Hi, it's your dad here

A head's up - this isn't an unbiased review, it's a shameless plug for a zine by one of the SZR staff reviewers. 


Hi, it's your dad here
by Nathan Penlington

44 pages, A6.
£3 (+90p p&p UK, +£1.90 p&p rest of world)

Q: What do you get if you combine a piece of rubber tube, 2 pound shop funnels, 16 works of twentieth and twenty-first century literature, and an unnamed fetus? 

A: An experiment in literary incubation in the form of a zine. 

The backstory: my partner and I have just had a baby. It has been proven that babies form attachment to voices they hear while in the womb - naturally a mother's voice is the most comforting noise.

Obviously I was external to the incubation, so we wanted to come up with a way for me to bond with the baby while she was in the womb. 

I had a plan - I made a speaking tube so I could read out every night. This zine is a record of those books and the reasons why they were chosen. 

Featuring works by JG Ballard, Eudora Welty, Jules Verne, Kurt Vonnegut, Richard Brautigan, Raymond Queneau, Rikki Ducornet, Guy J Jackson, Ray Bradbury, AF Harrold, Ernest Noyes Brookings, David Greenberger, Franck Pavloff, Angel idigoras, Peter Manseau, and PT Barnum. Hi, it's your dad here -  is a zine in the form of a pocket sized book, at pocket money prices. 


Limited edition of 100 - all copies signed and numbered. 24 hand drawn illustrations, and my favourite thing, a soft-touch laminated cover. I know, sounds good right?

You can buy a copy with PayPal via my website: nathanpenlington.com - Hi, it's your dad here

Ok, plug over. I can hear a baby crying. 

Terminal Punk

Terminal Punk
V.Vale

Black & white, 5-1/2″ x 8-1/2″ 40 pages, illustrated.

$5

V.Vale is responsible for the mind expanding counter culture publishing company RE/Search. Throughout the 80s and 90s RE/Search was crucial for treating the work of JG Ballard and William Burroughs with reverence long before the universities caught on; publishing anthologies about once taboo subjects such as body modification, and the history of women and tattoos - subjects that have had a renaissance of late before ultimately being co-opted by the mainstream. 

RE/Search have also published work of zine interest - re-issues of the influential punk zine Search & Destroy started by V.Vale in the late 70s (while he worked park time at City Lights Books), and the ground breaking collection of interviews with zine makers in Zines! Vol 1. 


V.Vale is counter culture personified. So he is in the perfect position to talk and write about Punk, not just as a short-lived music phenomenon, but as an ethos and aesthetic with relevance today. Terminal Punk is a series of interviews and conversations that reflect on the terminal philosophy of the Punk movement - not the spitting and safety pins Punk has been reduced to by the corporate machine - but the aesthetics, influences, history, and social outlook, that fuse into a way of living.   

Vale explores the DNA of Punk, outlining the three fundamental elements that form its make up: Black Humour; DIY / Anyone Can Do It; and Mutual Aid. Even if you don't think Punk is 'your' thing, if you have only the smallest interest in the creative process you'll take something away from reading this zine. Throughout Vale stresses the need to increase our awareness to fight the distraction culture we live in - making, distributing, and reading zines is still a significant way of doing that. 

As Vale says, "Until we have a perfect world I don't think Punk will ever be dead or obsolete".

Buy Terminal Punk direct from RE/Search researchpubs.com/shop/terminal-punk-zine-philosophy-w-i-p-by-v-vale

Signed copies are available from Rough Trade in the UK for £5: roughtrade.com/magazines/terminal-punk-zine-philosophy-w-i-p-by-v-vale-signed-copies



Review by Nathan Penlington

Gorge

Gorge – Elena Colman

Produced by Ladette Space

A5, 16 photocopied pages on black paper with separate page of text printed on A4 tracing paper. Sewn binding. 

Limited edition of 30. 

£3

This is a really hard zine to review, not because I don't have anything to say, but because I don’t want to give anything away. There is always a huge joy in exploring, of not knowing, and in surprise. I just want you to get your hands on a copy, and when you first start to turn the pages examine that feeling. 

Understandably your response will be different to mine, but for it me, this zine contains the essence of early of JG Ballard, condensed to a haiku-like artist’s book. 

Gorge was produced by Ladette Space - 'an experiment in making a gallery in your home and a home in your gallery'. It is a project enthusised by a diy aesthetic, that carries through to handmade publications and zines. Ladette Space were kind enough to send me a huge package of zines, reviews of which will follow over the next couple of weeks. 

I'm dissapointed though to have not known about the exhibition that accopanied this zine. According to Elena's website it consited of: 

gin and tonic fountain, artificial cave, black light, crepe paper, ferns, sequined fabric, humidifyers, pink light bulbs, looped video. 

I know, right? Sounds amazing.      

Buy Gorge here: ladettespace.bigcartel.com/product/elena-colman-gorge

Information about Elena's work can be found here: thecolmansingularity.com

Review by Nathan Penlington