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Ten Things is a collection of magazines, thoughts and ephemera that have been sitting on my desk for a few months while I caught up with deadlines
Much praised elsewhere, there’s not much to add about the marvellous Kasino annual, other than its a lovely size and format, and contains all the dry wit and thoughtful quirkiness of their previous publication Kasino A4.
Ten Things is a collection of magazines, thoughts and ephemera that have been sitting on my desk for a few months while I caught up with deadlines
HomeSapiens is a magazine with a built-in lifespan: six magazines (five issues and one special), each themed around different encounters in people’s homes. The first issue is titled Els Chomedians; the others have equally confusingly pun-based titles. It’s far from perfect, but it is worth tracking down.
Like a few other new publications in recent months, issue zero of Kill Screen (“The Maturity Issue”) was successfully funded through Kickstarter.
The first time I heard about its existence, I was excited to read Invert Look. It’s a creation of The Church of London, the non-religious publisher of Huck, and above all, Little White Lies, a marvellous mono-thematic film magazine that’s deservedly forged quite a niche for itself in the film world, and just celebrated five years of existence.
Two talented teams of writers and designers have recently launched preview issues of interesting, independent videogame magazines. It’s about time.
First, a little genre history.
The “print is vinyl” metaphor is a common one among industry futurologists, the argument being that as digital publications improve, print – as vinyl before it – will be left mainly for the hobbyists and obsessives.
True or not, vinyl magazines have more than a little history. Back in 1972, a vinyl-based magazine called Current Audio (first pressing: 75,000; it sold out) lasted a couple of issues, distributed in major American cities by record label Buddha.
Object-based magazines La Mas Bella and Visionaire have both produced vinyl editions over the past five years: the former invited artists to create a series of different LP sleeves, while the latter’s Sound edition included a tiny speaker in the form of a Mini that drove around the grooves of the record. Formerly tattooed magazine Tare Lugnt‘s latest issue is on vinyl, while vinyl is also an inherent part of the beauty of The Journal of Popular Noise.
And now there’s Underwood, a beautifully simple-looking biannual literary magazine, with the tagline “Stories in Sound”. It comes out twice a year, featuring two writers each time. The editor is Nathan Dunne, also editor of the book-format film magazine Tartovsky, and the first issue features the marvellous Toby Litt and the I-don’t-know-her-work Clare Wigfall. Looks lovely, too. At 20 pounds plus shipping, it’s a little pricy, but for a limited-edition vinyl, what did you expect?
Bonus links:
• I write about music magazines in this month’s Eye magazine.
• The Independent does a roundup of some literary magazines.
• Digital editions of print literary magazines.
• The book on McSweeney’s design is gorgeous.
• This is bloody clever.
So, having been Kottke’d and Boingboing’d, this thing is up and running.
More soon, but for now, if you, or anyone you know is stranded, please forward them this link:
It’s a simple, four-question survey about the experience of being stranded.
On we go.
