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!
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!
1. Yes, sorry, that was the last of the Chris Summerlin columns. You can still read all his other blog posts here, or how about a nice interview we did with Chris about Reynolds.
2. So, who’s up next? Simon Minter, that’s who. Simon was actually the editor of our columns section and did such a good job he even persuaded himself to write two columns, one about music and one about films. I’ll start posting these up as of next week. He also did all the cute column banners, did you know?
3. Don’t forget you can still buy our 10 year anniversary zine which has content not available on the website and can be read on the bus without the use of a fancy iPhone or whatever. It’s just one pound, people! Buy it here.
4. There’s something of a zine resurgence going on, have you noticed? This of course is A Good Thing and I will write more later.
5. And finally, PROOF that the diskant 08/08/08 party did actually happen thanks to this lovely video by Alice. Be amazed by the indie tombola, Findo Gask’s video projections and Sunnyvale driving a very long distance. Luckily for you, Alice didn’t document the part where we all got woken up at 8am by an orange march outside my house + torrential rain. Rock and Roll.
HEY, YOU! Today is your last chance to enter the giveaway for a Wil Forbis book and CD. All you need to do is post any old comment on this post and you could be the winner. It really is that easy.
Also, photos of the diskant party are starting to turn up online – see some by me, Stu and Emma. I’ll be updating the 08/08/08 page with any more photos or reviews I spot so keep a lookout there and let me know if I miss anything.
YAY. Thanks so much to everyone that made last night a success. It was so much fun and we made a lot more money than I could have hoped for. Enormous thanks to Findo Gask for being both awesome and all-round good guys and to Sunnyvale Noise Sub-element (and Alice!) for driving all the way from Oxford only to be awoken at 8am this morning by the orange marchers. They were also awesome.
Big thanks also to Claire and Jo for manning the Tombola – which went down a storm with almost every prize won – and to Alasdair, Nicolette, Chris, Stew and everyone at the CCA. And of course, everyone who came down, paid their money and had fun. You all rock!
More photos and stuff laters but for now my head hurts. You can still buy copies of the excellent and hilarious diskant zine and the diskant fun badge set so there’s still some fun to be had if you couldn’t make it down.
As the diskant party approaches, everything is starting to come together. I now have fifty copies of the diskant zine, a 32 page photocopied jaunt through the last ten years of diskant. It’s basically lots of short bits of writing that caught my eye as I trawled the archives but makes for a fantastically good read.
Here’s the content line-up:
– Summer 2008 Catch-up by the diskant team (June 2008)
– Bargain Bin Culture by Wil Forbis (April 2002)
– Honey Is Funny by Chris Summerlin (April 2003)
– Mild Head Injury by Simon Minter (July 2002)
– Some Kind of Monster by Dave Stockwell (September 2004)
– Instal 05 by Marceline Smith (October 2005)
– The Owls Are Not What They Seem by Alex McChesney (July 2006)
– Magik Markers, twice by Joe Luna (May 2006)
– Liquid Blue by Fraser Campbell (June 2005)
– Super Quick Primavera Roundup by Ollie Simpson (June 2007)
– “Ladies and Gentlemen, we got him” by Ross McGivern (December 2003)
– Slint by Chris Summerlin (April 2005)
The unlinked items are columns which we will be re-posting at some point in the future. However, you can read them NOW (or in a few days anyway) by purchasing a copy right here in my shop for a mere £1. You can also buy copies at the diskant 08/08/08 party of course.
If you’re one of the people involved in the above works of genius, email me for your free copy.
Even though I am up to my eyeballs in diskant party planning, I still find the time to give you new interviews to read. It’s amazing isn’t it?
First up is a long-overdue Talentspotter profile of the lovely SUNNYVALE NOISE SUB-ELEMENT who have just released an album of live tracks and remixes and will be bringing their own particular brand of genre-defying experimental electro-rock all the way from Oxford to our 10 year anniversary party (THIS FRIDAY!).
In the other corner is the mighty WIL FORBIS, Acid Logic founder, musician, diskant columnist and general good guy. No wait, bad guy. Oh, whatever. With his book just published and his Bargain Bin Culture columns dusted off and re-posted on diskant, I thought it was time to catch up with the man himself. It’s a pretty damn good read if I do say so myself.
Wil has also kindly offered up a copy of the book and his latest CD for a giveaway right here on diskant. Just leave a comment on this post and I’ll get Wil to pick someone as a WINNER in a week’s time. Flattery is probably the way to go. All joking aside, this really is a fantastic book so get on it, or buy your own copy by clicking on the image to your right.
Maybe you thought we were joking about the whole indie tombola idea but no sir. I have been pestering everyone even vaguely connected to diskant and the prizes have been rolling in. You can go see them all here on Flickr.
There’s still a few more to turn up but so far you could literally be winning any of the following:
– CDs by Part Chimp, Envy, Growing and Torche, a deSalvo 7″ and a label sampler from Scotland’s most tremendous record label, Rock Action.
– Singles and lovely embroidered patches from Brighton’s Blood Red Shoes, currently taking the world by storm (and thus dashing all hopes of The Oedipus reforming for our party).
– Albums by Polaris, Bilge Pump and Hirameka Hi-Fi plus lots of samplers from the UK’s best groomed label, Nottingham’s Gringo Records.
– Stacks of joy from indie legend Alistair Fitchett including 7″s on his Unpopular Records label, a full set of I Wish I Was Unpopular CDRs, badges and a special edition package of original drawings.
– Hilarious emo-broidery cross stitch samplers from Glasgow’s craft legends Miso Funky.
– 5 sets of CDs by The Marcia Blaine School For Girls, Like A Stuntman, The Village Orchestra and the Some Paths Lead Back Again compilation on London’s friendly experimental label Highpoint Lowlife.
– CDs from Oxford’s electro noise terrorists, Sunnyvale Noise Sub-element
– A lovely 7″ single from Leeds band Sailors
– Handcrafted jewellery, Scrabble bracelet and lots of badges by Glasgow’s crafty t-boo
– Postcard sets of seaside joys and badges by I Like, Scotland’s most uniquely interesting blog.
– A signed copy of our own JGram‘s book, the tale of the first person in the UK to get sacked for blogging.
– Vinyl box sets and handmade accessories from my own little venture, Asking For Trouble
– No tombola is complete without a bottle of Kia-Ora, some Mr Kipling french fancies and some Babycham so they’ll all be there too, fear not!
Get ye down to the CCA in Glasgow on 08/08/08 for a chance to win! If you’ve never encountered a tombola before (what have you been doing with your life?!), then take it from me; the odds are you will win something.
This looked so much fun – an update of the classic SNES games with lots of cool and hilarious new stuff. It really really was fun too, up until the point I realised I still have some inbuilt FAIL at jumping. Now I remember why I spent literally hours on end joyfully watching ex-flatmate and Mario Hero Ally C play Mario 64 and then would go play Zelda myself. Still, this game is so awesome that I persevered for a while, despite the dying 5 times in a row from sheer stupidity, and almost felt some kind of achievement. The addition of GIANT MARIO and teeny tiny Mini Mario is utter amazingness and I really could have learned to love this game. However, whoever decided to only allow you to save after each boss level is my new most hated person and has driven me into giving up entirely. I’m a busy person – I just want to play one level (5 times, badly) and then do something else. What exactly are we losing here by not letting me save after each level? I cannot believe I am hating on Nintendo for making games too hard to complete. The world has gone wrong. I also now wonder how I had the patience to complete all the Gameboy Mario games back in the day – clearly I had a lot more time on my hands. In summary, if you are not a loser you should go buy this.
YOSHI’S ISLAND
Instead I turned to this, thinking maybe it will have that Mario awesomeness but be aimed at 4 year olds and thus let you save more often. And indeed, it is a cute but clever gaming experience with lots of Mario related platforming fun. However, it is ruined by a) Yoshi, god I hate him, b) having to carry a baby around at all times who floats off if you bump into anything, c) Yoshi’s big stupid head bumping into everything. I managed about 2 levels before all the cutesy-wutesy clouds and happy flowers graphics started to make my teeth hurt.
COOKING MAMA 2
Now you’re talking! Who needs jumping when you can learn some useful real life skills like how to skewer an eel, peel a potato and program a microwave, all under the over-enthusiastic and watchful eyes of Mama. This is basically Cooking Mama 1 with new recipes and a million new modes and prizes you will never look at; in some ways an improvement and in other ways just over-complicating things*. On the whole, there seems to be less focus on interminable stirring tasks and taking 3 stages to cut up an onion, and more unexpected bonuses for being super-fast at oiling your frying pan. Just be careful though – one slip-up and Mama will be shooting flames out of her eyes in a rage. She really was not pleased by my pastry wastage making Mama shaped biscuits. Luckily I am great at stabbing eels in the head so we’re getting along okay for now.
To be continued. I am still mostly playing Mario Kart and Pokemon Link tbh.
* I hope you’re impressed I refrained from any over-egging the pudding type phrases here.
Filed under: gaming | Comments Off on 23 Nuggets of Nintendo pt 2
EDINBURGH ZINE FAIR
I think I may have to go to this as I have never actually been to a zine fair despite writing and buying zines for the last 15 years, or something. They promise “a celebration of underground, independent and small press publishing in all its forms be it art, comics literature, politics or other weirdness.” plus workshops, films and stalls. It takes place from 12pm this very Saturday (26th July) at the Forest Cafe in Edinburgh. More info on Facebook here.
FOREST OF SOUND IN THE FELL FOOT WOOD
Leeds’ experimental DIY promoters Forest of Sound (verging on Centaurgyism there) are organising a nice two day festival at the end of August in the woods near Lake Windermere in Cumbria. Over the weekend you can catch the likes of RandomNumber, Wintermute, Lake Me, Hub and The Declining Winter. Admirably, it only costs £16 for a weekend ticket with camping. More info on Myspace here.
Does no-one have a real website any more? Next person to email me a plug for their event with an actual website gets a mention. One day I am going to do an article on bands with their own websites that have been updated more than once in the last six months.
Filed under: events | Comments Off on Some events that may interest you
