Music Magazines 2006

I'd still pick up a new music magazine and check it on the newstand.

I read about African, Caribbean, and Latino music in The Beat magazine, out of Los Angeles but with contributors worldwide. Perhaps I am not looking online in the right spots, but I hear about music there that I do not read about anywhere else, online or on paper. And yes, I then buy some of that music.

Although I did not buy it, a recent issue of the NYC based publication Fader that I looked at at Borders had a wonderful feature article on Jamaican dancehaller Baby Cham, and great photos by musician/writer Ned Sublette of Mardi Gras Indians in New Orleans.

I just can't seem to find any of the threads...

I just let my subscription to the Vibe lapse (I had gotten it real cheap). An occasional interesting article on r'b'b hitmakers or producers and a nice but short Rob Kenner dancehall column were not enough to keep me interested. Plenty of ads and fluff.

Jazz Times ain't bad.

Neither can I. Is there a thread that addresses this (as in, "what was the last time etc etc")?

Are there any decent music magazines in the UK? That arn't OMM middle brow todge or indie-zine scenester-ing??

i don't have a subscription to the wire and i only read it at the newsstand--i always read sherburne's critical beats column, flip through the electronica, hip-hop, and outer limits columns, and then look at whatever features seem interesting. i agree with you about the dub column; i think freeman was on a one-man-crusade to convert that into the doom metal column or something, which i thought would have been interesting.

i've been liking arthur a lot lately, even though they jock that new-weird-america tip that i'm not into. i don't like devendra banhart and most of his crowd of psych-folk musick. please god, make it stop. but some of their features are really interesting. it helps that arthur is free in new york and the wire costs $10 at the current exchange rate.

Why does everyone always pick on the dub section?

The guy who did Sound Collector is one of the guys who does Arthur now, I think. Speaking of, Arthur is a great magazine. big xp.

-- mcd (srmcd...), March 28th, 2006.

It's just so retro (and yes I like it), plus it seems odd to ignore current Jamaican dancehall sounds.

Me too. dB knows its audience so unbelievably well, does some real reporting, and really hits on the geek aspect of metal, too. Plus, it's funny.

who is apathetic here?

what do you expect? print music journalism isn't in a golden era right now--it's going down the dumper, and fast. most of us who write about music can't afford to do it. i give myself another six months before i have to find another line of work. why do you think we've all retreated to music blogs and ILM to air out our thoughts and opinions on music? because we can't express them in print magazines and papers anymore, most of the time, at least not at a decent word rate. i agree that decibel is great, but only so many people can write for decibel. as far as i recall, arthur doesn't pay their writers--or if they do, it's a nominal sum. when the wire pays you it's more of an honorarium than anything constituting an actual paycheck. the entire spin editorial staff is at FOUR PEOPLE now--i know blogs that have a bigger staff than that! i've started writing for blender, but i can't say it's that fulfilling to write a 120-word record review. my blog gets as many hits per day as the average article in the voice music section. granted, i don't make any money off of it--i actually lose money doing it--but it's the only way i can keep sane in lean times like these. these are dark days, my friends. that's why some of the most talented music writers i know are getting the fuck out and doing other things, like law school.

Haha. I just thumbed through our office copies of Blender, Spin and Source and thought about how utterly boring they all were. Blender, weirdly, seems to get much better toward the back, like they figure that the Maxim set is only going to make it through 30 odd pages and then give up, so they can have some decent content in there. Spin just gave me too much about the clothes and not enough about the music. I don't give a fuck what Karen O wears, or the middling discontent she feels. I want to know if the album's interesting, if their live shows are interesting. I don't need to be sold on image.
But I dunno. I'm 26, I've been working for a small market monthly rag for five years, and freelancing in little bits aside from that. Most of what seems to pay has nothing to do with music, but I slog through. For Spin, one thing that seems to hurt it a lot is that a) I'm not terribly interested in a lot of the breathless gossip stuff, and b) even when I am, it's three months old. Why should I give a fuck about obits from February in your April issue? And I know that's a function of deadlines and print times, but the reason that mags are post-dated is to make them seem cutting edge. Now when I read it, I get the vague feeling of deja vu and cluelessness. Spin reads more and more like some sort of print version of Vh1, at least up front. As for the Wire, I find myself not caring about half of what they put in there anymore (at the very least) because past a certain point, all of the minimal "avant garde" all sounds about the same to me.
So I end up reading ILM and blogs, along with local papers that cover artists around here, since I've felt less and less pull to go to national acts as they seem to have all devolved into the same boring indie wanks.
And it's not that there aren't great articles on music being written, or that I'm not hearing great new music all the time. It's just that I can't trust music mags anymore unless I know the name of the reviewer (and even then not always), and their features seem to all be about everything but music.
Frankly, I read Dusted pretty regularly, have a couple of blogs on RSS, and count on endless PR spam in my inbox to entertain me.

Polyphonic - "Why don't the collective of music writers who can't express themselves at the mags and weeklies put together some sort of mega-zine and publish it?" -- That's what we've been doing with Arthur since 2002 (!)...

Scott - " i like [Arthur] even though i don't care about all the people they have on the cover and all that freeekfolke stuff that much." - Thanks for the kind words. Not sure why we (Arthur) get tagged so much in this thread with the 'folk' thing ... Our cover features for the last year have been .... let's see...

* Brian Eno interview by Kristine McKenna (the only one he gave to a US publication, btw; plus a wonderfully evocative appreciation of the great man by Alan Moore),
* an at-length M.I.A. profile by Piotr Orlov,
* Jon Hassell/Afrirampo/Sublime Frequencies/Alan Bishop concept issue cover,
* Animal Collective
* SUNNo))/Earth cover feature/dual interview by Brian Evenson,
* Delia Gonzalez & Gavin Russom cover feature/interview

so I dunno...

Yeah, I like Arthur. I wish there were more magazines like it to cover other points of view.

certainly not and that's why there are hundreds, thousands of people writing in their spare time, after work, besides socializing. because they love the music.

certainly not and that's why there are hundreds, thousands of people writing in their spare time, after work, besides socializing.

Yeah, but again, why not a magazine? Is it that magazines are essentially obsolete as a medium or is it that it's so much work compared to just making a blog, etc.

it's soo much easier, no funding needed, no advertisement hassle. running a mag requires a lot more than some good writers, it's a hard business that counts on sales as much as any other business

I wish that were true. Come look at the way we live. I'd be so happy if we had funding so that all of us could make a living wage and be without the stress that comes in the final week of the month before rent and credit card bills are due. I've been below US poverty level now for four straight years.

Washable: "Not sure why we (Arthur) get tagged so much in this thread with the 'folk' thing ...*Beards on majority of covers, dude"

Since when does "beard=folk"?

Running a mag is hard but totally doable. All you need are credit cards and dedication.
Blogs are cool for what they are but 1) their audiences are pretty self-selecting, relative to (say) a free mag 2) you have to look at a computer screen 3) their presentation is generally words-only or images-only -- very little design etc etc

i agree with the 'who cares about money'? angle. i don't give a shit about money, which is part of the reason i do silly things like write 4,000-word pieces for my blog, contribute to zines, take $300 checks for 2,000 word feature stories, and lose money doing things like covering terrastock for the wire. i didn't go into music journalism with the illusion that i would make a shit ton of money! but it worries me that we're entering a point where no one can afford to be a music writer for a print publication, at the same time that every music editor at every mag and alt-weekly in the country seems to be jumping ship.

Print journalism can cover content/genre as wide and varied as its editors/corporate masters will let it do, and as long as there are writers who are willing to address a general, curious audience rather than writing for simply other music writers/nerds. Most of the music writing I see online and offline is for nicheheads; few writers seem interested (or able) to write for an audience not made up exclusively of music freaks. Which is sad.

dude, have you looked at the NBA lately?

-- geeta (geet...), March 28th, 2006."

Geeta - Thanks for the kind words, I'm glad you're digging the mag, glad the download worked too.
btw- I don't mean to be flip about money. Anybody who knows me knows that I am thinking about money all of the time, because I don't have any. I'd prefer to think about other stuff. So, money would be nice. And, money is on the way, given the way our mag's ad revenues are picking up, subscriptions are up, back issue sales are up, Bastet CD and DVD sales are up, etc. I can't wait for the day when we can boost our printrun (currently 50,000), increase our frequency (monthly would be nice), and pay everyone -- "staff" and contributors -- equitably. It is going to happen. It's just taken longer than we woulda liked.

I dunno why the UK has the Fly and not an equivalent of Arthur--something with a lot of CONTENT!

(And I know the stock answer to that is "well, why aren't you doing it" to which I can only say "bcz it would be a fucking disaster".)

(probable xpostage)

What you really mean is they turn into trade fan publications and/or adopt the journalism model of Federal Computer Week. Has already happened to most if not all of the metal and guitar magazines. They're the FCWs of print journalism and I'm not a fan. Which is why I still enjoy a daily newspaper with a decent features section even when the articles rile me.

ha, i TOTALLY noticed this when i was living in europe! often the art direction looks very nice, nice graphic design, they all have glossy pages, and they all seem to run poorly-written features (set in a small, unreadable sans-serif font) on the exact same artists--usually lcd soundsystem, tiga, jamie lidell, superpitcher, and other hipster faves that navigate the indie rock/dance music divide.

(xpost to Geeta)

But I said it and I'm British! Maybe they only equal content when they're in symbiosis with something to work with...

(to JtN)

or aren't given the opportunity to do so, based on editors' opinions that music that may appeal mostly to a niche group of listeners/readers never could be properly addressed to a more mass audience. (i don't mean you, jay - just a general take on print media these days.)

interestingly timed xpost, haha

Heh. On the other hand, it's hard to write about music that has a high barrier to entry in a general interest way. I love Wolf Eyes (for example), but trying to sell even the local newspaper on a story about 'em leads to a lot of rejection letters. There really is a huge gulf between people who really love music and want to know more about it all the time and people who like music but are dabblers (the stereotypical 12 cd guy). And it's rare to find entertainment editors who are interested in music.

But I suppose I'll have to start looking for Arthur at my local news stand or some such.

vast generalization, of course. but true across a frighteningly large spectrum, i find.

matos - The New Yorker is a perfect example of a mag that runs writing (on all subjects) that is of interest to both the generalists and the specialists in the audience.

my thing is: when in doubt, write like you're explaining something to a smart, eager, curious reader. be willing to hold their hand a little.

What? That's about all they were interested in at a daily I worked for awhile back. That and movies, movies, movies.

i remember trying to do a piece on mutek chile for a fairly avant-gardist, downtown art & culture magazine; it never went through, after three rewrites, and was probably for the best - i was trying for something that didn't work. but i remember the editor pressing me about how i casually mentioned laptop performances - something that to me seemed absolutely normal. of course people play laptops in performance. bjork's "backing band" (hi drew!) does, fer chrissakes. and i couldn't think of any way to try to provide explanatory context for that concept that didn't sound like "golly gee whillikers, did you know that those crazy kids are playing portable computers as if they were instruments these days?" of course, that could totally have been my own failing, and probably was. but the example stuck for me as illustrating how unstable the line is between what different readers (or editors) may consider common knowledge.

i agree that the new yorker is a sterling example of music writing written for a large audience, but new yorker readers amount to a pretty rarefied group of people--they form their own niche. it's not the same mass audience that, say, the new york post has; it doesn't have the same kind of reach. it's not sitting in the subway, in bathroom stalls, hawked on street corners, etc.

That said, I think music writers write for music nerds because they're the only ones fucking reading anymore. Whenever I adopt a more generalistic tone on my blog I always feel like I don't know who I'm talking to anymore.

i think the problem may stem from the fact that knowing a lot about a music scene is perceived as something 'cool' or 'hip' => 'elitist' in a way that knowing a lot about politics or sports isn't. if you know a lot about politics you're well-informed; if you know a lot about sports you're 'one of the guys'; if you know a lot about music you're considered to be a hip bastard who speaks in code.

Just saying that politics writing almost always includes some sort of summation of the narrative thus far, whereas music writing, admittedly because of space limitations, tends towards the elliptical as a means of cramming as much info in as possible.

if it is written well, i have no problem with difficult. you aren't always going to get everything. sometimes you have to work at things.

Porbably a bunch of factors, none of which you can control. While the editors of the features section I worked in liked music if you were someone on the outside pitching -- or if you didn't have an in -- it was liked trying to chat with a wall. You could easily come away with the impression that they weren't interested in much of anything. Not Invented Here or NIH syndrome is another way of describing it. It's found nationwide.

"The first proper song, "Obstacle 1," is more confusing but also more interesting. Confusing because it starts out sounding like that Chili Peppers song all over the radio that goes "standing in line at the movie show with a monkey, heavy load," or something, but then it switches to the famous guitar intro from "Marquee Moon" by Television. What makes this confusing is that I love the TV song but I hate the Peppers song, so I don't know what to feel. Plus, I keep thinking the singer dude is gonna break into that Pixies song that goes, "Is she weird, is she white, is she promised to the night?" . . . but he doesn't."

reviews -
Mags - dull, too short (or too long). uninspiring
ILM - timely, interactive, convincing
new releases
Mags - always out of date, necessarily
ILM - first place to hear about many new releases. plus YSI, albeit naughty
interviews
mags - 80-90% boring.
ILM - sometimes linked to, i ignore. the noily interview i liked recently was the one on slices with eulberg who just talked about different sorts of birds and sharks
features
Mags - what are these, descriptions of labels, scenes, genres, places or something? these are ok i guess
ILM - offers same minaly thru links to blogs etc
gig guide/listings
Mags - too few, too late, too inaccurate. little discussion of same
ILM - both promoters and consumers can contribute. can be difficult to find tho
gossip
Mags - mostly unfunny, sometimes ok. does this even exist?
ILX - few libel worries. links to relevant sources if there are. uncensored, unedited.
hype
Mags - ok but try to hide it under veneer of proper writing. Marred by unadulterated press release material
ILX - unashamedly bouyant, poorly expressed but more exciting. hype bourne of consumer excitment rather than PR drive. Marred by lame street teamers
design
Mags - ok they win. except for when its icky horrid design eg Mixmag/NME. except you cant read The Wire at work and pretend its actually, like, work
ILX - see above
photos
Mags - loads of photos means less word count means cheaper labour costs. Dull photoshoot poses, dull styling.
ILX - just loads of random crap that have nothing to do with anything. this suit me fine. at least it makes me chuckle once in a while

(xpost)

by the way, when people talk about a UK "Arthur", i dont know what that is but if your looking for free mags then sandman has gone national, and it sounds a bit like that, although its pretty indie orientated

However, ILM is preferable to music magazines because (a) there are no music magazines currently worth reading; (b) it inspires me to go out and listen to and buy music I otherwise wouldn't have come across. That, I gather, being the point.

They're not though, as a rule, are they? Stuff gets reviewed the week or month before release if possible. I find it more problematic that people now consider stuff 'out of date' when it's not even the shops, thanks to Soulseek/YSI/yadda yadda

as ofr new releases, i mean in terms of "what is going to come out" rather than reviews, so necessarily the sooner the better. i would rather a proper review came out when i could actually buy it.

actually thinking about it, FACT probably hits lots of right buttons. but i dont know where i can get it, or how popular it would be up here. but they seem to be putting out colour, quite weighty (in terms of pagination) content with a good coverage of dance music, for free! i guess its all covered by advertising but the mag seem doesnt any more overwhelmed by advertising content than other pay-for publications.
havent seen it up here though so i never get to see it really.
i tried looking for "dummy" but to no avail.

"rip it up and start again"

On the other hand, Spin telling me in their April issue that there's an exciting new track that I must download now— the Yeah Yeah Yeahs remixed by Diplo! does make them sound like a little brother late to the party.

...............................................................

What is needed is a diverse music magazine: I have concepted a solution:

MeldodyMakerSoundsMuzikTheLizardUndergroundJockeyslut - Issue 1 on Sale February 1st

Indicative Contents

Vex'D and Breezeblock Dubstep wars special, Kayo Dot, Sickoakes, Khoma, Coil, Nine Horses, Nathan Fake, Lindstrøm & Prins Thomas, Biosphere, The Early Years, The Durutti Column, Steve Roach, B. Fleischmann, John Dahlbäck, The Great Depression, The Knife, Matthew Shipp, Thomas Strønen, SubtractiveLAD, belong, Carl Craig, Cannibal Ox, The Blue Aeroplanes, Darkthrone, Robyn, Katatonia, iliketrains, Clogs, Jack Rose, Calibre, Burst, Dave Douglas, Supersilent, Daylight Dies, Ryoji Ikeda

Dubstep section by Gutterbreakz
Experimental Electronic Section
Electro-House-Techno Section
Extreme Metal Section
Jazz Section
Noise & Post & Psych Rock Section
Underground Hip Hop Section

Kate Bush Exclusive 2006 Interview by Marcello

Previewed Club Transmediale festival in Berlin - Geeta dispatched

Previewed by:larm festival in Norway - http://www.bylarm.no/vis.php?f=home.html

600 Defining Albums of the 00s [100 for each year so far] - Part 1 - 2000

Mr Agreeable type article takes the piss out of the NME Awards

2006 Previewed: The Most Anticipated Albums of 2006

Exclusive Melissa [Mel W] interviews Radiohead re upcoming new album

Free poster of Annie

UK Listings: Gigs and Clubs

Guaranteed
No bollox NME tripe NO Hard-Fi, No Kaisers, No Arctic Monkeys
No Q tripe Coldplay
No 30 pages of the same dozen or so 60s/ 70s artists ala Mojo or Uncut

...would there be a market for a magazine like this?

..........................................................

I wonder what would be in a concepted issue 2?

It's stuff like this that trips you up, really. You're talking about print journalism, you have a finite amount of space, what's the point in casting your net as wide as this? It's bad enough when people do it online

conventional print music magazines resemble 'buyers' guides' far, far more than ILM!

and you don't think that Spin or Blender represent the tastes of a particular group of people?

that seems pretty diverse to me...not a small group of tastes
of course ILX has the "advantage" of having an "editorial staff" of 100s, so can cover lots of bases...

xpost if there weren't trainspotty lits without context, it wouldn't be the internet

Hullo! McFly?

i think there is a hive mind of sorts in ILM, but it tends to be within each genre, as opposed to "we only like 10 types of music here"...

of course theres a bunch of stuff that gets missed out, and im sure there are message boards that fulfil those listeners needs, but i cant think of a music magazine that concerns itself in any form with the breadth of genres that ILM does.

i guess it doesnt matter, posting ILM vs Print media is facetious to a point. but i think peoples expectations of what print media can and does deliver are warpred by their experience of Internet sources, and it also offers some insight into why print media audiences are shrinking, and the content of the same changing (eg narrowing the field, dumbing down etc).

eppy i certainly agree that you need something more than just ILM on the grounds that you would want to read a magazine for more lengthy material that you can't get in ILM posts--for the 5,000-word feature stories and the long, in-depth reviews that you don't get here simply by virtue of the way ILM is designed. but we're living in a time where the village voice runs cover stories that are only 1,000 words long and spin runs 60-word album reviews! ILM and blogs pretty much cover all the bases for me, along with the new yorker and a few other mags that you can mostly read online.

you see, I started it and it was intended to be a list thread, just as a source of information for this rather easy article idea i had in mind for a webzine. but the discussion in there was killed because of some people not taking anything seriously and that's my problem sometimes with ILM, i'm not a frequent poster or anything, or a respected poster and there are people who'll only post lame comments without any substance when it's not a respected poster starting the thread. if someone like you started it it would've been a whole lot more interesting

Well I know exactly who I'm writing for in print: me, the poor guy who translates my stuff to German in addition to the French edition, the artist(s), the label or distro, the mag's boss and my editor, friends, colleagues, mom, a hipster who might know a little more than I do, finally someone who didn't pay for the mag, doesn't really want to understand what I'm talking about but be entertained by a sentence or two (with a hypnotic flow of words around them). I pretty much have them all in mind as I write or re-read, not that I must make them all happy, but it's also how I get things done on a practical level.

ILM and its conversations and links and group/social psychology trappings and inscrutable street-teaming and nerdiness and relentless humor : totally unprintable, for the better. Also it's always in my pocket (connected mobile phone).

And Geeta, I understand and appreciate what you're saying but after abt. 100/150 posts the back-and-forth arguments between the same half-dozen people tell me more about these people that about music (then a new release comes out and a new round begins).

Also, am I the only one who likes reading people being excited about a piece of music for reasons other than it gets me to buy it? I just like reading excited music criticism, especially about stuff I've already acquired.

So... For gratification?

Multiple cross-posts: Sandman is one of the worst magazines ever--full of local boosterism and awful writing, something that even one of it's founders admitted to me when he was trying to get me to write for it.

I forget about FACT, which I do really like--I can actually read about stuff I'm interested in and have never heard of in it, even if its format does enforce brevity as a necessity.

I have learned about some decent records via Bull Tongue. It's a fine column. But this is a growing trend in magazines, and I'm not sure how I feel about it. Sometimes, I wish writers stayed on one side of the fence and the artists on the other.

Yeah, I know what you mean. It's a great point. But the "red light," so to speak, still goes off in my head.

Agreed. But I have to admit, I dug an earlier article about the Dead better. I forgot who wrote it (help?), but it was just about his guilty pleasure of the Dead, and that was such a fun read. It put the group into perspective, and it supplied some info about good live jams.

Most print magazines are best when they are featuring discussions (like the GD roundtable in Arthur, though I must admit to a general dislike for almost all GD output, studio or live) or interviews/features on old heads. For example, when the Wire did pieces on Dockstader and A. von Schlippenbach, I was peeing myself with excitement.

Nonetheless, I get most of my music info from ILM (and ILMers blogs/writings/etc), Foxy Digitalis (which is fucking great), and a few random other places (Blastitude, the fusetron updates, etc). If I ask a question about something on ILM, I'll get a response-- I bought a record today after Ned and others endorsed it. Print magazines can't do that.

(Also, to Jay/Arthur folks-- where the hell can I find your magazine in the midwest? I've gotten it in Philly and NY before, but I'm in Ohio most of the year, and feel ambivalent about subscribing to anything other than Harper's, which is suitably cheap and informative).

I should give props here to Aquarius, Other Music, and Volcanic Tongue because they try to write about every single release.

i have walked out of aquarius with so many "highly recommended" albums. and a few weeks later i am walking them into amoeba.

Great point. It's just a marketing strategy to distinguish them from the others. Ha!

(When I say reputable, I mean reputable-- not some label like FatCat, which puts out crap every once in a while, but a label like.... uh.... 5RC. Or Fusetron itself).

Can you imagine any label putting out a shite record and saying it's shite? Of course they say all their releases are great!

There's a bunch of reasons the mag is called what it is, and that's one of them...

Yeah I think that's being a hardass. I don't want to get into a debate with all comers over this, so I'll just say my perspective is it's pretty clear where Byron & Thurston are coming from and no one loses when they cover stuff that's close to them in their column.

You're probably right, and I do dig your rag bigtime. It's a unique, noble publication that's actually trying to do something different and meaningful. But at the same time, I feel like somebody should point out that Moore and Coley have written review(s) about the Magik Markers, for example, and Moore has released records by the MM's. Hey, I'm into all this stuff. But if this wasn't Coley and Moore writing this article -- say two dudes who were NOT underground legends -- then somebody would point this out quite quickly.

I bought a record today after Ned and others endorsed it.

What, where? Which?

I am with the "ILM trumps magazines" crew, I freely admit, and I say this as someone who has written for UK magazines like Careless Talk and Loose Lips and the like. Most of my writing career as such has been based online anyway -- I get ever increasing amounts of compliments, mail and promos based strictly on all those AMG reviews, which has been terribly flattering. Those reviews may not be extended thinkpieces but they're longer than 120 words (thank god), they are more or less permanent (not always handy if my opinion changes!) and thanks to all those licensing agreements I'm ending up in a lot of different places. So the screen feels more 'at home' to me than print, but those efforts that do print -- like the ones I mention above -- do or did great jobs.

I agree, and thanks Jay, for the reply.

Arthur is OK if all you listen to is indie psych bands and like your political content in wheelbarrowloads rather than spoonfuls. Oh, and of the completely anally leftocentric variety.

The best music magazine on the planet is currently Wax Poetics, unfortunately they have a rather narrow scope.

Art galleries are usually visually negative spaces that even try to hide light sources, never distracting the viewer from what's being displayed, there is no ambivalence, they are exercises in objective presentation. For the presentation of a portrait photograph in a magazine that's wonderful, you engage with the picture, there are no sidebars, pull quotes etc.
But the magazine's about music, and the treatment of text is alienating, it's presentation, like a gallery's, puts it in an objective role. It discourages scrutiny of the writing. The ads and the charts pages seem the most visually exciting things going on on the pages. The magazine isn't visually questioning, it presents. The album cover piece is a really nice idea, but the actual graphics are too small, especially compared with the sometimes oversized portraits. I'm looking at the July issue and alonside the cover photograph of David Tibet, there are 3 full page portraits 2 of which are David Tibet. How many times do you need to see him? They do it because they don't like placing photographs in the text and it's the only way they can break the text up due to to there adopted design rules. End result is just puzzling at the very least. Do people cut David Tibet out and stick him on their bedroom walls? I doubt it.
At least they tidied up their bitstream section, now it feels like the news bit in the Economist
I think I'm being over analytical about it but if one magazine invites analysis it's the Wire.

And Foggy Notions is nice for a multitude of reasons, they did well. Nice nice nice.

i guess theoretically i have a "music magazine" now, but i'm always kinda waiting for my boneheaded schemes to get me tossed.

Even a cursory examination of Arthur's contents over the last four years would show you that the mag covers a LOT more than "indie psych" (whatever that is).

I think perhaps it's simply a matter of taste re: the Wire. Where you say "UNDERdesigned" I read overly-formalised and graphically neutered. I don't disagree with the overdesign of most magazines, even the ones that have high ideas about themselves. I especially don't like the trend for density of detail and ornamentation, with vines and flock wallpaper styles, it's getting a bit stupid. That said I think the Wire design and layout is not without conceit or dogma, I would tend to think the opposite. The design is dogmatic in so far as there is an underlying idea as to how to present their words and it's formal and sober and shan't be distracted from. The images cannot free associate in any way, they are always purely for depicting the artist, the subjects of the portraits do not interact, they are static, and only the setting is used to manipulate the language of the image. Rarely there'll be an artist at work type picture. There's nothing in the least risk-taking about the magazine, I've been reading it on and off for a few years (since 2000/2001 I think) and it can really really feel like a chore. They've not attempted any substantial changes in that time. I have to mark records I'm interested in with a pen to remember where they are when I scan back through it. If this was Circa or something I wouldn't mind, if this was a journal I wouldn't mind but even the Journal of Music in Ireland is nearly better designed.
The magazine I always feel does it right is StopSmiling, the chicago monthly. I always really liked just the adjustments in alignments of the text boxes and the page number boxes etc. It isn't in any way over designed but it's recognisable and does graphic and photography really well on the page. I think one of my favourite magazines is Carlos magazine, the Virgin Upper Class in flight magazine. They were kind enough to send me some copies when I asked. It's done on unbleached paper in blue ink, with lovely sketched illustration and gold or silver embossed high lighting. Carlos Magazine

The portraits would be great collected together in book form.

i saw a very badly designed movie mag the other day. 'little white lies'?

Articles would suddenly disappear just as you went to read them.

I'm often tempted to start sampling magazines off amazon and other net retailers. Tower carry a bunch of american titles but I find it impossible to justify buying them because of reasons people have given upthread. Under the Radar is one of the titles I remember. Also Venus (is that female orientated only?). They're also usually sort of late, and of course US tour dates etc. don't mean much to me.

The only mag I have an actual subsciption to is National Geographic, had it for years and years. I love the photography. I do however inevitably buy Mojo. I haven't opened Uncut in years and years, NME either. Word, and Bang (are they still going?) never interested me. I cannot stand Hotpress at all, and I know some Hotpress staff have posted here before, I apologize. The Wire I buy on and off, more on that off, particularly if there's a cover disc.

I don't buy cinema magazines, I read the newspapers and to be honest their reviewers can be very good or good enough(I like Philip French and Mark Kermode in the Observer and Peter Bradshaw in the Guardian) I can usually triangulate a film from the Guardian/Observer/Irish Times/Sunday Times and the trailer as well as the net.

Oh and I can't abide Q.

They sell Colors in Tower? I hadn't checked but I had been under the impression that you coudn't get it in Ireland. It's only a quarterly and extremely expensive but the photographs are great.

National Geographic pisses me off. I can almost never get through a single article. I don't even find the photographs that interesting and the issue they did on Ireland made me very suspicious of what they say about other countries.

I have a supscription for The Wire (you get way more free CDs) and Colors since I thought you couln't get it here. I had always loved those Benetton ads and Colors has a similar vibe but doesn't have too strong an affiliation with the clothes label.

I like Mark Kermode too, but I also like Ciaran Carty, his opinions always seem to be his opinions, not for the sake of them. He doesn't agree or disagree with anyone else, just reacts to the film. Even when I don't agree with him, I get something out of his perspective which is my estimation of a good critic.

Re: Net Geo. The writing doesn't interest me in the least, I don't think the photography is interesting in terms of advancing the medium but what it captures, they have the money to send photographers to interesting places for long periods of time. That Irish article was an abomination, but it was written by an associate editor or something I think, basically he needs to use flickr and not the magazine he works on, spouting shite about "celts" along the way.

Never understood the Har Mar circus, didn't press my humour buttons or music buttons.

Everything you hate about The Wire is what I love about it – that clinical layout, the divide between words and pictures. I love that text and images are so often separate, that I can simply read reviews or interviews or whatever directly without a bunch of photoshop wankery cluttering everything up because the art designer wants to show off....I love that there’s just so damned much to read and that realistically it’ll take me a lot of time to actually check every piece out, months or maybe years, something may not interest me right away or might seem alienating but it’s likely that eventually the reverse will be true. Thus I’ve never thrown an issue away, and never will.

Thanks Raymond. I thought I was the only one who felt that way. But I have to confess to being the one who was praising Ray Gun. Which I've never really read. (too young, missed it) but tracked down a couple of issues to look at after being really impressed with a few covers I came across in design books. The dinosaur jr. one stick out in my mind.

I don't "hate" the Wire and appreciate that people love its design and find it a joy to read, but I'm just a bit tired of it. Perhaps because it seemed like a magazine that promised more visually than I ever got from it.

The enlarged text extract is called a "pullquote", it serves two purposes.
The first being to emphasise to a browsing reader the tone or angle of a story by concentrating on something that the story turns on. Pull quotes, intros, headlines and subheadlines and images serve to draw a reader and introduce them to an article, the don't have to commit themselves to say 3,000 words of text without being aware of what it contains.
The second purpose is to interrupt the text visually. I'm sure you're take on the Wire means you won't agree with this, but it's taken as layout law that if the flow of text isn't interupted by something other than the page break then a reader who isn't committed to reading it in the first place is less likely to want to read it. If you have things to snag your eyes on, you can break the text up and navigate it more easily. I have no problem what-so-ever with pullquotes and I don't miss dreadfully them when they're gone.
Everything about Wire is tilted against the casual reader, that's the effect they want. It always seemed a little to hostile to me. The absence of pullquotes ties with that.

I think this should be an ilm stock image...

-- Uncle Tom (to...), July 31st, 2006.

Remind me to get a list of their subscribers so that I can be sure to never invite them to parties.

Wire designer James Goggin take a bow!