What have YOU done this Summer? Well, Alistair Fitchett (he of the Tangents website and Unpopular label) has made not one, but two zines. Both issues of Don’t Forget To Dance come beautifully designed with tracing paper details and free badges, and of course packed full of great writing. Almost defiantly self-indulgent, Alistair writes about whatever he damn well pleases, from indiepop to cycling to books. Luckily for us, his writing is always interesting and engaging regardless of the topic. Issue 1 has stuff on Glasvegas, The Kinks, George Pelecanos and Phil Wilson while issue 2 features Nestor Burma books, Pauline Murray & The Invisible Girls, The Playwrights, The Bomb Pops and Slumberland Records. Go get! Both issues are available from the Unpopular shop on Folksy for just a little over a quid each.

I got sent a copy of The Illustrated Ape magazine last week, as they’d used a quote from my Paul Cannell interview. I’d never seen it before and it’s an amazing looking magazine, as much about the illustration and design as the writing. This here is their Heavenly Records issue which was hugely nostalgic for me. As well as the article on Paul Cannell (Heavenly and Creation artist), there’s a great rambling interview with Heavenly founder Jeff Barrett, a group reminiscence session with all the key players of the Heavenly Sunday Social, poetry from Nicky Wire, a piece by Kevin Pearce and some lovely illustrations by the likes of Rob Ryan. There’s also a bunch of random oddness and fiction which verges on the self-indulgently baffling but overall it’s a great read. Have a look at their website for info on stockists.

I myself made THREE zines this Summer, get me. Okay, one of them was a compilation of some good bits of diskant and one was a print version of my Tokyo Shopping Guide but the third is an all-new telling of my fun times in Tokyo last year. If you want to read about everything I got up to during ten days in Tokyo, from kawaii shopping to sightseeing to eating everything in sight then this is the zine for you. You can get all my zines from my shop.

Have you made a zine recently? If so send it over so I can read and review it!

Posted: 09|29|08 at 12:52 pm. Filed under: books, zines, etc..
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