Tear-Stained Makeup #8

By Marcos Pérez

www.artmarcos.com

So there's lots of things I could write about this comic, and the first is pretty crucial: Despite a recap page I found this comic somewhat hard to follow because it is part 8 of an ongoing story. This is not Pérez's fault. However, there are a lot of characters, and the fact that a flashback starts halfway through the first page doesn't help.

It didn't take me too long to figure out what was going on, but there are a lot of different plot threads moving through this comic, and while I understood most of them with no real problem, others made me wonder more "why is this included?".

Of course, the most important thing about this comic is the following character.

This is Tildy. Can you guess from her outfit and accessories what she does? She's a librarian! Of course! The glasses, the book, the cardigan. I mean, what else can she be?

Librarians care about their public image a lot, and I guess I either never really picked up on it or only interacted with librarians who don't fit into the mold (of course, as I'm the library student who makes this zine it's not really surprising...). And sure, some people don't care, and others are probably happy that she isn't middle aged and doesn't have cats all her over skirt or something (and other people are probably wondering where they can get a skirt like that with cats on it). 

The rest of the story is about doctors and unprofessional behaviour, and bands breaking up Euskaran translation. I'm kind of curious about how the story progressed, and how many issues there were. But not enough to actually go and look.

Roctober #50

www.roctober.com

I originally wasn't going to review Roctober. It's the size of a magazine! It has a colour cover! It's full of ads! But, they were invited to be at the Zine Pavilion at the ALA conference a few weeks ago, and they do only have a print run of 2,500 (though when does print run determine if something is a zine or not?), but what finally changed my mind was that this was an anniversary issue filled with content from every issue of Roctober up to this one, including when it was just a small photocopied thing (I think...).

Roctober is primarily a music magazine, though it's got a pretty eclectic mix of stuff. This issue features loads of reviews (most of which I didn't read, though I did check out the one of Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel, which terrifyingly made over $400 million dollars internationally, and seems to be in the top 150 grossing movies ever...), interviews (such as with the White Sox organist and a member of the New Monkees), in depth bios/retrospectives of artists, and way more.

There is _a lot_ of content here, and I didn't actually read all of it as that would have taken forever, and a lot of it I wasn't that into. There were some pieces I didn't even try to read due to the formatting (I think I've read enough huge walls of text with no paragraph breaks), but overall the layout works pretty well. I wasn't super fond of the way font sizes and faces sometimes changed from page to page, but I understand that this is reprinting older material, and that other people like it when that sort of thing happens (I generally prefer a more consistent look throughout zines I make). If you're into music more than I am (which honestly wouldn't be hard), you might want to check this out.

Basements and Living Rooms #1

Edited by Shannon Connor

So you know what I'm really bad at? Updating this blog when I'm in school. Have I seriously only written five reviews so far this year? That's crazy, and I am letting down all of the people who keep sending me zines to review (there are so many...). But now class is over for a bit, and let's fucking hope I can update this site more frequently.

You know what else I'm not very good at? Going to see live music. This zine is all about DIY shows that people (mostly in the punk community) put on in their houses, and I realize I can't remember the last time I went to a house show. For whatever reason I'm not as into music as some of my friends. Sure I like it, but I'm fine listening to it at home a lot of the time. Maybe that's because I like music made on computers a lot. (I told a friend recently that if someone described an album or song as sounding like a computer slowly dying I'd really want to listen to it, so clearly my taste in music is pretty questionable.)

So I don't go to house shows very much, and I also don't go to anything shows very much. I'm pretty sure I haven't seen any live music since I moved to Vancouver, and I think half the time I see live music it might be because I'm at a lindy hop event and there's a jazz band playing. And for that I'm going for the dancing, not the music. (Oh wait, there were some live performers at some of the electro-swing shows I went to, but apparently they were incredibly forgettable. There're probably others I've forgotten...)

But four paragraphs into this I realize that (in addition to clearly liking writing zine reviews because I can't shut up, why do I avoid it so much?) I'm jealous of the people that go to house shows with their friends and go on tour and generally have a good time doing that sort of thing. I have friends who go to house shows, and who put on house shows, and I've lived in houses where they happen. Yet, I think that frequently I've felt kind of uncomfortable at them. Possibly because for a long time (and still today to some extent) I felt uncomfortable and awkward in social situations were there were a lot of people I didn't know and a lot of noise and I wasn't that into the music and and and.

I miss living in punk houses. Or at least houses where I had lots of roommates and we hung out and talked and played games and watched movies and did stuff. This two bedroom basement apartment with a guy (who is fine) that I never see (because we're mostly on different schedules) is not the same. But Vancouver and I have not exactly been best buds when it comes to me finding places to live, and I have to find a new roommate for next month anyway since the other guy is moving out, and I have no idea where this paragraph is going.

I think that maybe the zine residencies that I helped host at the Roberts Street Social Centre in Halifax are similar to some of the experiences that people write about in here. Meeting new people who are only there temporarily, and getting really excited about the act of someone creating something cool. I kind of wish it was possible for people to go on writing or art tours in the same way bands go on tour.

The content of Basements and Living Rooms is photos, comics, and articles from various people about shows they've organized, hosted, played, or attended. They cover good shows and bad shows, and similarly some of the content is good and some of it is bad. Up above I credit Shannon as editor, but there's not really any editing going on here. I understand why you might do that, but it also kind of drives me crazy a little when a piece is super filled with spelling mistakes. Yet overall I liked reading this, even if it led to this terribly long (and just generally terrible) review.

Regular Jen Comix

 By Mark Oakley
iboxpublishing.com

So it's kind of weird to be reading a side story to some ongoing webcomic/graphic novel series. I mean, I've read some of Oakley's comics before (or at least one of them: Thieves and Kings volume 1, of which I remember absolutely nothing), but I've never read any of his current series Stardrop. (And I'm unlikely to any time soon. I mean, it looks like it could be pretty good, but that website! Hideous...)

Regular Jen is spinoff of Stardrop (how exactly I'm not sure, but the intro page assures me that this is true) in which the titular Jen meets up with Jenny (confusing...) who then sends her back in time to join a band or something? I'm not really sure. I can't complain about starting stories in the middle, because that's how I started reading comics. If you started reading superhero comics at pretty much any time ever you weren't starting at the beginning, you were thrown in with characters you didn't know doing things you didn't understand. Hell, every story starts in the middle to some degree. My complaint is more that this comic isn't long enough to tell a story, and I almost feel as though we're reading a deleted scene that didn't make it into the main plotline.

Oakley's art works well for the type of story he's telling. His characters aren't particularly detailed in the facial area, but he still manages to get emotion out of them through details he does use combined with a good use of body language. There's also quite a lot of detail put into the backgrounds, though one panel transition seemed a bit jarring because it went from the less than detailed characters to a scene that seemed like it could have been from a different artist.

Despite the underlying craft of this comic I'm left a bit let down at the end. Putting the word "Fin" at the end of this brief comic kind of implies to me that the story is over. But it's not! It can't be! More things could/should/must happen, and in fact the most exciting parts seem like they haven't happened yet. It should be a good sign that Oakley's story grabbed me enough to want to know what happened next, but for whatever reason it hasn't grabbed me enough to start reading a different comic from the beginning to try to figure everything out.

Radio CKDU 88.1 FM Colouring Book

ckdu.ca

CKDU is a campus radio station based out of Dalhousie here in Halifax.

(Aside: A friend and I used to have a radio show on the campus radio station when I was at university. It was called Meanwhile, Back at the Comic Book Shop and we talked about comics for an hour every week! That was over seven years ago, and I still miss it. I really need to start podcasting. If you're really bored you can go look at the archives in the blog I created for it, and read reviews to see what I thought of comics back in 2005. Oh, and apparently I wrote a bunch of stuff for it in 2009 after the show ended, I don't even remember that!)

Every year (I think) CKDU has a fundraising drive asking people to help support the station. A few years ago they put out this colouring book as part of the drive. It's not really a colouring book, but instead just some old show posters photocopied and bound into a book. I mean, I guess you can colour them in if you want.

Some of the posters in here are pretty awesome (there's a pretty neat one by Kyle Bridgett, who has a weird furry animal fetish erotica comic, you've been warned), and some are kind of boring. But it's also cool to look at them as a snapshot of shows that happened in Halifax in the past (one of them is for a show my friend's band played at!). The reproduction on some of the posters is weirdly terrible though, and it looks as though they might have been scanned and blown up from handbill size, which is too bad. I also wish there were more!

Probably the best part of this book is that it includes bios of the artists that did the show posters. That's awesome! Though at the same time I'm not entirely sure who drew what, so I can't really say who drew the poster below. I really like it though.

And The Evens are a pretty awesome band.

Shotgun Seamstress #3

shotgunseamstress@gmail.com
shotgunseamstress.blogspot.com

I've been hearing about Shotgun Seamstress for a few years, so I'm glad I finally managed to pick up an issue and give it a read.

Shotgun Seamstress is a zine about being black, queer, artistic, and punk. The zine uses interviews, comics, bios, and people's stories to discuss poverty, classism, racism, homophobia, and other related topics. This issue is all about money, and much of the content focuses on not having much/enough and why that's an issue in our society.

There are pieces on trainhopping, a photographer who didn't get any success until after he died, royalties in bands, and capitalism in general. My favourite piece was an interview done with Mick Collins (a member of the bands the Dirtbombs and the Gories). Collins is in his forties, and the piece discusses growing up in Detroit before hip hop, how that style of music has influenced black American culture, the co-opting of black culture by white people, how many blacks feel the need to conform, and why and how the black punk scene in Detroit was killed off.

I found this piece to be interesting historically, in part because I am interested in the way certain cultural aspects are co-opted by different groups, and the way sub cultures are created, grow, and shrink. The interview ends saying that they continued talking, and I wish that more of it had been printed!

Overall I found Shotgun Seamstress to be worth reading because it gave a different view on American society, beyond the one I am used to hearing (even from other punk zines). I may not have agreed with everything in here, but I guess it is important to see various view points on things and not just make assumptions.

The Fury No. 20

Mark Novotny
5413 6th Ave
Countryside, IL
60525, USA
One dollar

To some extent I feel kind of weird reading punk zines and writing reviews of them while listening to Bjork. It's like my headspace and the headspace of the person working on the zine are completely different. Can I appreciate hot, crowded punk house shows, and the search for '90s emo records at the same time? Sure, but it seems so much more...theoretical than maybe it should.

But The Fury is a zine that perhaps encourages readings such as this. There are pieces on language and words that discuss the works of Derrida and the Deconstructionists (amongst others), and Novoty wonders how much of our society and culture is based around the language we use. How language can be changed to change the way that people think.

And so when reading the rest of the zine I became aware of the word choice that Novoty used. The zine may be typewritten, but I got the feeling that it had been through multiple drafts before this final version was put together. Novoty knows about the limitations of language, but is doing his best to convey his own feelings and thoughts to others in the best way possible/only way he knows how.

There are stories about drunk singers at punk shows who try to stab their band mates. About walking unfamiliar streets and sleeping on unfamiliar floors. About potential and obscurity. About presence and sentimentality. About nerves and melancholy. About the deaths of friends and what they'll never be. About how those deaths can change what you are and what you become.

I often say that I think too much about many things, and this zine didn't help, but at the same time I like thinking about many things, and I like reading about how others also wonder about word choice and perceived negativity. I thought about dead friends while reading this zine, and also people I haven't seen in years (and probably will never see again). I felt sadness over what could have been, and joy for what is and will be.

Harbour Water Fest 3

By Shannon

Every year the Roberts Street Social Centre runs a residency program. Artists and writers come to stay in our shed for a couple of weeks and make zines, art, or whatever they want really. It's a pretty awesome program and you should definitely apply next year!

Shannon was the first resident this year, and this is the zine they made during their stay. It's mostly about Harbour Water Fest, a local punk music festival put on in people's basements and living rooms. Shannon writes about her experiences in Halifax in general, and the shows she went to specifically, and she also got other people to write about their own memories of the event. Apparently there was a shadow puppet play!

Shannon also interviewed the lead organizer of the event, members of bands that played, and other people who went to shows. The interviews are pretty interesting to read,  and cover everything from small town living, to transphobia, to  trying to create more positive, inclusive, and safe spaces for others.

The final part of this zine are the many photographs that various people took at the shows in Harbour Water Fest, and most (or all?) of the posters people made to advertise the various events. I really like DIY posters, so seeing them all collected here was pretty neat.

Sightings of Wallace Sendek

By Sean Azzopardi and Douglas Noble
www.strip-for-me.com
sean-azzopardi.com

When I started reading this comic I thought the pages that the pages were in the wrong order. Each page is dated, and the dates jump around backwards and forward through time. But each page can be taken as an independent whole and this seemingly haphazard order is the one in which Noble wanted this comic to appear (I guess some of the pages could be in the wrong order too, there's no real way for me to tell!). Taken together the pages begin to tell the story of '70s rock musician Wallace Sendek, his disappearance, and his later possible appearances.

Reading it in chronological order (yes, I did bother to do that) leaves me even more confused as all the dates don't seem to match up properly. But this could even be done on purpose, as the entire point of this thing is to make everything mysterious and ambiguous. Was Sendek killed? Was there some supernatural element in his disappearance? Is he still alive? None of these questions is answered, but that's not the point of this comic.

Instead this comic is all about creating an atmosphere and mood of mystery, and it succeeds admirably. (I'm a little jumpy and creeped out right now due to it being 2:30 am, reading this comic multiple times, and reading about Lord Lucan and other people who have disappeared.)

Artwise Azzopardi does a good job, using different styles and techniques on various pages. Some pages are quite sketchy, while others are considerably more detailed, and one even features edited photographs (is there a better term for this than "photoshopped"?). Azzopardi also switches between using solid bordered panels (often using a tight nine-panel grid to fit in the necessary dialogue and narration), and pages where various images meld into each other with no border in the way. Combined these two techniques help to add to the atmosphere of the stories and the events surrounding them, confusing the information and making the reader question what truth there might be in each story.

Overall this is worth checking out, if you're into ambiguous, frustrating works that have no real ending. I want to know who this person was, and what was going on with their disappearance, and hopefully one day, if Azzopardi and Noble decide to release another comic, I'll find out. If I don't though, that's okay too, as this comic has succeeded both in its narrative goals and in being entertaining.

Gadgie #25

By Marv
PO Box 93
Boston
Lincolnshire
PE21 7YB
England

Ah, Gadgie zine. The perfect reading material for people that love page after page of tiny text with no paragraph breaks.

I'm being a little harsh, as some of the content here is quite good, but turning the page and seeing two solid columns of tiny text with no breaks is kind of daunting to start reading. I think the reading experience would definitely be improved by Marv starting to use the return key a bit more frequently.

Gadgie is a punk music zine, and like many zines in that sub-genre it includes numerous reviews of cds, records, and shows, interviews with people in the punk scene, rants, and general news about the punk scene in and around the town where the creator lives (in this case Boston, UK). It's probably far more interesting if you listen to a lot of punk music, and always want to find new bands that you'd never hear on the radio or see on TV, but that's not really me.

Of course, there is other content in here that is pretty good even if you have no interest in punk music or culture. Marv writes huge stream-of-consciousness pieces about traveling, his youth, and other things. They're filled with constant asides and distractions, and are a lot like listening to someone talk.

The best piece in here is, much to my surprise, a music review. But unlike short music reviews of a particular album, this one is a huge piece of Marv's attempt to listen to his entire record collection in alphabetical order. You see, after discussing with a friend their huge record collections, Marv realized he didn't really listen to most of it that often, so he began a quest to listen to all of it, discovering lost gems, and wondering why he even owned other albums.

For whatever reason, people seem to be into the idea of other people completing (or attempting to complete) marathons of popular culture. There's an entire book trilogy about two guys who spent a year watching every existing episode of Doctor Who in order, and I have a weird desire to read them even though I don't like Doctor Who that much.

Marv's account of his attempt to listen to all of his records is filled with asides and stories about how he bought the record in question, anecdotes about the band, and other random things. And thus in the two pages that this piece takes up Marv manages to get through the letter 'A'. However it did feature my favourite part of the issue:

"On a similar theme, the folks at work were reminiscing in the staff room about their youth, as people of a certain age are liable to (ahem) and someone started fondly recalling how you used to buy records! Someone piped up that the first record they bought was an Adam And The Ants single. I kept it quiet that the last record I bought was an Adam And The Ants single (20pence worth of car booty)!"

The last record I got (in 2009) was also an Adam and the Ants record. Stand and Deliver!

Two and a Bit Songs: My Open Mic Adventure

By Jimi Gherkin
jimigherkin.wordpress.com

Years ago the band that some of my friends were in decided to go on tour. But as we lived on the most Eastern tip of Newfoundland (look it up), getting to other cities was rather difficult and required both more time and money than any of my friends had.

So instead they decided to go on a tour of all the open mic nights around town. They played in some bizarre places, had an awesome time, and even printed up some tshirts saying the date they played in each bar.

Why have I told you this story? Well, you can probably tell based upon the title of this comic to be honest. Several years ago (at Easter!) comics creator Jimi Gherkin decided that he wanted to play some songs he had written in front of other people. For the first time.

As anyone that's ever performed in front of other peoples knows, this can be pretty frightening, but Jimi seems like the type of person who is willing to do things that might scare him a bit.

So he looked up some open mic nights, invited his friends along, and headed out to rock the house. The venues where Jimi played seem pretty varied, ranging from weirdly formal to kind of cruddy. But he managed to have a good time at all of them, and even managed to play a Dead Kennedys cover. (Hurray!)

In addition to the comics that show how each performance went, Jimi also illustrates the first verse of one of his songs, which features a lot more violence and vomiting than the rest of the comic.

Overall this is a nice, and in some ways sweet, comic about fulfilling your ambitions and meeting new people. If only every zinester could be this positive about life : )

Busking issue 1

By Celeste
www.etsy.com/shop/ofcourseyoucan
notfitforsociety.tumblr.com

I think busking is pretty neat, and to some extent I envy people who have the skills and personality to successfully perform in front of other people (and make a living from it! I don't think I'd make much money busking by offering to edit things)

Celeste has been playing accordion for several years, and makes her living from it. Of course "her living" is far different from what most people would consider: she eats from dumpsters, doesn't own any new clothing, and doesn't really buy anything. Of course she's perfectly happy doing this, as not having a regular 9-5 job means that she can spend her days doing what she loves: playing accordion, volunteering, making art, and other fun things. She actually pities people who have deadening office jobs, and as someone who has one of those jobs I kind of envy her life.

This zine is filled with stories and anecdotes from Celeste's times busking across Canada. Some are told in comics, while others use text. She also has an FAQ of questions people ask her while she's busking like "Are you on drugs?" and "Are you actually rich?". The whole zine is told in an upbeat and appealing way that makes me wish that I was friends with Celeste and got to hang out with her.

I recommend this zine, and am excited to learn that she's almost finished her second issue. Check out her tumblr for some of the comics that will be in issue 2!

Three Zine

By Squid
www.squidishere.com
squid.bigcartel.com

One of the first thing you notice about this zine is the way it's printed. I have no idea how Squid did this, but the blacks on this zine are incredibly black and shiny. There are a couple of pages that are mostly black, and they just feel thick with ink. It's really neat.

As to the content, Three features drawings (of monsters!), comics, and recipes, but the majority of the zine is made up of "interviews with cool females".

Squid talks with one of the organizers of the Women's Autonomous Nuisance Cafe (WANC), and female members of the musical groups Lilies on Mars, Seaming To (okay, a person rather then a group), and Creatures of Kontrast.

I enjoyed reading all the interviews, as they range across a fairly wide variety of questions and talk about some cool stuff and actually made me go and listen to the bands online. The WANC interview discusses lady DJs, squatting, and other neat stuff, while all of them feel more like conversations than some of the interviews you read.

There are also reviews of concerts by a couple of the bands. The first of which seems to degenerate into a fever dream ("AAAAAAAAAAAAGH! Giant cockroaches with TV's for brains and temporary bus stop signs for noses!") before returning to talk about the music. Though considering that one of the band members say that they like "confusion, paranoia, and craziness" I think this is probably appropriate.

Gadgie 24

By Marv
PO Box 93
Boston
Lincolnshire
PE21 7YB
England

Gadgie is another of those big, thick (over 30 pages) punk zines that covers music, zines, complaints, and whatever else is running through the creator's mind.

Gadgie's been coming out for ages, and its creator Marv is now in his late 30s, married, and even has a child. Old punks don't die, they just (pro)create the next generation.

In this issue Marv talks about the punk scene in Boston, England (both current and its origins), going to Loch Ness for a holiday with his partner and kid, misheard lyrics, a pretty epic account of every injury he's ever acquired while playing soccer/football, and loads of other stuff.

I like how Marv seems really enthusiastic about everything, and how being injured bothers him because it means he can't go and dance at punk shows. However, his nonstop style of writing was kind of exhausting, as you don't really have any idea when the longer pieces are going to end or what's going to happen next.

Marv has a really distinct style of writing, a sort of stream of consciousness "I did this, then I did this, then this happened" type of thing. If it appeals to you you'll probably be happy to read anything he writes, but if it doesn't then I'm not sure there's any topic he could get you to read about. I think I fall somewhere in the middle.

Photocopier Music Playlist

Last weekend at the Roberts Street Social Centre we had a launch for our brand new photocopier! There was cake and games and you can see some photos on our website or facebook group.

I was in charge of music and managed to create almost eighty minutes of photocopier or zine related music. Awesome!

One of the bands I included are The Copy Scams. They're a pretty rad band that is mostly made up of zinesters. You can find out some more info on Alex Wrekk's blog. There's info on how to download their EP, and an announcement that they'll be touring the UK in November! Exciting!

I've made a youtube playlist of most of the tracks from below, though The Copy Scams songs and a couple of others aren't up there. The playlist is located here. Let me know what you think!

One of the coolest tracks I discovered was this one by Nigerian singer 9ice. He's apparently a big star in Nigeria, and I have absolutely no idea what he's singing in this song.



Here's the full playlist:

1. 9ice - Photocopy
2. Daft Punk - Technologic
3. Kill Me Tomorrow - Xerox My Hand
4. Fujiya and Miyagi - Photocopier
5. monsters are like that - echoRiotPop
6. Junkie XL - I've Got a Xerox to Copy
7. Xerox Girls - rammle
8. Cleveland Bound Death Sentence - Rumble Seats & Running Boards
9. The Copy Scams - one one one one
10. Simon Bird - Xerox Waveform Godless Ocean
11. Atom And His Package - Undercover Funny
12. Cut Copy - Hearts On Fire
13. Client - Zerox Machine
14. The Copy Scams - this is the intro
15. The Church Of Hysteria - Photocopy
16. Man Made Noise - Photocopy Machine
17. Mascot Fight - That's A Photocopier Not A Chair
18. The Copy Scams - 24 hour zine challenge
19. Yemi Sax (Photocopy (Original by 9ice)
20. Adam And The Ants - Xerox
21. Rosa - Scan To Print
22. The Copy Scams - list of stuff n' things
23. Private Eleanor - Photocopy

Can you name some tracks I missed?

Awaiting an Epiphany

By Rachel
www.awaitinganepiphany.co.uk

The Manic Street Preachers don’t seem that popular in North America, and I don’t think I could even identify one of their songs if you played them (album covers I could maybe recognize). I understand there is something of a mystique around the band because of the disappearance/suicide of one of their members in the ‘90s, but I still can’t see what creates such love amongst their fans.

I’ve talked to several people who have friends that live in the UK who are obsessed with the Manic Street Preachers. It’s kind of bizarre to look at this fandom that makes zines about the band, gives them presents, and goes to multiple shows on every tour (and then waits for ages outside to see them afterward).

(Hell, living in Canada the idea of going to multiple shows on any tour seems absurd, but that’s mostly because in the UK you’re probably within two hours of multiple cities, while two hours from where I live wouldn’t even get me out of the province.)

Rachel clearly understands the appeal of the band, even if I don’t, and they continue to be one of the things in her life that make her really happy. Which is great! I’m not going to pretend I understand her motivations for some of the actions she does in relation to the band, but I’m sure I do lots of stuff she can’t understand either.

At the very least her stories about going to shows and meeting members of the band make me think that the Manics are very appreciative of their fans, and generally seem like nice people.

I addition to all the stuff about the Manics Rachel also discusses her chronic fatigue syndrome, which isn’t really something I know much about but which sounds pretty awful, and a not very good article that was published after she was interviewed. She felt she had been misrepresented in the article, and it makes me kind of sad that journalists will write about people in such a way.

There’s also a well written piece on extinct animals, and the ways humans are driving more and more spices to extinction. This piece also touches on global warming, and reminded me how, like obsessive Manic Street Preacher fans, I cannot understand what is going on in the minds of climate change deniers, or, worse, those that acknowledge that it exists, but are continuing full steam (or oil burning) ahead with destroying the world.

So overall this is maybe not the most uplifting of zines (though this isn't to say it's depressing either), but it’s well written, and if you’re a fan of the Manic Street Preachers you should definitely check it out.

Oblast #13 - Ten More Videos I Watched On YouTube

This is the other zine I made at the Roberts Street Social Centre. Collect them all!

Unlike the last YouTube zine I made, this time I bothered to make a playlist, so you can watch along!

Robots and Electronic Brains number 14

Edited by jimmy possession
www.robotsandelectronicbrains.co.uk

This music zine is packed full of reviews, interviews, and articles about music and bands. Unlike most zines of this type it doesn't focus on one particular genre and the content can go from discussing Welsh language hip hop to the bands influenced by '60s French pop music.

Writing about music can be a pretty difficult thing to do, and I think even the best writers are writing it for people that read music writing. Thus, as someone who doesn't know that much about music I often felt a bit lost when reading some of the content here, which perhaps can be said to be aimed at the sort of people who spend their weekends searching through crates of records at garage sales in the hopes of finding that one amazing seven-inch.

However, some of the interviews were pretty good, and it came with a compilation CD with loads of different music on it (everything from hip hop to indie to weird cut up spoken word bits featuring Vincent Price), and it's worth it just to get hold of that.

Lucid Frenzy Digest 2011

By Gavin Burrows
lucidfrenzy.blogspot.com

It's almost...ironic that I reviewed a zine about about mental health issues and then almost immediately didn't update for two days because of my own problems. Haha. Hilarious! (No wait, it's not.)

Um, so, this is a collection of pieces that Burrows has run on his blog, and despite liking what I read in the last issue of this zine, I've never actually gone to his blog to read anything. This is probably because Burrows' pieces are quite long and in-depth and take a while to digest and process. Thus I find it easier/better to read these things in paper form when I'm not being distracted by someone talking to me in another window or funny pictures of cats or something.

In this issue Burrows talks about zines, and reviews concerts, movies, and art shows. I enjoy Burrows' general writing style, which is most evidenced by the fact that I read all of his pieces about music I had almost no familiarity with. Music articles/interviews are probably the bits of zines I skip over with the most frequency, as I find that they generally require you to have knowledge of the artist to really get anything out of them. Here, however, Burrows has managed to weave information about the band/music, history of the genres, and descriptions of the bands that are considerably more informative than "band x meets artist y". So yeah, I enjoyed reading them even if I don't want to seek out what the bands actually sound like. That's what music writing should be like!

Though I must admit that the repeated references to Francis Bacon kind of flew over my head. I guess I should read more about him at some point.

Treasure Hunt issue two

treasurehuntfuns@gmail.com

I think the strange collaged cover featuring multiple drawings, photos, text and other elements is possibly the best part of this group zine.

The contents are as random as the cover, and include pieces of art, poetry, a few bars of musical notation, photographs, an incredibly long and dull (to me) interview with a musician (that I just couldn't get into because it was about someone I'd never heard of, and didn't seem to discuss why I should care about him), a recipe, found art, and a prose piece about a breakup that was pretty good and written in an interesting style.

The zine was supposed to be a showcase of ephemera, and to that extent it succeeded. However there really wasn't anything in here that stuck in my mind. I looked at the cover of this zine before writing this, and couldn't remember a single thing featured inside. I'm not in the best of mental states right now, and I do like zines that collect random things and found objects, but this issue didn't do much for me.