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diskant is an independent music community based in Glasgow, Scotland and we have a whole team of people from all over the UK and beyond writing about independent music and culture, from interviews with new and established bands and labels to record and fanzine reviews and articles on art, festivals and politics. There's over ten years of content here so dig in!

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Archive for the 'overlord updates' Category

…and we’re back!

Posted: May 6th, 2012, by Marceline Smith

If you’re reading this, then you’ve arrived at the new diskant. Where ‘new’ equals ‘archived’. diskant has pretty much served its purpose – there are loads of ways for new bands to promote themselves, billions of new social networking sites for similar-minded folks to hang out and anyone can start a blog at the push of a button.

So don’t expect any new posts here, although there might be some if we feel like it. There’s still an enormous archive of awesome features, interviews and blog posts to dig around in, and if you miss us, then you’ll be interested in the new Where are the now? page, which will tell you what the diskant writers are up to now. Many of us have new blogs, bands, businesses and other exciting projects going on that should take note of.

If you’ve ever been a part of diskant, whether as a staffer, writer, random interviewer or just a member of the legendary diskant Yahoo group, please do email me or leave a comment and tell us what you’re up to these days so I can add you to the page. I’m not (just) being a sap when I say the diskant years were some of the best of my life, and introduced me to some of the greatest people I ever expect to meet.

So, I’ll just say THANKS to everyone, writers and readers alike. It was a fun fifteen years.

the slow decline of diskant

Posted: July 27th, 2011, by Marceline Smith

Hello ever-decreasing band of loyal diskant readers! As you may have noticed, diskant is slowly slipping into retirement. What with all these Facebooks and iPhones and things, there’s just too many other places for us to be posting our thoughts on, and being the incredibly creative and amazing people we are, there are now about 5 million things on the internet run by diskanteers. If you’re missing anyone in particular, try that list of author links on the top right. I may well follow this up with an extensive list of diskant-related blogs you should be reading.

As we’ve built up such an epic vault of awesome content over the last 13 years, there is no way I will ever let diskant disappear, major disasters permitting, but it does cost me a fair bit to maintain so I may have to move over to some more affordable hosting in the near future. So, if everything disappears soon, don’t panic! We’ll be back.

I would hope we’ll still manage a few round-ups and things now and again, as it’s cool to see what everyone’s up to, but I would definitely recommend subscribing to our RSS feed (in Google Reader or whatnot) so that you can hear about these infrequent postings.

Self-promotion alert!

If you’re now lacking some good reading, you might like my new zine distro, pushpin zines. diskant was of course built from the late 90s zine scene and I’ve been continuing my zinemaking ever since, while also recently encouraging a whole new generation of zinesters. At pushpin, you can buy lots of cool zines by my favourite zinesters on my favourite subjects – travel, creativity, Japan and personal stories. If you decide to buy anything, mention diskant at checkout and I’ll send you some freebies too!

2010 Catchup

Posted: January 1st, 2011, by Marceline Smith

Happy New Year, diskant readers! I know there are at least 5 of you out there.

2010 was a very quiet year for diskant – we’ve all been involved in other projects, from blogs, bands and labels to organising festivals and running our own businesses, not to mention jobs, kids and moving countries. You can always see what we’re up to individually by clicking those author links on the right sidebar.

However, we have made the effort to bring you a catch-up of all our favourite things from the last twelve months – our best albums will be up tomorrow, followed by books, films, zines, TV, gigs, events and more.

And we’re not planning on going anywhere – if you do enjoy diskant then make sure you subscribe to our RSS feed to get the latest posts whenever they appear.

This is the news

Posted: January 19th, 2010, by Marceline Smith

– Our first interview of 2010 is up, as Pascal interviews no less than Brian Chippendale of Lightning Bolt. Hurrah! Read it here.

– We’re down to the last 10ish copies of the diskant 10 year anniversary zine so don’t miss out – get yours now! Once it sells out, I may consider doing a new diskant-related zine.

– For those of you who read the Christmas catch-up articles, I would like to say that the Al Burian zine/mini-book was indeed fantastic but just made me want a new proper long book. At least he has a blog too. Also that I never made it to the Yummy Fur reunion after managing to be ill from about December 4th to present. Bahhhhh. By all accounts, it was a nostalgia fest / Glasgow indie reunion of the highest order. Oh well.

– And finally, if you’re on Twitter, then you can follow the whole diskant team in one fell swoop by perusing the diskanteers list. Or, if you’re holding out from joining because it’s too “trendy” then you can RSS it instead and no-one will ever know. Enjoy!

Christmas Catch-up!

Posted: December 23rd, 2009, by Marceline Smith

It’s not been the busiest year here at diskant but I hope you’ve enjoyed our writings. Instead of a failed attempt at any kind of end of year (or, god forbid, end of decade) poll, we’ve decided just to celebrate the fact that none of us listen to the same records and do a series of catch-up posts. Starting tomorrow, you can tune in here at 10am every day (except Christmas Day and New Year’s Day – go and like, have some fun in real life!) to find out what records, films, books games, TV etc. has been thrilling us this year.

Now that I have an iPhone (woo!) and a WordPress app, I might actually start posting more regularly. You have been warned.

Thanks for continuing to visit diskant, and Merry Christmas!

News from the diskant staff

Posted: August 10th, 2009, by Marceline Smith

Some stuff we’re up to:

– Tickets are now on sale for Simon and Stu’s annual charity event Audioscope. It takes place on Saturday 17 October at the Jericho in Oxford and has a pretty cool line-up so far: MAPS, THE LONGCUT, REMEMBER REMEMBER, BRONNT INDUSTRIES KAPITAL, TALONS, UTE, CATS & CATS & CATS and BITCHES. Get your tickets here.

– Simon also took part in Antony Gormley’s One & Other a few days ago, becoming a “living monument” on the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square. You can even watch the whole thing here should you have a spare hour.

– Chris Summerlin has all but ditched us for his own blog but he’s also selling off a load of his lovely gig posters – buy 3 and you’ll get a fourth poster for free. Find out more here.

– If you haven’t picked up a copy of JGRAM WORLD, Jason’s entertaining book of the blog that got him sacked then you can now buy it from my shop right here for a mere £6.

– You can also find me and my ever-growing stock of kawaii products at Duckstock next weekend (Sunday 16th August). It’s an all-dayer at The Flying Duck club in Glasgow (sister to Mono and Stereo) and promises about 20 different acts plus DJs and other fun. It starts at 1pm and it’s FREE! See you there!

Did I miss anything? Post it in the comments!

It’s the diskant Summer catch-up 2009!

Posted: July 18th, 2009, by Marceline Smith

Continuing our tradition from the last few years, I hunted down our team of procrastinating writers and got them to tell me what they’ve been listening to, playing, watching and reading recently. Starting Monday, you can read all about it in a series of blog posts that will take us through to August.

If you can’t wait that long, you can read our catch-ups from 2008 and 2006.

Tweet Tweet

Posted: March 22nd, 2009, by Marceline Smith

So, you’re no doubt “hip” to the new thing that is Twitter – microblogging for the masses, social phenomenon etc. etc. Of course, us diskanteers have been on it for a while so I have added a handy list of links to our Twitter feeds over there on the left. We don’t have an official diskant Twitter because let’s face it, official Twitter feeds are hella boring, but instead you can keep up with us AS PEOPLE.

If you’re not on Twitter already then you’re missing out on knowing how Alex is getting on as a new resident of Texas, what Greg Kitten thought of the most recent episode of LOST and what technology I’ve broken today. Not to mention my real time updates of the daylight murder right outside my house. Awesome. It’s quality content like that which has made me the 14th most popular Twitterer in Glasgow.

Yeah, so come join us and you’ll get some extra free content throughout the day. I also heartily recommend the entertaining Twitterings of our blog friends Popjustice, Sweeping The Nation, I Like, and The Morning News.

Anyone else good we should be following? Leave a comment!

Content Alert!

Posted: March 18th, 2009, by Marceline Smith

Yes, yes, blah, blah, neglect, sorry etc. but there is new stuff coming right up.

First off, some interviews from the archives of Oxford’s excellent charity event Audioscope. These interviews have previously only been available in the event programmes but now everyone can read them. The first one up right now is with the very friendly FOUR TET, soon to be followed by Scout Niblett, Clinic, Piano Magic and Michael Rother. Bet you can’t wait!

Secondly, it seems apt that you all voted for my columns next as it’s my birthday next week. However, upon re-reading them, it seems more like a cruel punishment. Nevertheless, I have swallowed my pride and you can read all my ramblings in full over the next couple of months, starting Friday. In my defence, I wrote them eight years ago. They are also amusingly filled with predictions for the future, none of which have come to pass so far. Go me.

Newer readers may be impressed to discover my loyalty to certain names and phrases – diskant was been my username for everything from my first steps on to the internet back in 1995 and Asking For Trouble was my column name back in 2001 and went on to be the name of my record label and now artistic endeavours. No wonder Google loves me.

Okay, carry on.

The people have spoken

Posted: February 10th, 2009, by Marceline Smith

Or rather, some of you have been voting in our ‘which columns next?’ poll. The current front runner is Stuart Fowkes, which had absolutely nothing to do with him pleading for votes on Twitter, ahem.

All six of Stu’s columns are now scheduled and will pop up over the next few weeks taking us into March. Stu was our resident demo reviewer – this is often a thankless task but at diskant it’s usually preferable to the bombardments of PR-approved crap. At least you sometimes get a nice personalised letter and some sweets.

I’m hoping you’ll all add some comments to the posts and let us know what the folks reviewed are up to these days. Some were successful, some went on to form other awesome bands and others were never heard of again. Oh, and I joined one of them!

Please continue to vote in the poll as I do intend to get everyone’s columns up eventually and you can help decide the order.

Stu is also writing over at The Spider Hill, should you be interested (you should be!).