Broken Face?

Mats Gustafson, who edits the zine, lets people offer up what they want to review easily enough, but he also gets promos to review to offer to people as well. Had I some of those, I might have had some negative things to say! But I responded to that too late, and I think for the most part we're all just talking about records we like, so hey. :-)

It's openly following in the footsteps of the mighty Ptolemaic Terrascope, of course, so that might take your fancy, Roger, or maybe you've already sampled and found it wanting (I actually first heard about BF at Terrastock 5). If we are talking about writers for BF in general, a tip o' the hat to fellow Walkabouts fanatic Peter Sjobolm here...

i think roger's criticism of bf for printing no negative reviews could be extended to 95% of zine culture, really.

nice to see a tip of the hat to muckraker, probably my fave zine ever, better than forced exposure even ... i'm sure patrick marley would be blushing right now.

My suggestion is to indulge in a wonderful suspension of judgement while swimming in the pure bliss of enthusiasm and beauty found within it's pages.

The other publication which completes the Holy Trinity of the Psych/Folk field is called "DREAM" Magazine. It is also very, very good.

so if a zine offers good reviews and good reviews only then you've got to be vary of it.

I like opprobium quite a bit bcz they do give bad reviews (but they havem't published anything in ages). it's realistic to expect that not everything you get through the post will be good.

is the new halana worth getting?

i haven't seen the new Halana but it supposedly features Elaine Radigue, so it's probably worth getting. That's another great zine, there - consistent and aesthetically pleasing to boot.

Opprobrium, as far as I know, still publishes, but it's online only now. Get yr NZ fix.

Funny you say that about P Marley - I spent some time with him recently (I also used to write for the Muck) and when John Olson and I tried to convince him how important the zine was, he did, quite literally, blush, and seemed genuinely surprised by it's impact. No chance of him ever publishing it again though, I'm afraid.

re: negative reviews: If something sucks, it's your duty as a journalist to both the reader and the offending band to describe why. Any journalist who refuses to give something a negative review isn't worth his weight in Fraternity promos. The problem, as I see it, is that a lot of smaller zines don't get promos from labels, and only review what they actually buy. Of course this creates a problem because you're less likely to trash something that you were interested in enough to pay for. A lot of zine editors end up sounding like battered wives making excuses. "I don't care what everyone else says about this record, I paid $17.99 for it and it sounds good to me. You don't know what it's like when we're alone" etc etc

Otherwise, you're just giving free ad space. Nothing makes me angrier than reading a "review" that basically plagiarizes the fucking one-sheet. What's the point?

i think julio's pretty perceptive here, you do generally have to be wary of mags that offer only good reviews: i've been stumbling around this issue myself, trying to get issue the fourth of astronauts together (3 years and running). but it was just too much fun to slam the aphex twin (again.) (drukqs = weakest record of the decade so far?)

but broken face has a definite aesthetic, which they've refined and re-defined to the point where people who send 'em discs will know that the bf dudes are into it; my suggestion of a piece on minimal house (just to throw some other options in there) was politely dismissed, but that's ok by me, bf have their heads in a different space to that. talk about drawing closely delineated aesthetic parameters if you want - and maybe it's a valid accusation - but i think mats has his head screwed on straight, he knows what he wants out of his 'zine and he gets it w/pretty remarkable results. that sunburned hand of the man interview, so great! ditto the yahowa.

and there were a few reviews in the last issue that were a bit -ive, though they were generally aimed at records that didn't fit the bf vision.

but this is a tough one, whether a 'zine should stand as a CHEERLEADER for a nascent phenom (this is clearly how broken face has clearly positioned itself w/regards avant-folk) or as a CRITICAL space. maybe the very best zines do both (opprobrium, muckraker [be still my beating heart ...])

(ned, i 2nd the comment re your amt review.)

and roger is right - there is nothing worse than one-sheet-as-review writing. there's a pretty funny thing (or at least there was) at that band national park's website which published a) a one-sheet written by david keenan for a festival happening in glasgow and b) the article from a glasgow paper which plagiarised so blatantly it was hilarious. i've seen it happen too many times (and once had a one-sheet i wrote for a show i co-organised just republished straight by the street press over here in adelaide, particularly ridiculous because i wrote it pseudo-intellectual just to see what would happen. i think it's the first time the word 'exigencies' has appeared in the paper, but nevermind.)

i just got semi-stalked because i mentioned how shit a local label was in a review. ridiculous.

oh yeah I know they publish online but they haven't updated it in ages so I'm wondering whether its still going.

yep, still using the hall of fame interview. tried emailing you a while ago but alas, no response. good to know you're still floating around.

(sorry about personal use of board, will restrict.)

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/brokenfacerecordings/

Look forward to checking out the other suggestions on this thread. Thanx.

foxy digitalis is good; lee jackson writes bunches for it and he's a good writer.