‘More real than anything you’ll see while scrolling’: The radical return of UK fanzines, 50 years after punk | music

‘T“The most important part of the word ‘fanzine’ is ‘fan,'” says John Marsh, a London-based zine maker. “Existing outside of mainstream media, free from the demands of release cycles and SEO, it is an obsession that turns into tangible things; self-published primarily for the maker’s enjoyment, but with the potential to forge relationships with like-minded people.”

In the 1970s, punk music like Sniffin’ Glue, Alternative Ulster, and Ripped & Torn allowed fans to share news and enthusiasm quickly and cheaply. Half a century later, audiophiles are enjoying a revival as a form of resistance to algorithmic fatigue and the hyper-capitalist music industry. “Digital attention span is at an all-time low,” says hip-hop musician ExP, creator of West Yorkshire Hip-Hop. “You’ll definitely spend more time looking at the magazine than anything you see while scrolling. It’s much more interesting and more realistic.” As Stephen McRobbie, indie pop icon and regular Bastille fan, puts it: “It’s a long way from other media, but the scene is always better.”

Today’s music collections reflect both individual passions and the eclectic tastes of groups, such as the annual Lunchtime for the Wild Youth album retrospective, or Gutter’s cacophony of words and illustrations. They appear as single cards (another subculture) and puzzles inspired by Smash Hits (Hard Boiled Babe); Documenting hyper-local scenes in Glasgow (Winch), Belfast (Bossore), south-east London (SelOut) and Teesside (Point Blanc). “I like to think of TQ as a living history of music in the North East,” says Andy Tarquin Wood, editor of TQ’s experimental music magazine. This sentiment is shared by Nova, who co-edits Glasgow’s Teen Warfare magazine with her friend Courtney. “It’s like a permanent snapshot of the time in the scene,” they say. “Even if some of the bands no longer exist, that record is still there, which makes it special.”

Punk still features heavily in today’s music scene, including long-running fan music Gadgie and One Way Ticket to Cubesville, as well as Artificial, launched last year by 18-year-old Bristol-based Bobby Lola. But almost every genre has its own fan chart, from ska (Do the Dog), mod (Heavy Soul), and 2-tone (Before, During, After), to metal (Cries from the Abyss) and folk (Anarchic Folk). Newcastle-based Afropulse is a monthly magazine that celebrates the diversity of black British music, with features on black alternative icons such as Poly Styrene alongside deep dives into grime, Afroswing, and the legacy of black British girl groups. John Marsh started Wired Up eight years ago to express his love for great rock music. ExP set up West Yorkshire Hip-Hop to help build “important infrastructure” locally and to connect with the roots of the genre. “Hip-hop has always been about making something out of nothing: rapping over beatbox, writing on the graffiti with leftover paint, dancing in the street,” he says. “Zines are a perfect way to connect a DIY community like ours.”

Lo-fi sounds are a natural soundtrack for zine makers: McRobbie attributes pastel’s popularity among zine makers to their shared “handmade, rough, almost outdoorsy” nature. He recommends the fanzine Here’s Where You Belong, “which combines the editor’s musical taste with her printmaking and other enthusiasms.” And among the current crop of indie pop fans, you have the literary-inclined In the April Sun and DA DA DA!. Jane Doofus edited an indie pop magazine as a teenager in the 1990s, and started the zine Things Happen last year “to express… [her] “The Smarter Side” alongside her career as an author and journalist. “No one looks suspicious when I want to ask Amelia and Cathy from Heavenly to pretend they’re aunts in Agony Magazine,” she says. The first issues of each of her fanzines featured Stephen Duffy of Lilac Time on the cover. “He says he looks forward to chatting with me again in 30 years whatever the next thing is.”

The current revival has brought many zine makers back into the fold. David Rumsey revived his 1990s skinzine ‘Tighten Up’ in 2014 – and still covers “all things skinhead, except the right wing”. Hamish Ironside’s Saudade originally ran from 1990 to 1994, returning in 2023 after he co-wrote We Peaked at Paper, an oral history of zines that “fully revived his enthusiasm”. Perhaps most uniquely, Sudade is still printed on a Gestetner, a mimeograph machine that was often used to produce magazines before photocopiers became widespread in the 1980s. “The whole ethos of magazines is DIY, and by having my own printer, I’m completely self-sufficient,” Ironside says of his machine, which prints from stencils made with a manual typewriter. “I also really love aesthetics. It makes my magazines look like they could have been done in the 1950s or even 1930s.”

Phil McMullen also uses a rare technique in his ‘labor of love’ Terrascopaedia, which may be the only music volume printed entirely in letterpress – ‘not surprising, since it takes about seven hours to print one page’. Having been active in underground music journalism for more than four decades, McMullen launched Terrascopaedia in 2012 after teaching himself the technique, which involves adjusting individual letters by hand and using a heavy antique press. “I’m drawn to showcasing artists who share my sense of craft,” McMullen says, including folk artists Guinevere Raymond, Greg Weeks, and Sally Ann Morgan. Morgan is a musician, McMullen says, “who plays psychedelic Appalachian folk music beautifully. And the icing on the cake is that she’s also a letterpress.”

In defiance of the AI ​​style, many young filmmakers are adopting the cut-and-paste look of classic fanzines. Pindrop shares his thoughts on the London underground scene via scattered illustrated papers. Voidoid features collected articles on Lou Reed and mini-shrines dedicated to Candy Darling. Teenage friends Evan Mox and Will White are intense and thoughtful Why Do We Care? (WDWC) was stimulated by a shared love of the Manic Street Preachers, and taps into that band’s early DIY aesthetic. Encouraged by Moakes’ father Gordon Moakes – a member of Nothing and former guitarist with Bloc Party who also edited the 1990s magazine Conform or Die – the duo created WDWC as “a source for intellectual and theoretical discussion as much as passion and spontaneity”. The bands (mostly from the ’90s) they cover share a “desire to understand and examine society through knowledge and art,” White says. “Manic Street Preachers and McCarthy’s lyricism contextualizes the class divide, and inspired me to study critical theory. Huggy Bear and Bass feel relatable and speak to my experience.”

Members of the Scottish bis-indie-pop band have also noticed this generational appeal and remain major fans. “Our enduring appeal to fan creators comes from our formation as fan creators ourselves,” says singer and guitarist Stephen Sy Fay, who edited Paper Bullets during the band’s takeoff in the mid-’90s. “Ours was the last organic network before the Internet, and I imagine there’s a love story in that [younger] Generations.” Stephen’s bandmate Manda Wren credits their outsider status, then and now, to this enduring appeal. “Today’s youth are not only drawn to us for our loud political lyrics, but also the acceptance of being comfortably different from those around you,” she says.

Lyrical magazines have long served as outlets for radical outsiders, such as the bilingual Welsh magazine Gwarth ar y Teulu, created by “misfits, gays, and the working class,” according to Cardiff-based musician and editor Eva Supertramp. When political magazines are used to prosecute protesters in the United States, music magazines also play a crucial role in making the relationship between culture and politics tangible. The latest edition of sound and music magazine Texture includes timely articles linking noise and resistance, including an animated radio broadcast piece in solidarity with Palestine by sound artist Mort Drew. After the outbreak of war in Ukraine, TQ released a Ukrainian special featuring electronic musician Katerina Zavoloka, who “has been very open about the impact of the Russian invasion on her music and family,” says editor Wood. Teen Warfare tapped into its zine community to make an out of a troubled concert, where local bands protested singer David Draiman’s vocal support for the IDF. “Turning it into a protest party definitely encouraged more people to get involved,” says co-editor Nova, who sees art as a way to make politics less intimidating. “At their core, zines are about sharing information and building community, even if they are music-focused.”

Community expression and growth is a common goal for today’s music makers, whether they want to help grow their local scene, or connect with fellow fans via international mail networks. Zine makers also communicate with each other at concerts, online, and in Zine libraries and galleries. “Creating a magazine feels like speaking a forgotten language,” says WDWC’s White. “When someone who understands it hears you talk about it, you instantly bond with each other.” Wood sees all of TQ’s participants—writers, readers, and musicians—as “part of a kind of iterative collaboration.” Thirty years after creating the magazines themselves, Pace still feels part of this collective creativity. “Last year, I found a fanzine in the back of my guitar amp – Why Do We Care? With Bis on the cover,” says Sci-Fi Stephen. “After reading and feeling the energy coming off the pages, I sat down to write a song that I thought writers would want to hear. That’s true power.”