‘More real than anything you’ll see scrolling’: the radical resurgence of UK fanzines, 50 years after punk
‘The most important part of the word ‘fanzine’ is ‘fan’,” says London-based zine-maker Jon Marsh. Existing outside mainstream media, free from the demands of release cycles and search engine optimisation, music fanzines are obsessions turned into tangible objects; self-published primarily for the maker’s own enjoyment, but with the potential of forging connections with like-minded people.
In the 1970s, punk zines such as Sniffin’ Glue, Alternative Ulster and Ripped & Torn allowed fans to share news and enthusiasm quickly and cheaply. Half a century on, music fanzines are enjoying a resurgence as a form of resistance to algorithm fatigue and the hyper-capitalist music industry. “Digital attention span is at an all-time low,” says hip-hop musician ExP, creator of the West Yorkshire Hip-Hop zine. “You’re almost definitely going to spend more time looking at a zine than anything you see scrolling. It’s more interesting and more real.” In the words of Stephen McRobbie, from indie-pop icons and fanzine regulars the Pastels: “It’s the long way round compared to other media, but the scenery is always better.”
Today’s music fanzines reflect both individual passions and the eclectic tastes of collectives, such as Lunchtime for the Wild Youth’s yearly album retrospectives, or Gutter’s cacophony of words and illustrations. They appear as punk one-sheets (Another Subculture) and Smash Hits-inspired puzzles (Hard Boiled Babe); documenting hyper-local scenes in Glasgow (Winch), Belfast (Poseur), south-east London (SelOut) and Teesside (Point Blank). “I like to think that TQ serves as a living history of music in the north-east,” says experimental music zine TQ’s editor Andy TarQuin Wood. This sentiment is shared by Nova, who co-edits Glasgow zine Teen Warfare with their friend Courtney. “It acts as a permanent snapshot of a time in the scene,” they say. “Even if some of the bands aren’t around any more, this record is still there, which makes it special.”
Punk still features heavily in today’s zine scene, including long-running fanzines Gadgie and One Way Ticket to Cubesville, as well as Artificial, launched last year by 18-year-old Bristol-based punk Poppy Lola. But just about every genre has a fanzine charting it, from ska (Do the Dog), mod (Heavy Soul) and 2-tone (Before, During & After), to metal (Shrieks from the Abyss) and folk (Anarchic Folk). Newcastle-based Afropulse is a monthly zine celebrating the multiplicity of Black British music, with features on alt Black icons such as Poly Styrene alongside deep dives into grime, Afroswing and the legacy of Black British girl groups. Jon Marsh started Wired Up eight years ago to express his love of glam rock. ExP created West Yorkshire Hip-Hop to help build “crucial infrastructure” locally and to connect with the genre’s DIY roots. “Hip-hop has always been about making something from nothing: rapping over beatboxing, graffiti with left-over 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 credits the Pastels’ popularity among zine-makers to their shared “handmade, rough-hued, semi-outsider” nature. He recommends the fanzine Here’s Where You Belong, “which combines the editor’s music taste with her print-making and other enthusiasms”. And among the current crop of indie-pop fanzines you have the literary-leaning In the April Sun and the whimsical DA DA DA!. Jane Duffus edited an indie-pop fanzine as a teenager in the 1990s, and started Zine Things Happen last year to “express [her] sillier side” alongside her career as an author and journalist. “There’s nobody to look suspicious when I want to ask Amelia and Cathy from Heavenly to pretend to be magazine agony aunts,” she says. The debut issues of both her fanzines featured Stephen Duffy of the Lilac Time on the cover. “He says he looks forward to chatting to me again in 30 years for whatever the next thing is.”
The current revival has led many zine-makers back to the fold. David Rumsey revived his 1990s “skinzine” Tighten Up in 2014 – it still covers “all things skinhead, apart from the right wing”. Hamish Ironside’s zine Saudade originally ran from 1990 to 1994, and returned in 2023 after he co-wrote We Peaked at Paper, an oral history of zines that “totally revived” his enthusiasm. Possibly uniquely, Saudade is still printed on a Gestetner, a duplicator that was often used for producing zines before photocopiers became widespread in the 1980s. “The whole ethos of zines is DIY, and by owning my own printer I am totally self-sufficient,” Ironside says of his machine, which prints from stencils made with a manual typewriter. “I also really like the aesthetic. It makes my zine look like it could have been done in the 1950s, or even the 1930s.”
Phil McMullen also uses a rare technique for his “labour of love” Terrascopaedia, which may be the only music zine printed entirely using letterpress – “hardly surprising, given it takes around seven hours to typeset a single page”. Having been active in the underground music press for more than four decades, McMullen launched Terrascopaedia in 2012 after teaching himself the technique, which involves manually setting individual letters and using a heavy vintage press. “I am drawn to featuring artists who share my sense of craft,” McMullen says, among them the folk artists Gwenifer Raymond, Greg Weeks and Sally Anne Morgan. Morgan is a musician, says McMullen, “who plays gorgeously haunting psychedelic Appalachian folk drone. The icing on the cake is that she’s also a letterpress printer herself.”
In defiance of AI slop, many young makers are adopting the cut-and-paste look of classic fanzines. Pindrop shares thoughts on the London underground scene via scrappy photocopied sheets. Voidoid features collaged essays on Lou Reed and mini-shrines dedicated to Candy Darling. Teenage friends Evan Moakes and Will White’s dense, thoughtful Why Do We Care? (WDWC) was catalysed by a shared love of Manic Street Preachers, and taps into that band’s early DIY aesthetic. Encouraged by Moakes’s father Gordon Moakes – a member of the None and former bassist with Bloc Party who also edited the 90s zine Conform or Die – the duo created WDWC as “equally a source of intellectual discussion and theory as of passion and spontaneity”. The (largely 90s) bands they cover share their “desire to understand and scrutinise society through knowledge and art”, says White, “Manic Street Preachers and McCarthy’s lyricism contextualises class division, and inspired me to study critical theory. Huggy Bear and Bis feel relatable and speak to my experience.”
The members of Scottish indie-pop band Bis have also observed this inter-generational appeal and remain stalwart fanzine fixtures. “Our continued appeal to fanzine creators comes from our genesis as fanzine creators ourselves,” reckons singer and guitarist Sci-fi Steven, who edited Paper Bullets during the band’s mid-90s breakout. “Our era was the last pre-internet organic network, and I’d imagine there’s a romance in that for [younger] generations.” Steven’s bandmate Manda Rin credits their status as outsiders, then and now, to this continuing appeal. “The youth of today are not only attracted to us because of our political, shouty lyrics,” she says, “but also the acceptance of being comfortably different to those around you.”
Zines have always been outlets for radical outsiders, such as bilingual Welsh zine Gwarth ar y Teulu, made by “the misfits, the queers, the working class”, according to Cardiff-based musician and editor Efa Supertramp. When political zines are being used to prosecute protesters in the US, music zines also play a crucial role in making the connection between culture and politics tangible. The latest edition of sound and music zine Texture features timely essays linking noise and resistance, including a moving piece on radio broadcasts in solidarity with Palestine by sound artist Mort Drew. And after the outbreak of war in Ukraine, TQ released a Ukrainian special featuring electronic musician Kateryna Zavoloka, who “was very open about the effect of the Russian invasion on her music and her family”, says editor Wood. Teen Warfare leveraged their zine’s community for an action outside a Disturbed concert, with local bands protesting singer David Draiman’s vocal support of the IDF. “Making it into a protest gig 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’re music-focused.”
The articulation and growth of community is a shared aim for today’s music zine-makers, whether they want to help cultivate their local scene, or connect with fellow fans via international postage networks. Zine-makers are also connecting with each other at gigs, online and at zine libraries and fairs. “Making a zine feels like speaking a forgotten language,” says White of WDWC. “Whenever somebody who understands it hears you speak of it, you instantly bond with one another.” Wood sees everyone involved in the zine TQ – writers, readers, musicians – as “part of a kind of looping collaboration”. Thirty years after they were zine-makers themselves, Bis still feel part of this communal 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 Steven. “After reading through and feeling the energy flying off the pages, I sat down to write a song that I thought the writers would want to hear. That’s the real power.”