christmas card from a blogger in chapel allerton: finally, the barrel nut #11!

December 4, 2014 at 10:49 am | Posted in art, no audience underground, not bloody music | Leave a comment
Tags: collage, copier art, cut-ups, dada, dr. adolf steg, gary simmons, hiroshima yeah!, joe murray, mark ritchie, michael clough, no audience underground, posset, scanner art, text score, the barrel nut, visual art, yol, zines

Bloody hell, it has been nearly six months since the last issue dropped! Bet you thought I’d discretely shoved this barmy little project down the back of the sofa. Well, I could make up a whimsical nonsense story to account for the delay (erm… lost on a yeti hunt? Nope – used that one) but the sad fact is that I’ve just been busy with other things. Still, who can resist the zen calm to be found in folding a bunch of these zines at the kitchen table? Not me. Also, I thought it might be nice to do something special seeing as it is the fifth anniversary of RFM this month so not only does a shiny new issue appear but, for the first time, it is DOUBLE SIDED. Woo!

Wrapped in the usual dada silliness by your truly you will find cut-up collage by RFM’s own Joe Murray and Hiroshima Yeah!’s Mark Ritchie (big themes: space, god, death, n’ that) and proper art that looks like a Bauhaus photographic experiment by Mark’s co-writer Gary Simmons, plus an indication of his financial situation and a terminal film still from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Barrel Nut regular Yol praises King Coffee on the tomb wall and offers sage personal advice in the form of one of his rolling text scores/typewriter screeds. Dr. Adolf Steg of (the already much missed) Spon offers some vaguely dermatological doodling with newspaper headline addenda and finally Michael Clough gets an unheard of four-panel spread for an example of his unnerving scanner art ‘totems’ series. It is top notch stuff.

Should you be a recent convert to this blog and thus have no idea what I am talking about, here’s a repeat of the basics:

The Barrel Nut is a microzine – a single sheet of A4 paper cleverly folded to make an eight panel (per side), A7 pamphlet. Paper copies will be distributed to anyone who wants one, or who has expressed an interest in the past. I’ll bring some to gigs I attend and a bunch will be passed around by those with a similar love of the post.

Should you be so inclined then you are very welcome to download and print out your own. Links to the latest issue in jpeg and pdf formats are below (you’ll need to trim the print-out down one edge to make it fold properly). Some more context, assembly instructions and previous issues can be found on The Barrel Nut’s own page (tabbed above).

Should you wish to contribute artwork then I would be very grateful indeed. Submissions need to look OK when reproduced as a black and white photocopy and be 7cm by 10cm in size (or scalable to roughly those dimensions). Good quality scans attached to an email are fine, originals sent in the post ideal. Please get in touch.

All contributors should have their copies by now, it was available to pick up at the gig last week and a bunch more will have been distributed with the latest issue of Hiroshima Yeah! Subscriber copies will be in the post soonish – consider it a Christmas card from the RFM family. Contributions still always welcome – if you like this little distraction then please feel free to send me something. More will follow in the fresh New Year.

The Barrel Nut issue #11 FRONT as a pdf file

The Barrel Nut issue #11 BACK as a pdf file

The Barrel Nut issue #11 FRONT as a jpeg file

The Barrel Nut issue #11 BACK as a jpeg file