and reprint it.

Do you think there’s still a point to, or role for zines these days?

I’d say that question deserves a whole essay in response but I’m not the guy who is going to write it. Instead, I’ll offer a few strands.

My short answer would be “No — at least in the role that I think zines fulfill. Technology has made it possible to do the same job in more efficient, inspiring and profoundly communicative ways.”

To unpack that pretentious little nugget a bit: in those pre-internet days, zines were the most direct and lively way for folks otherwise off-the-grid to assert an identity, and participate in culture, and to meet other people interested in the same kind of things. Now there are better ways. In term of efficiency, I won’t pretend I understand the relative carbon footprints of printing a few thousand copies of a small magazine vs. publishing things onto the internet — but it does seem like the potential audience of a printed zine isn’t really justified when you consider the potential waste of the many copies that might go unread.

I guess zines are still interesting for people who are particularly fascinated by things that are made by hand or in a limited edition, but that was not my primary interest. Maybe that’s already obvious from my description of Jaboni Youth’s evolution from a hand written, photocopied and assembled thing to a professional, offset printed magazine.

By the way, sorry that I came up with such a boring way to end this interview. Maybe the boredom will inspire someone the same way it did me.

Künstlicher - Laura Snapes

Fri, 14 Oct 2011 11:56:00 -0400

As I’m persuading you to embarrass yourselves with your teenage zine efforts, it makes sense that I should go first. This was not my first fanzine - that was Espionage, but it only exists on paper in my childhood bedroom so I’ll dig that out next time I go home. Künstlicher, however, was Espionage phase two, reanimated for my AS-level art coursework with a new name - it means “artificial” in German. And it sounds brilliantly rude (at least when you’re 16). I’ll never forget the very Christian one of my art teachers blushing a bit, and very tentatively positing that she didn’t think the name was appropriate for a school project. “I don’t know what you mean?” I replied, pretending to be confused, knowing that she wouldn’t try and explain what it sounded like.

Where Espionage was a purely bedroom vocation, Künstlicher was an empire in comparison. I wrote and designed everything, took all the photos and printed and distributed it myself. As well as a circulation of about 50 (god bless my dad staying late after work so I could use the photocopier), it had a blog and an advertising rates card. Even at the low, low rate of £15/full page - with bespoke layout if you desire!! - no-one took me up on this highly lucrative business opportunity. I can’t think why.

Künstlicher only ran for one issue as I soon realised that blogging was a lot less hassle, especially because (as you can see) I was completely rubbish at Photoshop. The cover had local post-LCD Soundsystem heroes I Say Marvin sweating it out in local Truro pub The Swan (but no feature on them inside, well done me), an interview with Lee May Foster from Bonbi Forest (that was the first time we’d met - she’s now Lee May Foster-Wilson and one of my best pals), and a completely bizarre article on babysitting. I’ve picked out a few choice excerpts below.

This is an embarrassingly bad review of one of my favourite local bands, The Bloody Tentacles, from when they came and played in the record shop I worked in. Note the wonderfully literal illustration. I think I was aiming for some kind of apocalyptic scene. Tis was written shortly after a parents’ evening where I asked my parents and English teacher, “Have you heard of that journalist Julie Burchill? Yeah, I want to be like her.”

Also: “cool-as-fuck sound”. Can you hear that? It’s the sound of me crumbling into a million pieces in embarrassment.

Here’s a guest article from now-Guardian Music editor Tim Jonze, who I think I repeatedly hassled on MySpace to get him to do this for me. And then promptly put blue text on a blue background so no-one would be able to read it anyway. Sorry Tim. I can tell what you’re thinking too - I really missed my calling as a magazine designer. Our art director is literally quaking in his boots having seen these pages.

Lastly, here’s a spread on local band Rosie & The Goldbug. I thought this was literally the apex of design when I finished it. Not that you can tell from the pictures I chose to illustrate the piece, but Rosie’s thing was wearing Dresden Dolls-style black and white shiny tights and playing the piano with her feet. The legs on the right are in homage to that - I lovingly cut them out of a Daily Mail spread on patterned tights, and scanned them in individually. The first line - “‘Kate Bush on crack’ and ‘the deranged older sister of Dorothy’ are two ways in which Rosie Vanier has been described” - I wrote both of those descriptions myself in the local newspaper. And the last line - “fortunately for Vanier, at the end of the yellow brick road seems only success”? She’s currently touring small pubs around the country. Never let it be said that I can’t spot ‘em early.

Poor beleaguered secretary…

Fri, 14 Oct 2011 11:16:57 -0400

Poor beleaguered secretary…

Photo

Fri, 14 Oct 2011 11:15:42 -0400

Until the first posts go up, here are a few handsome old...

Fri, 14 Oct 2011 11:15:21 -0400

Until the first posts go up, here are a few handsome old photocopier adverts in homage to the machine that made zines possible…