This Would Destroy A Victorian Child

Hello You.

Big announcement below by the way.

This real problem with being busy is that it doesn’t leave you with much time to do anything else. Since I got back from the Biennale its been nose to the grindstone on a variety of problems with hard and fast deadlines, and additionally I went to my first music festival since 2017 and the first one outside of the honeymoon period of resolve you get in new sobriety. The last two weeks things have calmed down in terms of manning the battlements panic that comes from having things that need to be done now, but I’ve still had tasks to do and every time I’ve sat down at the studio to do something, I’ve had something to do. I haven’t had the whimsical sensation of being able to just ponder what it is that I can do today in a while. Things have needed attention. As such there is no huge essay on a particular topic this week. Its going to be a short one, which means its probably only going to be double the size of what a standard newsletter should be.

This week I are mostly been talking about:

1) What am I doing right now?

2) ARCTANGENT

3) Big Announcement: The Zine Shop

4) Nick’s Music Corner.

I wonder how much cultural credit that reference still holds?

First of all a big thank you to everyone who attended Stapled towards the end of August. It was a massive success, at least that’s what I’m taking form it. We did the exhibitor feedback forms and whilst the Sunday crowd had concerns about the footfall, it was quieter on Sunday than Monday, the comments were primarily praise. I felt like it really achieved something that is missing from Leeds and increasingly England as a whole. There aren’t many comic book events made with the independent guy in mind, at least from my experience. As such we will be doing it again next year, its just about sorting out a date with Left Bank and hopefully pivoting it to a time period when the students are still in Leeds. I think that would give us a much needed boost in terms of attendance. That being said, over 700 people came in through the doors over the two days, and we sold out of Stapled T-Shirts on the first day. So we must have been doing most of it right.

The thing that really stood out to me from the feedback was how much people valued the atmosphere of the event. We had people telling us it was the safest feeling event they had been to. Words like friendly, and community where kicked around as well. As someone who has been made to feel like an outsider for a large portion of their life its integral for me to make my events inclusive and safe. Orlen, our safeguarding officer, did a really good job of putting together an incident reporting and documentation process. We did a briefing before the event so that everyone was aware of the process, how to use it, and what to do if someone was creeping on them. From Stapled to Zineophilia or any event I do, I want people to feel safe.

On the Zineophilia front I was re-elected the group leader of Zineophilia for a second year running. In 2023 we became a constituted community group after three years of me running by myself. A big part of this choice, along side the need to have people help me to grow the society, was to make safeguarding and participant welfare a part of the society’s DNA. If someone had a complaint against me, and I was the soul organiser and group leader, how would that person process that? Similarly, if I am doing things that aren’t in the group’s interest, or if someone had an idea they wanted to run with as part of Zineophilia, how could that work? Having a board and a general committee and a membership voice has helped us grow the membership numbers, do some incredible events, and learn a lot about safeguarding and membership protection. I don’t take it for granted that I’m going to just automatically be Group Leader. I encourage people to run against me. I want what’s best for the community I have worked hard to create. Its not my echo chamber or personal therapy group, its something that I want to have a long lasting life and meaningful impact. Vanity can go fuck itself.

Arctangent is a music festival down in the Mendip Hills outside of Bristol. This year was its 10th edition, and it has become the music festival for fans of Math Rock, Progressive Metal, Post-Rock, and bands that make guitars and synths make sounds that they really shouldn’t be making. I got tickets at the tail end of last year when it was announced that the band Three Trapped Tigers would be playing one of their last ever shows there, which at the time was advertised as their actual last ever show but the subsequent final tour has put that to sleep, and there wasn’t anything in the world that would stop me going. I have been to one festival in sobriety before, one that was more family orientated, so at the point of ordering I felt fine about it given the boost of a great distance of time.

In the weeks leading up to it I had become terrified.

I didn’t realise how much it was stressing me out, and was doing everything I could to ignore my anxiety and project it onto other things. But the fear of all the things I used to love at a festival (taking lots of drugs, getting drunk, people wanting to give you lots of drugs and booze and then do both those things with you) really had a hold of me. Prior to sobriety Music Festivals were for me an excuse for bacchanalian excess in an environment that actively encouraged it. Drunk people at a festival are not only allowed, but actively encouraged. I didn’t think for a second that I would fall into old habits it was more that being surrounded by those old habits would be upsetting for me. I worried about not sleeping. I worried about not eating. I worried about standing up for long periods. I worried about all the stuff that didn’t for a second ever cross my mind when I used to rock up to a festival with 24 pint cans of Stella and a bottle of Jack Daniels coiled up in my sleeping bag. Seriously, the tent bag and the sleeping bag are THE place to hide things to get them into festivals.

It wasn’t until the day we drove down that I started to feel excited and once we had set up camp and settled in I felt like a massive weight had been lifted off me. I had an amazing time, and shout out to the festival organisers for putting together such a superb environment. It felt calm throughout, despite the amount of circle pits I saw, and at no point did I even see any violence or fighting. I saw a wonderful array of some of my favourite bands in the world, and the set up was so good they were all playing at large gig space quality rather than the usually dodgy festival set up. Even the big festivals have a real shoddy reputation when it comes to audio quality, because you are playing music in a big field. Making that sound good is hard. But I suppose if you are going to be playing loud music to a bunch of hipsters that all look like a kaleidoscope of multiversal Nick Gonzo’s then it behooves you get good sound quality.

Highlights on the music front were the headliners (Mogwai, Electric Wizard, Explosions in the Sky, As So I Watch You From Afar, Animals as Leaders, Meshuggah) but also a range of small bands that I didn’t have much experience with (Bo Ningen, Julie Christmas, Imperial Triumphant, The Omific, Briqueville, Haxan). But more about that in the music section.

My big announcement is that I am opening a Zine Shop on Headingly high-street.

This is its first announcement outside of casual conversation with friends, but I am currently in the process of putting together stock to launch the shop in late October with a big party. Its just a small shop, as pictured above, but my friend Clive and I spent a weekend custom making some fitted furnishings and shelves for it to make it a bespoke Zine outlet. Its within the back of Beam Works, a print and art shop next to the Oxfam bookshop on the main strip of Headingly. To those not in the know Headingly is a neighbourhood in North Leeds that is famed for being very studenty very liberal, and very artsy-fartsy. I have cool memories of getting the bus there with my Dad and sister to go charity shop dredging in my early teens, looking for vinyl records and good quality books. Its where I live now, so for me its a great opportunity to contribute to the culture of the area and help keep it weird.

The above photo is of the furnishings we made covered in a portion of my own zine collection. If you want your work featured in the store please email me at [email protected] and I am sure we can come to some agreement.

Leeds has a great array of comic shops, OK Comics being the best, (sorry-not-sorry) and also has a cool indie bookshop in the form of Village Books in the city centre. But it doesn’t have a zine exclusive shop, so this is a change to showcase some really strange and specific shit. I’m hoping to really have a weird and diverse range of small creators works, including a XXX shelf over the top of the door.

More news on it as it comes I am sure, but I am excited to see where it leads.

Welcome to music corner where I give you some of my musical recommendations though-out the year. It must be getting closer to winter because my music taste is getting much heavier.

• I got really into Wretched Blessing’s self titled debut EP this month. This is an album of music you should only listen to if you like really really heavy stuff. Its basically screaming and noises, but if you’re into that its really high quality screaming and noises. There is a real variance in heavy music in terms of quality, and Wretched Blessing know when to be loud, when to be quiet, and how to put together deeply textured wall of sound Metal.

• As mentioned above I loved seeing BRIQUEVILLE at ARCTANGENT and their albums have been on rotation recently. They call it Post-Metal, and its not an inaccurate description as it takes the language and form of metal and uses its elements to make a more textural soundscape rather than traditional songs. Again its very heavy, but its a lot of fun, and I really love the song Akte XVII from their Fourth album IIII.

• For fans of things with discernible lyrics the 2022 album Unison Life by Brutus is an atmospheric metal band that has elements of Black Metal and Post-Rock but with a more punks level of energy to it. Again, heavy, but much more traditional that the above two.

• Imperial Triumphant is a must listen for people who are fans of having their faces melted off.

• This one isn’t metal: The 2023 album Ask by Altin Gun is a psychedelic soundscape of music. They’re a Turkish/Dutch band based in Amsterdam that take a lot of cues from funk, especially the Thai funk music that bands like Khurangbin have made more visible in recent years.

.I appreciate that all but one of those suggestions by a lot of peoples metric weren’t actually music, but hey. Its my Newsletter.

Well there we go. Hopefully I will get more time next month so you don’t have to wait so long. I am teaching on Four different courses across two universities the the coming term, so I doubt it. But hey, lets cross our fingers and hope for the best.

I hope this signal finds you Earthling.

As always, yours faithfully.

Nick Gonzo.

[email protected]