Tactile Zine Presents: Behind the Scenes No. IIInfluences.
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Have Heart’s Watch Me Rise
Iron Maiden – Aces High
Cam’ron – Down and Out
Darkest Hour – Sound the Surrender
My zine is heavily influenced by the things that I’m into besides keyboards. The biggest influence being music; particularly heavy metal (and it’s subgenres), hardcore (admittedly a subgenre but unique enough in my eyes), and hip hop. Hardcore has a long history of publishing fanzines covering bands, shows, and subtopics. Maybe the author is into a certain label, straightedge, or hardcore from a certain town. The zine would be laser focused on that and might include interviews with bands, articles about upcoming albums, and/or have pictures. Hardcore zines often will include music too. Decibel Magazine has a flexidisc in every issue. The
Moment of Truth Vol 3 zine run by Ricky Singh of
Backtrack included a
mixtape with printed lyrics and explanations of the songs. I suppose what really kicked my ass into gear was watching this
documentary on Judge and how they released their demo in a zine.
Besides hardcore zines, the metal and hardcore live music scenes are a huge influence. I go to a lot of shows a year. I average about 20 a year and I could go to more but annoying things like me being tired and work get in the way. I almost exclusively go to metal and hardcore shows; a lot of local hardcore too. It helps I know some of the promoters around town so I hear about the basement shows and really small unknown venues. And I guess I should also mention I pay about $15 on average for a show so it’s easy to hit a ton. If you don’t know what a hardcore show is like, check this out.
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No Warning – 4/10/15
The video is an amazing segue into
hate5six and the legend that is Sunny Singh. This beautiful man goes to shows up and down the east coast and even all over the USA to tape hardcore shows for his site. He publishes the videos on his site for free. And he’s dedicated; he posts a lot of videos and even filmed an entire Mindset set after getting accidently punched. It’s a really good way to check out lesser-known hardcore bands and experience them live; which is the best way to experience hardcore.
So why am I talking so much about Sunny? Right when I started Tactile,
hate5six put on a retrospective event where Sunny talked about his seven years of running the site….for free. So when I decided to run Tactile for free, I contacted him to talk about doing things DIY and for free. It gave me a lot of insight into how I wanted to run the zine. Plus I like the manifesto a lot.
All right, now that we’ve read far too much about my tastes in music, let’s talk about fashion and design. If you didn’t notice already the Futura Italic font is a close representative to the Futura Heavy Oblique font made famous by a certain skateshop on Lafayette street in New York City. I think it’s fascinating how easily a fashion label or brand can make a little image or just words iconic. Companies like Bape, Supreme, and Carhartt have a certain aesthetic that I think is really cool; even if I can’t support the company and clothes for other reasons. I now find myself cruising malls and stores looking for certain typography or imagery that grabs my attention so that I can turn that into something usable for the zine.
Along the lines of imagery, I also find myself really drawing to graffiti. I adore HipsterPunks' and kudosgodspeed's handstyles. And I love Sen4, Gary Stranger, Klops, and Aper.
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Klops Fresh Paint #2
If you’ve seen the stickers, you may have already figured out that I’m a huge fan of retro video games. I’m talking like NES, SNES, N64, Turbografx, Neo-Geo MVS, Game Boy Advanced, etc etc. All of the 8 bit video game stickers are sprites from various video games I love or have loved in the past. A lot of them my family recognizes as games we grew up playing. I love the look and am obsessed with that part of my childhood.
Finally, this community inspires me. So many people have reached out or were open to helping with the artwork. BlueNalgene, inanis, booper, hydrospell, coconut, hipsterpunks, and others have contributed to the zine’s look and I’m really grateful for that. I’m bad at Photoshop and worse at drawing so just to have people who are interested enough to spend time drawing for me is a blessing. And if you see this and somehow feel inspired to draw or contribute some words or pictures….really if you wanna help out, just contact me. We’ll make it happen.
