I’m very pleased to announce the launch of the new Secret City Records website. This amazing Montreal-based independent record label hosts a small but incredibly talented roster of artists including Patrick Watson, The Go! Team and Plants and Animals. The site design and build was the result of a fruitful collaboration between LOKi design and Delmarr, featuring some very tight css scripting by Chris Desjardins.

We’re still working out a few kinks and getting all the content in place, but please check it out and let us know what you think. Welcome to our little corner of the web, your ears and eyes will thank you…

Mentioned previously on this blog, Oubliette’s cute and sinister skull keychains/magnets are now available through the interweb on the amazing craft site etsy.com. They make the perfect end of winter gift, so please visit her shop and support the indy crafts revolution.

At the Musicians are Cowards event, John and I were pleased to give an interview for The Wednesday Morning after, a current affairs show broadcast on ckut 90.3 FM. Our interviewer Mike had some great, pointed questions, and we hope you’ll find our answers about design, activism, etc. interesting, educational, or at the very least, entertaining.

Unfortunately, the last few minutes of the interview are really garbled. I’m not sure if they were trying to enact our ideas of dissonant dialogue or if it was a technical foible. Nonetheless…

Download the show here (.mp3) or Stream it (.m3u). Our interview starts 38 minutes in, shortly after Democracy Now (is that crazy or what?). I love you Amy Goodman!

Parlovr getting the show started off right!

Many, many, many thanks to everyone involved that helped make last weekend’s launch party such an amazing success. We’d especially like to extend our gratitude to Amber Goodwyn who organised the event for us, the bands who gave generously of their time and talent, Flames!, Parlovr, and The American Devices, our gracious hosts, Yan, Carlos and David of lab.synthese, and Cat and Lindsay for their love, support and tireless work at the door.

Thanks of course to everyone that turned out, and to those that participated in the art making. The atmosphere was amazing, achieving such a perfect balance between a rock show, art happening and intimate house party. We really had a great time, and I think the event itself was a perfect expression of what we’re trying to do with the zine.

Photos after the jump…

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John and Kevin at lab.synthèse

FMTM Issue Nine and this weekend’s launch party are mentioned in both the Mirror and the Hour this week! We wanted to use the above pic for our press coverage, but it looks like they preferred the cover design to our ugly mugs…

With much help and encouragement from the spectacular Amber Goodwyn, the hospitality of Yan Basque of/and Lab.synthese, and the generosity of the (kick-ass) bands Flames!, Parlovr and American Devices, the much-anticipated launch of Four Minutes to Midnight Issue 9 will be taking place on Saturday, January 26th.

More than an ordinary rock show, the launch of Issue 9 will also act as the starting point for issue 10, with the audience invited to participate in a variety of collaborative acts of art-making. The writing on the wall, so to speak…

Hope to see you there!

Flames! | Parlovr | American Devices

Lab.synthese

PS. Credit for the event’s title is due to A Silver Mt. Zion‘s beautiful song “Triumph of our tired eyes”.

Despite the insane weather outside, Cat and I spent the weekend tabling at the Hot Cakes Craft Fair. Lots of very interesting stuff, friendly people and again, like expozine, a really great vibe. Cat’s crafts did very well and we picked up some unique Christmas gifts for everyone.

Without a doubt, my fave of the weekend, Alex’s disease-ridden preserved plushes; “The Cutest Bunch of Sinister Anywhere!”

PS. The secret is out! We finally received issue nine! We’re working on an amazing launch in January, details soon…

Lickety Split Issue 5 cover (designed by Sherwin Tiga)

Better late than never! The Expozine weekend was great, we sold a bunch of copies of Issue 8 alongside Cat’s Skull keychains and worked hard to pimp the forthcoming issue. We also picked up a ton of zines, books and stuff in general which we’re still slowly working through.

It was very nice to see Amber there peddling her smut (what a beautiful cover!). And after hearing our sob story, she’s kindly offered to help us with our launch. Which is great news, because this girl knows how to throw a party…

It was also really great to be tabling next to Dave at Cumulus Press. He’s just released Extraction, a great comix journalism book on canadian mining. He’ll also soon be releasing Picture This!, an extensive collection of political posters from Quebec featuring a poster and a chapter intro by yours truly!

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Unfortunately, due to a printing mishap, we were one of the 2% at Expozine this year who didn’t manage to get their title out for the event. We were there yesterday nonetheless, hawking Issue 8 and a few other wares. Over the course of the day my depression about not getting Issue 9 out transformed into acceptance, then contenment at how amazing this event is and how many great zinesters and cultural producers were in attendance. A great vibe.

We’ll be there again today, and we hope to see you there. Later, I’ll be writing a short recap about all the stuff that drew my eye (and there’s plenty!) and we’ll be planning an extra-big launch for Issue 9 when it does come out to make up for our little slip-up. Stay tuned…