dddd and the new new digi-luddism

February 15, 2010 at 10:03 pm | Posted in no audience underground, not bloody music | 2 Comments
Tags: dddd, no audience underground

Holy crap!  Now there’s something I wasn’t really expecting to see: DDDD fanzine has a website!  Those who are familiar with the champions of new luddism will share my astonishment and pleasure in finding it.  Those not in the know will need the following primer:

I don’t know how long it was published for, or how many issues it ran to (though it was more than 70), but I do know that DDDD, defunct in paper form, was a PROPER fanzine.  That is: written by two people (Simon and Pippa?) on a manual typewriter, then chopped up, stuck over a vandalised pop culture collage, photocopied, stapled and sent in the post curled up into a tube.

The writing is a tumbling torrent interspersed with moments of beauty and poignancy whenever they managed to grab hold of something on the cliff-face, slow the fall for a second and catch a breath.  This unselfconscious technique was used to spin, say, an article on the etiquette of car boot sales into a nihilistic tirade of misanthropy before veering, via a hairpin u-turn, into a blissed-out account of how Joni Mitchell kissed it all better.  None of this was done with a punk-rock sneer and cynicism was almost wholly absent.  All of it, even the contradictory stuff, was absolutely heartfelt.  It read as a genuine attempt to reject a world both terrifying and (even worse) boring and build something better instead…

They also did interviews, reviews and acted as a kind of organ for the no-audience underground.  They were always very kind about my efforts.  Simon once drove the length of the country from DDDD HQ (the village of Minstead in Hampshire) to Newcastle to see a gig put on by Lee ‘Culver’ Stokoe featuring me, Lee, Lee’s friend whose name I’ve forgotten, and Julian Bradley (then of Vibracathedral Orchestra, as well as many brilliant solo projects).  Afterwards he gave me, Julian and my then-girlfriend Verity a lift all the way to Leeds on his way back down South.  Truly a giant amongst men.

Here is an interview I did with them back in late 2001 which was printed early 2002.  The font is small but the scans (as A3 pdfs) are good quality so blow ’em up and you can read it just fine.  I’m putting this up without reading it because if I did I would surely censor my 9-years-ago-self:

DDDD interview 1, DDDD interview 2, DDDD interview 3

Anyway, part of their world view was a virulent new luddism which frowned suspiciously on any technological advances after the invention of the photocopier.  It was especially scornful of the internet.  In fact, my first experience of DDDD was a glowing review of my first FFR cdrs that ended with a severe grump because, at the time, I only included an email address on the packaging.  As you can imagine, given this position, finding their online presence (cheers for the tip-off Lee) was a pleasant surprise.  They have managed to keep the look and attitude of the paper zine and have embraced the near-instantness that blogging can allow, opting to do less more often.  The layout takes a bit of getting used to but it is less dense than it used to be and, as Simon says, all you need to do is start at the top and read down to the bottom. Please do so.