a craft ale with the bald heads of noise! the barrel nut issue #12!

February 23, 2015 at 12:58 pm | Posted in art, no audience underground, not bloody music | Leave a comment
Tags: collage, cut-ups, dada, foldhead, gary simmons, hiroshima yeah!, joe murray, mark ritchie, michael clough, paul walsh, photocopier art, posset, scanner art, visual art, zanntone, zines

Never one to miss an opportunity for collage fun, I spent the afternoon of a recent sick day coughing phlegm all over my cutting board (hey, at least I didn’t need a glue stick!) whilst assembling the dozenth issue of RFM’s atomic microzine.  Glowingly described as a…

…momentary distraction from the hellish nothingness of the vortex…

…by Pyrrhic Victories magazine, previous editions of The Barrel Nut adorn the finest notice boards, untidy bedside zine piles and dustbins of the worldwide no-audience underground.

Should you not know what I’m barking about, or be overwhelmed by the self-indulgent whimsy of the preceding paragraph, here is a repeat of the usual explanatory bumpf:

The Barrel Nut is 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 may 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.

So now you know.  #12, the second DOUBLE-SIDED issue, features cover dada idiocy from yours truly (reproduced way larger than life and in glorious colour above), more of Michael Clough’s eerie ‘totem’ works – the scanner art equivalent of EVP recordings, a photo-memory of Summer boozing from everyone’s favourite drunken uncle Paul Walsh, some Zennish cut up hoodoo from RFM’s own Joe Murray and a pair of pieces by Gary Simmons and Mark Ritchie, the brothers responsible for Hiroshima Yeah! Gary gives us a microbial starscape of indeterminate origin and Mark entertains with an uplifting ophthalmic DIY collage. Unfold and turn over for a full page ‘Bald Heads of Noise’ cartoon by Mark Wharton of Idwal Fisher in which the notion of the no-audience underground is skewered hilariously in six panels. Unmissable.

Contributor and subscriber copies will be in the post ‘in due course’.  For those who can’t wait, or don’t mind a bit of salt-and-shake style DIY, then print out your own from the links below:

The Barrel Nut issue #12 FRONT as a pdf file

The Barrel Nut issue #12 BACK as a pdf file

The Barrel Nut issue #12 FRONT as a jpeg file

The Barrel Nut issue #12 BACK as a jpeg file

Artwork for future issues always welcome – please feel free to drop me a line.