Issue 100 - Thom Yorke

Thom Yorke

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Crack Magazine | Issue 100

Thom Yorke:

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Contents

Jehnny Beth and Joe Talbot:

Nina Kraviz and James Murphy:

34 44

crackmagazine.net

54

Wolfgang Tillmans:

62

68

Editor's Letter – p.31 On the road – p.82

The Oral History of Crack Magazine 76

Recommended – p.32

Crack Magazine Time Capsule – p.86

Dear Marie: Agony Aunt – p.100

CONTENTS

Little Simz and Novelist:

NACHTDIGITAL Akiram en Aleksi Perälä Atom TM & Tobias Batu Credit 00 Dasha Rush David Cornelissen Deena Abdelwahed DVS1 Gerd Janson Good News Helena Hauff Inigo Kennedy Janosch Job Jobse Lux Manamana Marie Davidson Miasto, Masa, Maszyna Olivia Ossia Paquita Gordon Perm Polo Powder Robag Wruhme Shed So Sonja Moonear Steffen Bennemann Vai Vlada Vril Wata Igarashi Woody YPY

AUGUST 02-04 2019

POHODA FESTIVAL 11th 13th JULY 2019 AIRPORT TRENCIN SLOVAKIA

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THE ROOTS SKEPTA THE 1975 CHARLOTTE GAINSBOURG MAC DEMARCO MURA MASA LIANNE LA HAVAS DEATH GRIPS MICHAEL KIWANUKA VITALIC THE ROOTS

E KK LY

LI

AMBIENT FLOOR Adel Akram Brenz Hold Grand River Jing Michelson Nika Son Nina Oceanic Onetake Rachel Lyn Sa Pa

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ANKALI & FRIENDS Diane Barbé em ju es aj si Eva Porating Exhausted Modern fabian Favor & Protection fleika Hoff Møreti OGJ/Torr Psj Raphael Kosmos Sinnan St. Jakob

MORGAN HERITAGE JEFF MILLS SOFI TUKKER VERONICA VASICKA LOLA MARSH DIMENSION AMADOU & MARIAM & THE BLIND BOYS OF ALABAMA BABA ZULA CALYPSO ROSE IC3PEAK SHORTPARIS SUDAN ARCHIVES VIAGRA BOYS DREAM WIFE TROJAN SOUND SYSTEM NOGA EREZ DONNY BENÉT SHOW ME THE BODY BAZZOOKAS EMMANUEL JAL & NYARUACH

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May 2019

Crack Magazine Was Made Using

Crack Magazine has reached a milestone. So we’d like to put the spotlight on us for a second. (What can I say? We love attention.)

Kevin Abstract Georgia Juvenile Back That Azz Up Thom Yorke The Eraser Little Simz 101 FM Novelist Afro pick Robyn Got Her Own Thing From Sweden (Kindness Remix) IDLES Mother Savages Husbands LCD Soundsystem You Wanted a Hit DJ Rashad Double Cup OutKast Prototype Julia Jacklin Don’t Know How To Keep Loving You Crumb Nina Vampire Weekend Unbearably White

Thom Yorke shot exclusively for Crack Magazine by Clementine Schneidermann in London, April 2019

We never give away our secrets. But if there is an invisible thread between all 100 issues, it’s probably persistence. Our continued independence is a double-edged sword, offering an exhilarating freedom alongside practical pitfalls. While our readership continues to grow internationally in print and online, we’re still putting together a magazine with our mates and distributing most of them by hand, and we’ve hustled hard to succeed within our budgets. Over the years, we’ve also relentlessly, tirelessly hassled certain publicists whenever we got a whiff of activity from artists on our dream hit list.

If Björk or Aphex Twin so much as sneezed, their team would hear from us. We felt triumphant everytime we managed to snag one, and grateful they trusted us to represent them.

For Issue 100, we got (some of) the gang back together. As a handful of former cover stars pair up in conversation – Nina Kraviz and James Murphy, Jehnny Beth and Joe Talbot, Novelist and Little Simz – they voice the unspoken connections between genres, generations and attitudes that have travelled with us along the way. Staff members past and present indulge in even more nostalgia for our Oral History, while a similar sense of community is championed by Wolfgang Tillmans, whose exclusive editorial speaks to the need for European unity. It reflects another constant of our lifespan, that many of the artists we feature are trying to navigate these challenging times politically and socially. So it feels particularly powerful that Thom Yorke – who has been etched into our hit list since day one – reveals how his new work is a response to our anxious world for our 100th cover story, speaking to the magazine’s co-founder.

This issue you’re holding feels special to us. So read it. Share it. Let it take up space on a coffee table somewhere. And if you’re picking us up for the first time in New York, you should know we think that’s pretty fucking exciting. As we look ahead to the next chapter, this goes out to everyone who’s helped us to this point. I’d like to thank Tom and Jake and former Editors Geraint Davies and Davy Reed, whose insane persistence and passion paved the way. And to all the contributors, readers and artists who’ve come into contact with us so far, thanks for putting your faith in our scrappy magazine from Bristol.

We’ve surprised ourselves.

Anna Tehabsim, Editor

crackmagazine.net

Héctor Lavoe La Murga

In its genesis, the magazine felt pretty singular. An angsty misfit with an attention-grabbing name, first created in a bedroom in Bristol by best mates Jake Applebee and Thomas Frost. Self-published monthly on newspaper, later wrapped in glossy covers, distributed by its staff, and always free. Each issue has been a mixed bag of bands, DJs, rappers, visual artists, radical thinkers, the odd pop star or true great; people with a sense of shared purpose. Fully independent and truly inexperienced, in the beginning we operated from the periphery of the established publishing industry. Over time, we’ve nudged a little closer to it. As we spread across continents and newsfeeds on the journey to this, our 100th issue, one question, and maybe a hint of surprise, followed us around: how do you guys survive?

EDITORIAL

FKA twigs Cellophane

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Issue 100

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Sun Ra Arkestra Union Chapel 24 May

Recommended

GAIKA Electrowerkz 23 May

O ur g ui d e to wh at's goi n g on i n y ou r c i ty

Lizzo O2 Forum Kentish Town 27 May Parklife Festival Cardi B, Solange, Helena Hauff Heaton Park, Manchester 8-9 June

Melt! Festival Bon Iver, A$AP Rocky, Jorja Smith Ferropolis, Germany 19-21 July By now, Melt! Festival is the stuff of legend. It takes place in the shadows of ginormous, earth-eating pieces of machinery, and it has a dancefloor that never closes.

The Sleepless Floor is infamous as the black sheep of the Melt! family, sucking in ravers and DJs for absurd periods of time and spitting them directly back into the reality of the working week sometime on Monday.

Certified Bristol favourite and Peach Discs boss Shanti Celeste is pumping good vibes only with her fun-loving blend of house and techno, while fellow friend and NTS partner Peach brings her seamless blends to the decks. In need of some nourishment after the rave? Catch London up and comer Nilüfer Yanya’s wistful guitar pop – it’ll bring you back in no time.

Sitting peacefully on the northern edges of Manchester, Heaton Park is jolted to life for the arrival of Parklife Festival. Known for offering fully stacked line-ups spanning across all genres, it’s safe to say that this year they have knocked it clean out of the park. Head to the main stage for a rap cocktail of Cardi B, Migos, Dave, Nas and Earl Sweatshirt, where there won’t be a still body in sight. Or keep things classy and catch Solange’s spellbinding post-When I Get Home show. For those looking for a more high key affair, opt for the angular techno sounds of Daniel Avery and Hessle Audio boss Ben UFO going back-to-back with Call Super. The best news? You don’t even have to camp. You’re welcome.

Sónar Barcelona Yaeji, Rosalía, LCD Soundsystem Fira Montjuïc, Barcelona 18-20 July Over the last 25 years, Sónar has successfully established itself as one of Europe’s most forward-facing festivals, inspiring promoters across the world to merge music with digital art and technology. And with newer editions in Reykjavik, Istanbul and Hong Kong, they’re still leading the charge. This year, the Sónar by Day programme offers the curious sounds of Yaeji, Laurel Halo, Jenny Hval, jazz artist Emma Jean-Thackray, UK rappers Little Simz and IAMDDB and a back-to-back set from Mumdance and DJ Stingray.

As we’ve come to expect, the evening line-ups are absolutely stacked. LCD Soundsystem, Bad Bunny, Helena Hauff, Thom Yorke and Gorillaz are some of the many acts who will soundtrack the warm summer nights.

Project Pablo Phonox 24 May

Murlo EartH 21 May

Tierra Whack Omeara 3 June

Pickle Factory x Timedance Batu, Deena Abdelwahed, Metrist Pickle Factory 11 May

Violet FOLD 10 May

Omar Souleyman XOYO 10 May

Croatian Amor Studio 9294 10 May Nuits Sonores James Blake, Laurent Garnier, Model 500 Lyon, France 29 May-2 June

Paula Temple Village Underground 17 May

EVENTS

Beloved Lyon festival Nuits Sonores has once again passed the curatorial baton to four trusted artists. Covering all shades of house and techno, Bonobo, Peggy Gou, Maceo Plex and Lena Willikens have used the opportunity to dig deep. Bonobo taps up Shanti Celeste and Nubya Garcia, Peggy Gou spotlights Roi Perez and Yu Su, Maceo Plex is routing for Radioactive Man and Ectomorph, while Lena Willikens gets trippy with Vladimir Ivkovic, Donato Dozzy and Elena Colombi. A congregation of your favourite DJ’s favourite DJs.

One of the UK’s most forwardthinking record labels teams up once again with one of the UK’s most forward-thinking venues for a fifth night of weirdo club smashers. A Pickle Factory old hand by this point, Timedance boss Batu serves up a couple of first-timers in the shape of Brighton’s Metrist and occasional Fever Ray collaborator Deena Abdelwahed. Expect abstruse, brain-frying dance music of the highest order.

Big Joanie The Lexington 12 May

033 Drugdealer The Dome 15 May

Better Oblivion Community Center O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire 11 May Sherelle b2b Fixate Patterns, Brighton 31 May

Liz Phair Islington Assembly Hall 4 June

Men I Trust Village Underground 14 May

‘160’ is a number you’re going to hear a lot more of in the coming months. Something of a catch-all term for club music that takes in everything from juke to jungle, ghetto-tech to dnb and trap to acid, its common denominator, besides tempo, is that it completely levels clubs. Just check out Sherelle’s recent Boiler Room for proof. That set featured at least five Fixate productions, so it makes sense that the two of them join forces down on the Brighton coast for an absolute face-melter of a session.

Field Day Jorja Smith, Death Grips, Todd Terje The Drumsheds, Meridian Water, London 7-8 June

Terraforma Laurie Anderson, RP Boo, Mica Levi Villa Arconati, Milan 5-7 July

Inner City Electronic Nina Kraviz, Ben UFO, Shanti Celeste Various venues, Leeds 1-2 June Returning for a second year, Leeds dance music festival Inner City Electronic has pulled out all the stops. Spread across 11 venues dotted around the city, the all-dayer lines up some choice faves: Nina Kraviz, Ben UFO, DJ Stingray, Willow, Motor City Drum Ensemble and more. Here you can also attend music and technology talks, workshops, masterclasses and art installations traversing the sub-genres of dance music, all for the very affordable price of £40. It’s good up North.

Between The Lines Corsica Studios 16-17 May

Since launching in 2014, Terraforma has continued to stand out in a sea of lookalike festivals. It’s novel approach to programming (no two artists play at the same time), curation and location have made it a must-go for a large contingent of electronic music fans. 2019 looks set to continue that trend. This year’s boon booking comes with avant-garde artist and composer Laurie Anderson, who will present her classic piece The Language of the Future. Other highlights include Lorenzo Senni’s “trance music in slow motion” live project STARGATE and some highoctane club sounds from reborn Detroit legend DJ Stingray. Oh, and all of this is taking place in the palatial surroundings of the Villa Arconati. What’s not to love?

Desiigner O2 Forum Kentish Town 10 May

That these two labels would get together for a night at XOYO makes a ton of sense.

Both have been pushing knife-edge club sounds for close to a decade, and while they both approach the dance from slightly different angles, they share a passionate desire to push party music into new and unexplored territories by assimilating a host of genres into something uniquely their own. We’d recommend getting down early as this one’s going to reach wild heights in record time.

Best Kept Secret Bon Iver, Christine and the Queens, Kraftwerk Hilvarenbeek, The Netherlands 31 May–2 June For 2019, Best Kept Secret plonks itself back on the grass of the Beekse Bergen safari park. One of 2019’s hottest acts, Christine and the Queens, headline alongside one of 1970’s hottest, Kraftwerk, back touring it up in rebooted 3D form. Elsewhere, whether you fancy belting out one of pop’s most ubiquitous tunes (Carly Rae-Jepsen), opening up a pit of the electronic kind (Death Grips, Giant Swan) or keeping it horizontal in the sun (Toro Y Moi, Cate Le Bon), you won’t be at a loss for vibes of all kinds.

Bad Gyal Studio 9294 11 May

Mariah Carey Royal Albert Hall 27 May

EVENTS

Taking place in and around London’s latest enorma-venue venture from the team behind Printworks, Field Day heading to its new home north of the river for another stellar edition. This year the event stretches out by the wilds of Tottenham Marshes, where you can get down to a solid day and night of expertly curated musical variety. As has been the case for the last few years, we’re honoured to be hosting our Crack Magazine stage featuring some of our very favourite acts. Put your arm around a mate during Deerhunter’s loved-up indie set, get stuck into the eccentric world of Julia Holter, or open up a massive pit to the harsh experimental sounds of California duo Death Grips. Elsewhere across the line-up, Montreal producer Marie Davidson treats us to an electrifying live show, Earl Sweatshirt returns for a nurturing set of his sleepy rap, and Skepta makes a long-awaited hometown appearance. Impressive, right?

See you down the front.

Night Slugs vs. Príncipe XOYO 17 May

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Daydream Nation

EVENTS

Ahead of his next album, Thom Yorke calls for a shock to the system

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Words: Thomas Frost Photography: Clementine Schneidermann Producer: Kate Edmunds for Truro Productions Styling: Charlotte James Styling Assistant: SK Cheng Hair: Mark Francome Painter Hair Assistant: Kirsten Bassett

036 At the Barbican gallery and estate, one of London’s most iconic slabs of concrete, Thom Yorke is in a reflective mood. “Scott Walker invited us to play once for his Meltdown,” he tells us. It’s a poignant moment. The groundbreaking singer and auteur passed away in March aged 76, leaving a void in experimental music.

With dark balladry that exposes the fragility of the human experience, both Walker and Yorke opened new worlds.

The similarities didn’t go unnoticed.

Yorke once jokingly described Creep as the band’s 'Scott Walker song’ after it was initially dismissed by producers who mistakenly thought it was a Scott Walker cover. In 2006, Walker was quoted saying: “Radiohead are fabulous. If I could have it all again and be in a band, that’s the kind of band I’d like to have been in.”

Of Walker’s death, Yorke tweeted, “he was a huge influence on Radiohead and myself, showing me how I could use my voice and words.” If part of Walker’s enduring legacy was to impact the use of Thom Yorke’s voice, we arrive at a pertinent time.

On a forthcoming solo album, the details of which are kept close for now, Yorke tells anxiety-ridden tales of contemporary claustrophobia across layers of electronic fuzz and deconstructed noise, his voice in many guises taking centre stage.

With its themes of inner city pressure, reflecting on the record enclosed by the Barbican's 400-foot high tower blocks today feels fitting. “It’s very J.G. Ballard,” Yorke admits. (In Ballard’s 1975 novel High Rise an apocalyptic tower block drives its inhabitants insane.) As with most of Yorke’s creative output, the record treads along a line of relative instability. While he speaks of a period of “dreadful writers block” and “incredible bouts of anxiety” over the last two years, this new project is Yorke as you want him – living out the darker aspects of the human condition and holding a torch up to the prevailing mood.

Despite the existential obstacles, Yorke

has remained remarkably focused in the last 18 months. Suspiria, his first film score, took his sound into eerie new territory for Luca Guadagnino’s 2018 remake of the cult Italian horror film. With his Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes show, he continued to cement his identity as a solo performer, putting his body at the centre of the stage. Ten days before we meet, he performed classical compositions with sisters and acclaimed pianists Katia and Marielle Labèque as the Minimalist Dream House band at a sold-out show at the Barbican.

Today, his tone is hushed and he seems relaxed. In our peaceful surrounding encased by Brutalist architecture, the green foliage of the tiered conservatory provides beauty among the bleakness. Halfway through our interview his daughter bangs on the window. Yorke pulls a face at her and throws her a peace sign.

Despite the intense subject matter, there’s a consistent playfulness to our conversation, something that’s been mirrored throughout his work.

Existing in a world where constraint is considered a challenge, Yorke has spent the past 30 years testing the preconceptions of what is expected of him, wrong-footing everyone along the way. In a rare interview, Yorke shares his dreams, reality and the dystopian visions behind his new album.

You've just completed a new solo record, performed your first classical piece and scored a soundtrack. How do you explain this rich creative burst you seem to be in at the moment?

Wow. Well I think I'd look at it in a different way, because things slowed down for a while and I'm happy I can work again and come back into focus.

I seemed to spend a lot of time in my basement, in the studio for two years, and suddenly everything that was kicking around in there is starting to come out.

It seems like you’ve ticked off so many boxes in the last 12 months alone.

It really wasn't meant to be. The thing with Katia and Marielle Labèque, the piano piece, to me it started as a joke.

They were asking me, 'You should write some piano music for us,’ and I'm like, 'Hah hah, I guess. I can’t read music.’

Then obviously I realised that that wasn’t a prerequisite.

When suddenly I found myself saying yes to doing a film score and writing music for piano, I realised that it's actually not that different to the way I've learnt to use a computer. It was the weirdest feeling building something on the laptop and handing it over to these two incredible musicians. The work was based on a few ideas of using probability and arpeggiators, a very electronic state of mind, and suddenly they’re playing it like it's a piece by Schumann or Ravel!

“Sometimes I don’t even recognise myself in some of the music I made, which is always what I'm looking for, I guess” Was there a similar feeling with what you achieved on Suspiria?

That was such an insane process. I was so wildly out of my depth. I liked the fact that it gave me a set of things to do, like write for a string quartet and write for a choir. Things that I never would’ve imagined. Sometimes I don’t even recognise myself in some of the music I made, which is always what I'm looking for, I guess.

037 EVENTS

Suit: Undercover T-shirt: Vintage PIL Sunglasses: Acne

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EVENTS

You have to come to something with a beginner’s mind. Once you’ve learned to use a drum machine, or learned to write in a particular way, the temptation is to go back there, because you know it works. But the point is, if you’ve discovered it works, it no longer works.

Look at Aphex Twin. He does similar things to me but uses machinery. Once he’s gone through a phase of going back to an old sequencer, he’s done with it, he's moved on.

This album feels like the natural progression of your electronic exploration over the last 20 years.

It’s certainly heavy. It’s big. We watched Flying Lotus in the early years on tour with us, and we watched him with his live set-up performing all his loops and thought, 'Well that’s interesting,’ because it’s a live performance, he’s improvising. We suddenly realised this is a new way to write stuff. I would send [Nigel Godrich] completely unfinished, sprawling tracks and he would focus in on the bits and pieces that he thought would work, build them up into samples and loops, and then throw them back at me, where I would start writing vocals.

Did these compositions feel as daring as anything you’ve tried with Radiohead?

At the beginning it was terrifying. I was hiding behind the decks, pretending to sort of DJ, but it’s not like that because I’m also singing and occasionally playing guitar. There was a bit of a eureka moment at one show we did in Paris where there was a stage in front [of me] and I thought, 'Oh fuck this,’ and I just ended up using the stage [to dance].

When you don't have a band playing you come at it from a different point of view. You start off basically feeling

Left: Shirt: Lou Dalton Trousers: Undercover Right: Jacket: Shiukai Alfie and Sam Hughes Shirt: Jan-Jan Van Essche Trousers: Undercover Shoes: Churches

Or performance art.

What my partner has taught me as a theatre actress is that she can’t do what she does if she isn’t completely in the moment. It’s so obvious when you’re not. But also I’ve got to think about the machinery cues. I’ve got to run back to the desk, turn the modular on, change the tempo on this tune, change the vocal loops, make sure to change the patch for the next synth sound, while I'm doing all that.

There is such contrast between your movements and the intense subject matters you’re singing about. It seems like you’re dancing and revelling in the grimness of the songs.

I really enjoy that. That’s the point where I think 'OK, I don’t think anyone else would be daring to do this right now.’ The thing I’ve always loved about watching John Lydon is the way he would revel in those moments where you’re like, 'Fuck.’ You and I both know what I’m talking about. In the music is something really, really dark, so I’m not going to stand here and be really dark, I’m going to move.

Have you tried to hold up a mirror to the prevailing existential mood on this record? There’s quite a dystopian feel to the record.

There is. Have you ever flown to Tokyo?

That jet lag is the definition of an existential crisis, every time. There was one night where I’d go to sleep, two hours later I’m absolutely wide awake and I just had these images… humans and rats changed places. A dream.

And as I came out, I woke up with this really strong set of images of girls in tottering heels, but they’re actually

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really exposed. Then you have to find a new way to just be there. The worst thing onstage is to feel self-conscious.

That’s where it all got a bit weird because suddenly it was like, 'Hang on, this is a bit more like theatre…’

rats and the human beings are in the drains. I had another one, these weird images of the city of London and all the skyscrapers are just shuffling along.

The dystopian thing is one part of it, yes, but for me, one of the big, prevailing things was a sense of anxiety. If you suffer from anxiety it manifests itself in unpredictable ways, some people have over-emotional reactions. [For] some people the roots of reality can just get pulled out, you don’t know what’s happening. Then eventually reality comes back. For some reason I thought a really good way of expressing anxiety creatively was in a dystopian environment. I had so many visual things going on at this point. Another one was where everybody was travelling to work but their bodies were telling them that they wouldn’t do it anymore. They were refusing to cooperate, so they were doing these involuntary movements.

If we’re touching on anxiety, let’s move onto wider issues.

Oh goodie.

How did you reconcile your need as an artist, your need to live a practical existence through touring and earning money, while living a sustainable lifestyle?

It doesn’t sit easy with me. I don't even like flying! I was really, really upset about it a few years ago. The amount of it, as well – if you only do a few shows, then people fly in. Which is way worse. But the wider thing for me is that we have spent a good 16-20 years pointing fingers at each other. These endless headlines like, 'Yes but what can you do.' Change your lightbulbs.

Blah blah blah. While the government is allowing licenses for fracking.

For example, just travelling in Europe, right? If you gave me the chance to travel on the train in Europe, in a comfortable way in a reasonable amount of time, I'd take it. Our system of travel is not geared up to support that; it’s geared up to support flying.

We subsidise aviation fuel and that's the only reason that it’s cheap to fly.

Every government massively subsidises the cost of fuel for planes. And then they tell you not to fly! It's just one example of how without government support we can't change the way that we operate, and that's not just here.

That’s everybody.

Do you feel like we're heading towards some kind of dystopian society and do you feel like that's reflected on the record?

It’s reflected on the record, definitely.

Whether we're actually heading for it? I think we've got to this crisis point

EVENTS

Do you feel a sense of artistic freedom working across these fields?

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“You couldn’t even imagine when I grew up, even in the midst of the darkest years of Thatcher, that we’d induce the entire country into a state of blind panic”

MUSIC

MUSIC

Coat, Sweater, Trousers: Undercover Boots: Feit x Too Good

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because we've allowed our social system and the way that society functions, the way that it looks at economic borders, travel, politics – we've allowed it to drift. It was my generation that did it. 'Cause we grew up with Thatcher and Blair and just went, 'Alright, well they're just a bunch of fucking losers living in a bubble.'

And in doing that, we left the losers in charge. Michael Gove as Prime Minister? Are you fucking kidding me?

I was a daydreaming, idealistic 20-year-old, 30-year-old. We were still refusing to accept that something more fundamental needed to change as a society and our trajectory was essentially unsustainable in a million different ways. That's why I find it wonderful seeing now, my son is studying politics, and to realise how much [the younger generation] consider it something important, to be lying in the streets and getting involved – thank fuck. Because our generation just gave up. We left losers in charge and assumed they're gonna do it right.

Maybe it’s dissipated now our glorious leader has stopped threatening us with crashing out [of the European Union]. But that build up, a purely manufactured build up, we’ll look back on that in 10 years – if we survive for that long – going, 'What the fuck!’ I mean, how on earth did we let these people manipulate us to the point where it was genuinely inducing a sense of anxiety and panic, eating at the fabric of society. For what? To appease a bunch of lunatics who will never be appeased. About 200 people plus their fascist friends? Crazy. You couldn’t even imagine when I grew up, even in the midst of the darkest years

have run out of choices and are acting.

Is there this looming inevitability of returning to Radiohead at some point?

We’re 50 now, most of us, so these things have to feel natural, they have to feel right. We haven’t scheduled this, this and this. I do really miss doing the shows. I felt like we got into a really good place when we did Glastonbury and toured South America.

I feel what you’ve recently achieved has in part been earned by what Radiohead did with Kid A and Amnesiac. I feel the fans will follow you anywhere now.

Do you feel like there's a compelling will to act now that we've hit that point?

The level of hypocrisy and complacency from the Tory government over the environment is shocking. When they first got in, I was involved in this law that got passed when I worked with Friends of the Earth, which committed the government to do a report every year to monitor the progress with climate change, with reducing CO2 emissions. The Tories basically said, 'We're going to fucking ignore that.'

For us to be angry like we are, I think it's fair enough. I’ve got a little 'thank you’ plaque up in my house for being involved and I look at that now and think, 'It's not worth the fucking paper it’s written on.' Everyone's always told us to use the system, to work within parliament and within government to change things. You make a law, they ignore it.

What do the current oppositional forces in our society provide you with as an artist in 2019?

MUSIC

I don’t see it as subject matter because you can’t write about it directly. What you can do is pick up on the sense of anger and fear and half-truths.

of Thatcher when she was having a war with the miners, that we’d induce the entire country into a state of blind panic. And then wake up one day and say, 'Oh yeah, we didn't mean that. Sorry.’

We’ll look back in 10 years and see how our current Prime Minister, more than any other PM ever, spent her entire time trying to circumvent the sovereignty of Parliament. I wrote one thing directly to Theresa May on Twitter one day, 'cause I couldn’t accept the fact that one human being believes she has the right to drive us off a cliff like that.

You’re very active on Twitter now.

Do you feel complicit in the problem of communicating messages on social media?

Yes, I do, but I don’t have a choice. I use it as a vehicle to retweet positive messages. You can only use the tools at your disposal to get the messages across. You’re left no choice. It’s the same thing that’s happening at the moment with Extinction Rebellion who

You know, it feels a bit like that time period now. Not all of them did, mind you. Some of them dropped off after OK Computer and some of them dropped off after The Bends, which was annoying as we hadn’t even got started yet!

When the record [Kid A] was done, I recently discovered this review in Melody Maker where we got absolutely destroyed by – what was his name?

Mark Beaumont. [On Kid A: “It is the sound of Thom Yorke ramming his head firmly up his own arse, hearing the rumblings of his intestinal wind and deciding to share it with the world.”]

I only read a couple lines of it and was like, 'Phwoar, that’s fucking harsh.’ I do remember the rest of the band sitting in the dressing room before we went on at one of the first tent shows in Newport in the pissing rain, and they were white as a sheet going, 'We’ve been absolutely trashed, we’ve been destroyed by blah blah blah.’ But at the same time, for me, there was a sense of, 'Great. Bring it on!’ We went

on stage and even though I was a bit like, 'What the hell,’ because honestly I didn’t expect such an extreme reaction, we were also like, 'Come on then, fucking come on then!’ There was a sense of a fight to convince people, which was actually really exciting.

Looking back at this point, how does nostalgia sit with you?

Recently, I’ve been going through the Kid A and Amnesiac stuff with the others. We were all a bit mad by the end of that period. We went through the whole crazy OK Computer period and I became catatonic at the end of it. Then we worked really hard for a year and a half with really not that many breaks and it was really intense. We didn’t know what the fuck we were doing, and I was refusing to rehearse anything!

Imagine, if you will, the chaos.

I recently found this box file of all the faxes I was sending and receiving from Stanley [Donwood, visual artist] about the artwork and they’re hilarious. I’ve got all this stuff, pages and pages and photocopies, that I just left strewn around the studios. Nigel picked them up and thought, 'We’d better keep these.’

I was so focused and at the same time angry, confused, paranoid.

I’m looking at all these people involved, going 'Who the fuck are these people?!’

We’re going to do something really cool with all that material.

My final question is: what makes you optimistic about the future?

I think we've reached a crisis point.

I hope it will be our final crisis point where we actually allow the anger and frustration that's inside of us to come to fruition. To speak. We need to wake the fuck up. Once we wrestle the wheel off the maniac – maniacs – trying to drive us off a cliff, I'm optimistic. I really do think right now we're seeing the people at the wheel for what they are and it's only going to snap us awake. I hope so.

Thom Yorke's next album is set for release via XL Recordings

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“I’ve been going through the Kid A and Amnesiac stuff with the others. We were all a bit mad by the end of that period.”

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GRIT PAIN LOVE MUSIC

Post-punk revivalists Jehnny Beth and Joe Talbot discuss strength, sex and elevating sincerity in an age of self-consciousness

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Words: Francis Blagburn Photography: Jack Johnstone Grooming: Paige Whiting

“As a post-punk band, there's a responsibility to embrace the macabre. The new school of thinking is that you can actually do that with compassion and inclusivity.”

Savages frontwoman Jehnny Beth has a reputation for seriousness. You wouldn’t know that though, on a grey Thursday in a photography studio in Haggerston, her chit chat brightening a room that crackles with occasional laughter. It’s only when she turns to the subject of music that her brow furrows slightly and the room seems to darken at the edges.

'Serious’ is an uninspiring word: dour, dull, deadening. Beth is anything but.

Savages’ 2016 record Adore Life is a splash of water on the face. When she steps on stage with the four-piece, she appears both all-powerful and wilfully vulnerable, a mode of engagement the band acknowledge in a written manifesto that accompanies Adore Life: “It’s about showing weakness to be strong.”

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Joe Talbot’s five-piece Bristol punk band Idles share Beth’s desire to find strength in vulnerability. Talbot’s lyrics smash conventional notions of masculinity all the while displaying the blunt rage associated with it (“I’m a real boy, boy and I’ll cry/ I love myself and I want to try”). The band’s sophomore record Joy as an Act of Resistance was a clarion call to anyone with grit in

their teeth, tackling issues like social dislocation, austerity and loneliness with the same unwavering stare Beth shows a Savages audience, often with a wry smile tucked somewhere in the back. Meeting for this conversation, the pair extract passion from pain.

Crack: One thing that unites your music is to fight against an oppressive world with love and compassion. Do you feel like people are crying out for that right now?

Jehnny Beth: For me there was a realisation on the second Savages record where I received so much love from the crowd and I felt I had a responsibility to answer that. I decided to write Fuckers. “Don’t let the fuckers get you down” was a phrase a friend gave to me when I felt down, and I thought, I’m going to give it to people as well. I don’t know about you, but when you’re on stage and you receive so much cheering and love...

Joe Talbot: It’s the best feeling in the world. I was crying on stage the other day just because I felt so carried.

There’s a point for both Jehnny and myself on stage where you give more

than you can contribute as an artist, you just let go and it’s like being caught. It’s like falling backwards and having people catch you, on a scale where you feel elated and part of something bigger than you understand.

With Savages’ music and the school of feeling we came from as a band – post-punk and noir, goth music, like Bauhaus – it’s a dark aesthetic and I think there's a responsibility to embrace the macabre. The new school of thinking is that you can actually do that with compassion and inclusivity.

That's what's needed at the moment, a

Joe Talbot

We've got to a point where a developed country with intelligent people in it want to leave the most beautiful, interesting and safe continent on the planet. That’s fucked and that’s because people are made to feel isolated and in danger.

JB: When I went to see Massive Attack on their last tour, Adam Curtis did all of the text. One of the lines towards the end of the show was, “There are no enemies.” I thought that was one of the most powerful lines one could say to an audience at the moment. Even on a personal level, not necessarily global, political... just to think that. You mentioned to me earlier that you were touring in America and the reaction of the audience was the same. It's really global, that feeling of loneliness.

There's a lot of lonely music out there as well, music that sounds lonely.

JT: With male, machismo-driven rock music there's the loneliness of “I,” of arrogance. And there's no need for arrogance at the moment, we’ve got nothing to be arrogant about. It’s not like you either have to be strong, stoic and not show your emotions, or soft, meek, compassionate and loving. The healthiest [way for a person to be] is to allow themselves to be fluid. Today is a new day, I'm a new person all the time.

Just allowing yourself to be vulnerable, allowing yourself to be strong. You can be compassionate without being a walkover. You can be a million things.

JB: I like what you said earlier, that on stage you're very vulnerable but it’s very safe. I stopped drinking alcohol four and a half years ago and I started crying on stage because I started to feel happiness as well as pain.

The alcohol had been stopping the happiness from happening. And when I stopped going on stage with alcohol, I suddenly felt so happy to the [point of] tears, and that’s very vulnerable, but that’s where I learned it: not from life, from the stage.

that you are the most amplified version of who you are.

JB: It's exactly like sex. I think sex without alcohol is much better.

JT: Yeah, not at first though, again. [they laugh] Crack: Does it frustrate you if people criticise post-punk by saying it’s too referential to its past?

JT: It's dog shit, fuck ’em. Everything’s derivative. You absorb what you love and you celebrate it. Derivative is not a dirty word, it just is to certain people.

Post-punk, if you want to see it as a structured language within music, and you talk that language, that dialect, and create something interesting out of it.

There's a million different languages out there and music is infinite. Every now and again someone coins something new, but in between it is loads of different frequencies of similar things that sound beautiful.

JB: It's really nice to say it like that, like jazz is a language. We're talking about bands here, and bands are full of constraints.

JT: For Well Done, I was like, 'I want to write a grime song’ and it came out sounding like us.

JB: Some of the greatest songs were written like that. I heard that Stagger Lee was written referencing hip-hop.

When I wrote Fuckers for Savages it was [inspired by] LCD Soundsystem.

It doesn't sound like it at all, but it’s Savages, it’s not going to sound like LCD Soundsystem.

JT: Yeah that's interesting. On the [upcoming] third album, there's this

pounding techno thing. It won't sound like a techno song outwardly, but to us it's a techno song.

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counteraction to the dislocation and isolation which comes from everything happening in this fucking world at the moment.

Crack: Do you think it's more valuable and more interesting to talk about masculinity in relation to Idles than it would be to talk about femininity in relation to Savages?

JB: We keep talking about the liberation of women and feminism, which I got really harassed to talk about [in] the early [days of] Savages, as if I was meant to speak for all women in the world when I didn't really understand myself what I had to say about that… I didn’t really read anything about feminism at that time, I wasn’t very eloquent about it. But men need liberation as much as women and you can’t liberate women without liberating men. It needs to go hand in hand, and that’s why I was interested in Idles for that reason, because it was offering that new perspective, and that for me is very modern.

JT: The plurality of Savages’ performance: you can see masculinity in the strength if you want to see that or you could see that as femininity in strength. I see strength, I don't see female or male strength, I see a strength in performance and power behind the music.

JB: Why should strength be associated to masculinity?

JT: Exactly. Hopefully my daughter’s generation will have a lot more of an understanding that femininity is allowed to be whatever the fuck [women] want it to be, not what I decide as a man, and vice versa. I get to decide what masculinity is. It’s tender and strong. It might confuse people now, but it won’t.

JT: I think there's something beautifully vivid about sober performance. It takes a while.

JB: Have you been performing sober?

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JT: Yeah. It’s just way more lucid.

Alcohol’s a depressant, it suppresses your shit, so as soon as you get past

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“I received so much love from the crowd and I felt I had to answer that”

JB: I have a lot of hope for the generation [to come].

JT: Fuck yeah. They're a lot more intelligent than I am.

JB: When I grew up, 'cause I grew up as a bisexual, having desire for male and female, and I still do today, I had no role model, no one around me who told me you can be bisexual, that's a thing. And that was an issue for me for a long time, and still is sometimes a struggle: if I like both, what am I? Do I have to choose? A lot of anxiety came from that.

JT: Especially if you don’t have representation in the world that’s projected to you. 'Cause I'm bisexual as well. You're not represented, but I’m a man so it’s very easy.

JB: Don’t downplay a man’s struggle. I think it exists.

JT: Absolutely, I just mean for me personally. I've never struggled with it because I think I'm represented all the time in a lot of other ways. The white male voice is spoken and projected more than anyone else. That's what you get when you’re a kid, if you’re a white middle-class boy.

JB: You’re raised to believe the world is yours.

JT: So I’ve always felt like I’ve been represented even if I kind of haven’t.

Crack: In the age of the internet, people are not only dislocated on a social level but also in terms of being a bit ironic and self-aware. Do you think crowds are quite difficult to get going sometimes because of that?

JB: If I go back to the beginning of Savages and the London scene at the time, I think the only band that would get me excited was Bo Ningen because they were actually throwing guitars at the roof. There were no bands out there that I felt were actually taking the stage seriously enough. They looked like they were going on stage to be seen by agents and management, to be signed. So my first idea was to go on stage and stare people in the eyes and get something out of it, otherwise I don't want to do this.

I think it’s changed though, because that was six or seven years ago. I can’t remember, but it was part of indie rock: the cemetery of rock music. Everything died. We knew it was a dead end. I worked really hard at getting moshpits going. Johnny Hostile was on the side of stage and he was part of this whole hardcore culture. He took me to a Converge gig when we met. I’d never been in a moshpit and I had a panic attack. I ended up working really hard on trying to get people to be involved.

When the word started to get around and we toured America, suddenly there were mosh pits at every show from the first song. That was a victory to me. I thought, 'Whatever this is, it’s better

than nothing. It’s better than the emptiness.'

JT: That period in between when you guys came around and maybe the Strokes’ third album, there were just loads of really good looking London bands that didn’t give a shit.

They were bored on stage. Fucking coathangers everywhere.

JB: I agree.

Jehnny Beth JT: They didn’t fucking feel anything.

We’re in a world of austerity, and people going to their fucking jobs getting paid fuck all. Give 'em something more. The new school of hard-working bands [started making music] that meant something to themselves, not necessarily outwardly.

People started caring again and you can’t hide that. It wasn’t cool and it was harder to write about, but now everyone’s paying attention.

MUSIC & CULTURE

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Produced exclusively for Crack Magazine by Kris Andrew Small - krisandrewsmall.com

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Same Same

Words: Nick Boyd Photography: Devin Blaskovich

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After a riotous first show together in Brooklyn, Nina Kraviz and James Murphy take some time to contemplate the state we’re in

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Nina Kraviz and James Murphy have far more in common than you might think.

So not being around some guy my age was fun.

It’s true that their work is centred around making people move, but as we know, the genres and conventions of dance music are often rigidly policed and defined. Kraviz and Murphy have both built their extensive careers by bucking trends, crossing borders and furrowing their own distinctive paths.

Crack: Nina, do you have a lot of experience with disco and house as well?

Crack: You played together last weekend. As you both come from somewhat different corners of the dance music world, is that something you considered or did it seem natural?

JM: I don’t know where I fit in the world anymore. As a DJ there was a period of time where I was a part of a group of people who were coming up together.

But now I don’t know where I fit at all.

NK: Yes. There was a time where I used to play disco mixed with funk and techno all together. That’s actually how I started my DJ side. The only thing that firmly stayed was acid. All the types of acid, from rock to techno. I also used to play 7-inches and scream in the microphone. But it didn’t last.

Coming back to James’s set, I loved it. Normally I would be the person travelling with records but this time [I travelled from] the Coachella live gig and I didn’t have enough space to carry everything.

Crack: It’s easy for James living in Brooklyn.

JM: Yeah – I rode a bike here!

NK: I know, but it looks so sexy to have a bunch of records. [James] does it very similar to myself. I would also get everything out on a table.

Crack: Is there something you’d like to see more of on dancefloors today?

A long time ago someone said to me that you [Nina] wanted to do a set together and I thought that could be fun. I mean, I started DJing by playing rock records at techno clubs and being threatened for my life, but I was on a lot of ecstasy so it seemed fun. I started asking people questions about you because that’s really the only real way to get information. You don’t Google because you don’t learn anything about people, you just learn bullshit. One of my friends said they really liked that you got more and more successful but never played shit. You know what I mean? Never played just dummy music or something.

NK: Yeah, generally I just wish people were more into the emotional side of music, regardless of genre, BPM, approach. There’s not much room for expansion, for emotion. There’s a lot of room for energy or drive.

I also liked that it was interesting to people. I could play with some other middle-age white dudes with beards but that’s fucking what I do all the time. [laughs] My life is going around with guys like, 'Oh, which pressing is that?’

It’s always inspiring to see other types of the same thing. Like techno – yes.

What is techno? To one festival it's one thing and then you take a twohour flight to a different part of Europe, or even in the same country at a

JM: People are kind of addicted to the adrenaline rush.

NK: Which is good, I like it. It’s almost like sex, for example. You can have this romantic way of making love and then you can have this ape way of doing the same things. It’s still the same thing, just a different approach. There’s room for every approach.

different club, and it's still techno, but the approach is completely different.

You can sense it immediately… Have you ever played something that made someone really upset?

JM: Oh yeah! I got threatened! I’m serious. I was in punk bands and then I would go dancing because I found ecstasy. I would go, 'Man, if someone dropped Loose by The Stooges right now this place would go crazy!’ Then I started DJing and I’d do that. I thought it would go really great and it didn’t.

People would try to kill me.

James Murphy

NK: Did it bother you?

JM: No! 'Cause it’s such a great song.

People would just be running at me like, 'What the fuck are you doing?!’ I would clear dancefloors at festivals, on purpose sort of, at the peak of super bro EDM when all it was was just people staring at you waiting for a big explosion. All people were doing was just peak, peak, peak. They’re not engaged emotionally. They’re not even really amped. As a DJ you’re just like, 'I’m doing something exciting!’ and

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The трип boss and the LCD Soundsystem frontman recently shared the stage for the first time at Brooklyn’s Knockdown Center. Checking in a week later, the pair draw on their shared experience at the vanguard to discuss the etymology of techno, the troubles with being true to yourself and to ask the age-old question: what makes a truly great party?

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“I’d go into a techno club and start playing The Stooges. I thought it would go really great and it didn’t.

People would try to kill me.”

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059 they’re like, 'you’re doing something exciting!’

NK: This is exactly what I’m talking about – a lack of emotions in sets.

JM: I do think that’s changed but I also feel like my friends and myself were part of the problem at the time – being too exciting. For a period of time people weren’t coming to see me DJ only for music. I was notoriously diving into the audience and doing too many drugs. It was about just seeing what was going to happen. Like playing the same record three times, which is something I used to do. Pick up the needle, blow it off and play it again because I liked it so much.

NK: Well… I could get really wild.

When the music kicks it's just like, 'Ahh!’ But when it comes to what I’m doing I don’t like to piss people off.

Even if I see that people are angry and they think that I don’t play techno music. They say, 'Give us some techno!’ and I’m like, 'But I just did!’

JM: We call them Play Harder Bros.

The bros that come up and yell at you to play harder.

NK: Like when I dropped a hardcore record and people say, 'Oh you don’t play techno.’ I think it is. It’s all techno.

There’s a really weird moment of identity in music at the moment. As someone who has an idea of those bridges between genres, for me everything is a consecutive phase of a whole. It’s like a palette of colours.

Everything in music has influenced each other.

JM: It’s like language. Things have roots. If you speak Danish there’s bit of Germanic stuff.

NK: Exactly. English is like full on French, you know.

JM: It’s a full on mutt. It’s fancy if it’s French and it’s Saxon if it's not. Nerd shit! I’m sorry. [laughs] NK: I love talking about languages. But back to techno. The word techno, for each individual, might mean something completely different. That’s what I meant by a problem of identity. It’s something that can be 10 different things at the same time.

JM: It’s like punk. All good words are like that.

NK: Well, but at least when you talk about punk, it doesn’t have this

problem? Punk captured the vibe so perfectly. When you say punk, you know.

JM: But you miss the point if you say punk and exactly know. Because you have The Stooges, you have Jonathan Richman…

NK: But all these people have a central element that holds this word 'punk.’ It’s this attitude in music, in people, in what they do. Isn’t it?

JM: Sort of. But they’d be incongruous to each other. Unrecognisable in one another.

NK: Musically it could vary, but in terms of attitude in music, which I believe to be the most important thing. I think it’s identified pretty clearly. You wouldn’t miss it. You disagree?

JM: Oh yeah. When you think about someone like Jonathan Richman who is as punk as anything, he’s the sweetest, nicest, most gentle person. He’s almost like a classicist. He wrote songs like, 'I want to live in the old world.’

Almost anti-punk. To me Kraftwerk is very punk. I thought it was punk when I was a little kid 'cause punk to me was anything that wasn’t normal. I think it was because I have such an intense relationship to punk. When somebody else says to you, 'Well techno is…’ you understand it.

NK: That’s what I’m saying, I don’t think I could define it…

JM: Because you know it super well.

Because you know it intuitively in your body. You can see the differences even if they’re discreet.

NK: Basically, when you look at the map in the last 35 years it's all techno history for me. Detroit techno wouldn’t exist without Italo disco. Even though

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Crack: Nina, have you ever done anything like that?

060 Nina Kraviz

NK: I feel like you have to have this attitude. You have to kind of be a tyrant as well. Otherwise you just stay still.

Good sound doesn’t make a party but bad sound can ruin a party. And bad lights.

JM: Do you ever DJ and hate your tracks? Everything you play sounds wrong.

NK: I just did this show at Coachella where I was doing something completely new. I was singing and playing instruments. It was my first show I did this way.

NK: Sure.

when you look at Italo disco and Detroit techno you might say what is the connection? But there’s a huge connection.

JM: But also you start out by saying what you don’t like.

Crack: That’s punk.

JM: Like that 16-year-old who wants to throw a bottle at me because I won’t play exactly what he came to see, I’m OK with that.

NK: At least it’s passionate.

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JM: Exactly. Like, 'Fuck, this is what I like and you’re not doing it and I’m pissed.’ I like both. There’s a great thing when you love music deeply and you can see all the interconnections.

It’s the middle shit that’s fucking tough.

The Vice Presidents. They’re neither the labourer nor the inventor. They’re just there to maintain borders and boundaries. Good! Now I feel better.

I know who to hate. [laughs] Sorry I didn’t mean to go off!

JM: It’s the worst feeling in the world.

Second easiest job in the world next to video game tester, 'cause a videogame tester stays the fuck home. You have to go on a plane but otherwise it's pretty easy. But once in a while you’re like, 'I hate this record.’ You can almost hear with everybody else’s ears and they don’t like it. The only thing that gets you through that is being a little bit arrogant like, 'No, this is fucking great and I’m going to get people on my side.’ You need a little bit of that tyrannical bent because otherwise you should just stay home because it’s so awful. Those nights happen and you’re just like, 'This sounds bad and so does the next song I have.’

JM: Good to start with something small. [laughs]

NK: What is the formula – if there is a formula – for when a party is good?

I’m not talking size of the venue, who the people are on the dancefloor are…

What makes a party a good party?

JM: Analysing. People wonder why musicians have drinking problems.

But the worst feeling is thinking what’s going to work.

I’m still working on finding an answer but I think basically you need to be a leader. A good leader has enough power to push through their ideas but at the same time respects the people who they are empowered by, listens to their needs and converts them into something that belongs to everyone.

You can’t be like, 'I’m going to play this track right now, you’re going to die of pleasure! Yeah!’ This show of muscle or whatever. Not going to work. This same thing works with expectations, when you want something too much.

Like when you fall in love and you give them mythical qualities and then you get really upset when you don’t get what you want. It’s the same rule that works in any party.

You’re just basically resonating something that’s already there. All you need is to hear the right frequency. You are like a huge electrical system. You need to be this element that radiates what you receive.

JM: It’s feedback. You’re right. It’s confidence and it’s feedback. But also when it sounds bad that’s the worst.

NK: Yeah, talk about confidence. I was offered it by Coachella. I’ve always done songwriting, but some years ago when my album was released I did a few shows, and the last one was such a miss that I literally had a pain shock from this show. That was enough for me to refrain for six or seven years.

But then I just said, why not? So I’m standing up there and I’ve done half of my show already and it’s not going the way I thought it would and I’m thinking.

The worst thing that can happen to an artist is thinking.

NK: There’s this moment in my show where I’m nervous. I even say this in the microphone: 'I’m nervous, help me!’ At this point I danced and jumped on the carpet and started singing. I was really down and there were only two songs that were actually good because I reached the bottom of my expectations and I just thought, 'Whatever.’ Once I let go and accepted it, the energy started flowing. I was sitting on the carpet, talking to people barefoot basically. I loved it. That was the best part of my show even though it came out of not a nice place. I was really…

JM: Terrified.

NK: It was too natural. That’s when people were like, 'Yeah!’ It was great.

It was very beautiful. So it’s always this balance.

JM: I don’t even put breaks in songs when I sing because I don’t want to have to stand there. [laughs] Seriously.

I sing or play the drums the whole time because the second I just stand there I say, 'Fuck, what do I do now?’

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“For me everything is a consecutive phase of a whole. It’s like a palette of colours. Everything in music has influenced each other.”

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After making their names in the UK rap scene, Little Simz and Novelist touch base on what it means to be self-made

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Words: Tasbeeh Herwees Photography: Daniel Regan

064 Little Simz

Little Simz and Novelist met a long time ago, but neither of them can pinpoint the exact time and place. Was it at a birthday party? Was it at a studio five years ago? They don’t land on a consensus. “Simz is someone that I’ve always just seen,” says Novelist. “For as long as I’ve been doing music, I’ve always looked at Simz like, 'Ah, Simz is on her own ting as well.’ 'cause I’m on my own ting.”

The two rappers have had similar career trajectories – both started out very young, coming up in the UK grime scene, their names often spoken in the same breath as the likes of Stormzy and Skepta. And they’re both celebrating well-received albums released in the past year. Novelist released Novelist Guy, an entirely self-written, self-produced debut that showcases his talent for aggressive flow and creative wordplay, earning him a Mercury Prize nomination, while Little Simz put out her third studio album Grey Area in January, a sharp, comingof-age work that cemented her as one of the UK’s most promising MCs. As each artist pulled up to a house in Venice Beach, California, they were dressed the same, both in black sweats and hoodies, though the sun was out and beating strongly – an unplanned coincidence. For our conversation, they spoke about about the struggles of remaining independent, making music and what it means to be an outsider in the music industry.

Novelist: How old are you, Simz?

Little Simz: 25. How old are you? Wait, I was at your birthday!

N: I was turning 22. My 22nd birthday was basically celebrating my album.

LS: So, what’s it like for you [in the music industry] then, because I feel like you’re like me, in a sense, you’re the black sheep. Do you get what I mean?

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N: I know exactly what you mean. I like things to be natural. And a lot of the stuff in the music game is not

natural. It’s people pulling strings to meet things, or go a certain way. My whole career, I’ve never had to do anything I didn’t feel like doing. And I’m still here. Being independent and working with your family members and just doing things DIY is going to be more strenuous than having a whole big team of people. But I prefer that because you learn more. You make decisions based on factors that aren’t just to do with likes and numbers. You make real long-term decisions.

I’ve enjoyed the process of going through the hard stuff as well as really being able to stand up and say, 'Yeah, we did this, we made this happen.’

But to onlookers, they might not understand it. You can’t waste your time convincing people, you’ve just got to be it and then at the end of the tunnel, they’ll see the light.

Same back at you, why would you consider yourself [a black sheep]? Like outside, looking in?

LS: I don’t know, people have struggled with finding where to place me. Do you know what I mean? Like, 'What even is she, though? I don’t get it.’ And I think that’s also because I don’t even know where I fit. I don’t feel like I fit in anywhere, do you get what I mean?

But also, we’re both indie, innit. So our route by default is not traditional or like…

N: It’s a big freestyle!

LS: Yeah! It’s a lot of improv and figuring it out on the job. It’s sick because not only do I have the perspective as an artist but I have the perspective of a business owner, do you know what I mean? You don’t really get taught that in the industry, to manage your business.

N: Who do you go to for that?

LS: No one!

N: Bare people don’t understand how I’m still here. I’ve barely released music.

I only release music when I really feel like doing it, do you know what I’m

saying? But I’ve got… [laughs] I’ve got so much music! If I wanted to just drop music, I could do that, but there’s an appointed time for everything.

LS: This was your debut, innit. And it was Mercury-nominated? Where were you when you found that out?

N: My mum’s bedroom. We was chilling. I think my mum made a loud noise, like an excitement noise. And then she told me, and I was like, 'Ah, that’s heavy’.

LS: Reaaally?

N: Do you know why that was important to me, yeah? Because I know what I can do. But not everyone understands unless you’re killing it with views or doing mad tours and features and what not. But I produce everything myself. I write everything myself. I virtually mix down everything myself.

I register my music myself. I try and learn through myself… And also the message!

LS: Mmm. N: That’s the main thing. The message of the music. I didn’t want that to be something that’s overlooked because it’s contrary to what most people put out, so when that was given a valuable accolade...

LS: Very valuable.

N: It was a stamp, like, 'Yep! He’s

certified.’ And I’ve never reached for them things in my life. I’ve never been like, 'Yes, I need to get all these different awards.’ First award I ever got, I went there in my tracksuit, fam. Yeah, when all the mandem had tracksuits. I don’t really care about that stuff. Does the mixdown sound hard? That’s what gets me tingling. But I did really feel happy and proud when I was put on that platform, 'cause it’s not easy to come by.

LS: Of course! Part of me also feels like people know [about me], they’re just quiet.

N: That’s not a feeling, it’s the truth because people open their mouth and say what they like.

LS: Yeah, the same shit. Especially where we’re from as well, it’s so small.

Everyone knows everyone. I remember when I came to your birthday – obviously I listened to the album but hearing it live is always different, innit. I feel like it cuts through the noise. You’re so different. I don’t feel like anyone’s really making what you’re making.

Crack: I know you spend a lot of time in the US. How do the two places compare for you?

LS: I think home is always going to be home. But when I first started coming out here, I just felt like I had all the odds against me. I’m black, I’m a woman, I rap, I’m British… And so I didn’t feel

065 MUSIC

“People have struggled with finding where to place me. Like, 'What even is she, though?’”

066

STYLE

N: We appreciate it when someone external to our team will look in and say, 'Yeah, this is good.’ That’s highly appreciated.

LS: Yeah, yeah.

N: But I feel like fans are a by-product of the music. I’m making the music for me, but to share with you. Whereas a lot of music is being made for them.

I wouldn’t make anything that I don’t want to listen to. I’ve got one tune, you know No Weapons?

LS: Mmm. N: There’s not one time I hear that song and I don’t get gassed.

LS: [laughs] N: Not one time! I can’t count how many times I’ve played that song since I made it. But I get the same feeling listening to it.

being anti! I’m fully not. All I’ve seen my whole life is artists talking about how much they hated being signed.

067

like it was going to work until I started coming more and found [they were] being more receptive, because there’s a realness to it. So as I started coming back out they were just embracing me loads. One thing I like about Americans is that they’re not quick to write something off. I think us Brits, as soon as we hear something or see something, if we’re not on it we’re just like, 'Aight, over it.’ We’re not patient enough. In my experience, I’ve found Americans will give you that chance.

LS: Nah, I’ve definitely been on Logic, doing it up.

N: You’re a producer then.

LS: But why though?

LS: Is it?

N: Pssh. Structure innit.

LS: But I feel like record labels are all the same, personally. I don’t think you’re gonna get told anything different. I think you’re gonna walk in there and they’re all gonna tell you that you can have creative control. They’re gonna tell you, 'We want you to win.’

It’s all the same thing, but I think it just depends on you, and how you manoeuvre within that.

N: I think you’ve still got to move like you’re independent when you’re signed.

LS: Yeah.

N: You’ve still got to grind in the fashion that you would if you didn’t have that.

N: Yeah, you just gotta claim it. You’re actually a producer, 'cause that’s what producing is: making the beat, making the song. Dr Dre will be in a room full of people who are technically on point, but he’ll just be telling them, 'I want this to sound like this, I want this to sound like that,’ and at the end of the day, you’ve got a Dr Dre record. But it was pieced together by workers. It’s like being an architect; they’re not the ones who lay the bricks.

Novelist

LS: I probably missed out on hella credits.

N: Me too, but you know what it is.

When it’s time to go in life, the story will get told. Or it won’t! But we know what it is.

LS: I just think it’s important to gain knowledge on what you're getting into, for a start. That’s another thing, I don’t think a lot of knowledge is given to artists before they go and sign a deal.

Or they don’t self-educate themselves enough about what they’re getting into.

Do you think you could ever play a role where you would executive produce?

N: Why, do you need some beats?

LS: [laughs]

LS: I’ve considered it, definitely.

N: Everyone’s considered it.

LS: Yeah! 100 percent. And if I were to do a deal now, I think I’d be happy I've done it this way. I’m happy I’ve experienced the real essence of independence. I don’t know what it feels like to be a signed artist, I’ve been independent my whole life.

N: I’ve never said I hate labels, I’ve said I’m independent! Do you know what I’m saying! Big difference.

N: [laughs] I can do all of that!

LS: So like fully craft someone else’s album?

N: Yeah. I’m better at doing that than trying to take control of all my own stuff. I can easily help other people, that’s not hard for me. I spent most of my life doing that. There’s so many artists that I’ve spent time around and given them direction and I’ve seen it pay off. Have you ever thought of doing something like that?

LS: But people take that as…

LS: Yeah, I would love to! I’ve done that as well. Same thing in the past, just orchestrating it, but it’s not my ting and I don’t mind that. I can play instruments though, I can play a bassline.

N: 'Ah, you don’t like labels!’ They think man are being anti. But man’s not

N: That’s producing. You might just not be on Logic patenting the ting.

“Being independent is going to be more strenuous. But you learn more.”

MUSIC

Crack: Have you both thought about getting signed, or do you want to stay independent?

WOLFGANG TILLMANS Created exclusively for Crack100

by Wolfgang Tillmans

ART + CULTURE

069

Photos by: Elina Brotherus / Helsinki, Maciej Cioch / Warsaw, Andreas Kronthaler / Alpbach, Cristina de Middel / Madrid, Karol Radziszewski / Warsaw, Katja Rahlwes / Paris, Patricia Schwoerer / Munich, Wolfgang Tillmans / Berlin

28 YEARS AGO HISTORY SEEMED TO ONLY MOVE FORWARD (SEE THE OPTIMISTIC I-D REPORTAGE FROM 1991 ABOUT THE EUROPEAN ELECTRONIC COMMUNITY; OR SEE 100 ISSUES OF CRACK CELEBRATING THIS E.E.C.) THIS WAS AND IS NOT THE CASE. THE ADVANCES GAINED, ARE NEVER TO BE TAKEN FOR GRANTED. IT TOOK CENTURIES OF BLOODSHED FOR EUROPE TO OVERCOME THE POISON OF NATIONALISM. DEMOCRACY ITSELF WAS FOUGHT FOR AND IS STILL BEING FOUGHT FOR IN MANY PARTS OF THE WORLD. DEMOCRACY DIES WHEN IT IS NOT BEING USED. EXERCISED REGULARLY, TO MAKE SURE IT STILL WORKS. BREXIT IS HAPPENING BECAUSE THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE ALLOWED IT TO HAPPEN. THEY CHOSE NOT TO REGISTER TO VOTE. THIS MAY 420 MILLION EUROPEANS HAVE THE RIGHT TO ELECT THEIR COMMON PARLIAMENT. NATIONALISTS WANT TO USE THESE ELECTIONS TO TAKE THE EU APART FROM THE INSIDE. WE COULD LET THEM HAVE THEIR WAY OR INSTEAD WE COULD CHOOSE TO MAKE 23 - 26 MAY A DATE TO CELEBRATE THE EUROPEAN UNION,

BY SHOWING AN INTEREST IN ITS DEMOCRATIC WORKINGS. BY GOING TO VOTE AND CHOOSING NON-NATIONALIST PARTIES. BY SAYING WE CARE. BECAUSE:

TAKE PART IN DEMOCRACY

For more information on why the EU matters, as well as about the Vote together project: www.votetogether.eu

ART + CULTURE

OTHERS DECIDE FOR YOU IF YOU DON'T TAKE PART IN DEMOCRACY IF YOU DON'T OTHERS DECIDE FOR YOU

071 ART + CULTURE

STRANGE TIMES WE'RE IN

OTHERS DECIDE FOR YOU IF YOU DON'T TAKE PART IN DEMOCRACY OTHERS DECIDE FOR YOU IF YOU DON'T Wolfgang Tillmans

076

The Oral History of Crack Magazine

CRACK 100

For 10 years, we’ve helped artists share their stories. To mark 100 issues, here we reflect on our own. Tracing our journey from a bedroom in Bristol to this milestone, staff members past and present reflect on the luck, grind and chaos that got us this far.

077

Interviews by Oli Warwick Compiled by Anna Tehabsim and Graeme Bateman

‘We established a reputation from our scruffy Bristol roots’ Jake Applebee (Co-founder and Executive Editor): It all began after the 2008 economic crash. Me and Tom were best mates from school, and after finishing university we came back to Bristol looking for work.

Thomas Frost (Co-founder and Executive Editor): I’d lost my job working for a PR company – a guy who had this wacky idea to rival Facebook. There wasn’t really any other work available because of the crash. It was quite a bleak time to be honest.

Jake Applebee: I was living with my dad, waiting tables in the evenings. I’d put together a magazine at uni so was fairly competent at getting something through to production and Tom’s a great writer, so we decided to make a magazine. It probably couldn’t have happened in any other city. We got together £200 of our own money for a demo print run, did some interviews and went round trying to sell advertising for a magazine that didn’t exist.

Thomas Frost: It was a case of wandering round with a hitlist, cold calling, trying to sell

advertising on the spot. It was horrible. But luckily enough people bought into our vision. If you look at the advertisers in the first issue it’s a crazy hotchpotch of tattoo parlours, clothing stores, the odd club, a tearoom.

Jake Applebee: The first year we were in my bedroom, distributing it out of the back of my dad’s car. We worked maybe a few months in advance, and for the first two years we couldn’t pay ourselves as there wasn’t any money from the mag. Everything went back into increasing the print run or trying to grow.

Jake Applebee: We had my dad’s phone number as our contact details in the editorial page in our first issue. I got a voicemail from this guy saying 'Oh, it's Geoff from Invada Records.’ He didn't say he was Geoff Barrow from Portishead, he was just like, 'I run Invada Records, wondered if you fancied having a coffee, to chat about music and stuff.’

Geraint Davies (former Editor): I went with my girlfriend to her university’s freshman fair, and at some point was handed a free paper. That night I read it front to back.

I know this sounds corny but I said to my girlfriend, 'I’m going to work for this magazine one day.’

When my six months of writing at a 'lifestyle magazine’ were up, I dug out my collection of three Crack Magazines and sent them an email. Tom replied and offered me an unpaid internship. At that point it was me, Tom and Jake in a tiny little room at the top of a complex of offices in Bristol. They only had two chairs so I had to work on the sofa for the first few weeks.

Luke Sutton (Director): When I picked up the magazine I noticed how it fused DJ culture with guitar music, pop and other music I was really into, and felt no one was really doing that. I reached out inviting them to come to my club night, and a couple of months later I was up in that room selling advertising space in the magazine. Soon after I started we decided to go monthly and launch in London at the same time. Looking back, it was quite an ambitious move.

Issue 12, Portishead

range of music we were, and it felt like we were making a magazine fans of new music would be compelled to pick up.

Geraint Davies: Other than looking enviously across at The Stool Pigeon, I think we felt fairly singular. We’d established a reputation from our scruffy Bristol roots, and I think people liked that – we had a voice and a clear visual aesthetic, and we were confident with our identity. No one else was throwing together the

Tom and Jake with third print run, 2009

Thomas Frost: The kind of artists we could get on the cover is off the back of our relationship with Geoff. When he offered us an exclusive Portishead interview for the cover we were just like, 'Woah, we're not turning that down.’

Jake Applebee: After that, we gave Grimes her first UK cover around the time we launched in London. We did the first UK cover for Jessie Ware, and we had DJ Harvey and Flying Lotus all in the space of about six months, so I think we were taking it a bit more seriously then.

Luke Sutton: After starting in London, we

struck up a relationship with The Nest, a club in Dalston, and did monthly parties. I remember booking DJ EZ for a few hundred quid for this Crack Pure Garage night we did, complete with a ridiculous poster modelled on the original CD artwork. We had Spinn and Rashad play, Julio Bashmore did an all-night thing. Some really great artists played those parties.

and decided to cold call at the office. I was like 'Hi, I’d like to write for Crack Magazine’ and they buzzed me in. So it all started like that. A few years down the line in my first Editor’s letter I told this story and we started getting people at the door with their CVs. People were like, 'Shit, it’s well easy to get a job at Crack, you just buzz on the door and they think it’s really cool.’

‘The magazine was our baby’

Jake Applebee: After Davy, Alfie [Allen, former Creative Director] joined. He had the time and attention I never had to really push the magazine forward visually, and that transformed us professionally. Alfie was a character around Bristol. I remember him coming to parties at The Nest and chewing our ears off about how we should give him a chance. We got him in for a month, he made a good impression and stayed there for a few years.

17.05.13 THE NEST

DJ EZ

Davy Reed (former Editor): After graduating from university in 2011, I was really keen to get on board. I had a bit of bad luck after uni – I’d been fired from this frozen yoghurt parlour on my first day of work, so was in this weird mood

Alfie Allen (former Creative Director): Back then you would get asked to play out of position all the time doing various menial tasks whether they were design related or not but no-one cared – we all lived and breathed the mag and just blindly trusted that the magazine would succeed.

Anna Tehabsim (Editor): The magazine was our baby – everyone was dedicating themselves to it and it didn’t feel like a job. I was lucky to slip in when I did. I can’t imagine many other publications letting their intern write a cover story on The Knife, but that was the first big thing I did for the magazine. A lot of us were young when we joined. I was 21 when I started as an intern, and was 26 when I became Editor.

To some extent we’ve all grown up together.

Jeff Mills in Issue 57, by Henry Gorse

Davy Reed: Me and Alfie lived together and worked crazy late nights. One time I remember sending a mag to print and literally seeing the sun come up in the office, on a deadline. Or we’d be there ’til 11pm, then go home and sit in the kitchen talking about the mag ’til a ridiculous time in the morning. We invested so much.

‘A music magazine that looks like a fashion magazine’

CRACK 100

Issue 85, Fever Ray

Davy Reed: When Geraint was the editor, he set the tone for a long time. He keeps it real – a really honest, passionate music fan who’s super down to earth. At the time there was this image of journalism and media as this intimidating London hipster culture, but Crack wasn’t like that at all. I think people respected the fact it was a Bristol thing first before branching out.

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A NIGHT OF UK GARAGE BROUGHT TO YOU BY CRACK MAGAZINE TICKETS AVAILABLE FROM WWW.ILOVETHENEST.COM £7ADV

Crack Garage at the Nest, 2013

Luke Sutton: One significant thing for me was Simple Things Festival in Bristol. In 2013 we got asked to help programme the line-up and offer our curatorial skills, and as I’d been booking all the Crack events at the time I worked on it as a booker. It was quite nice to be let loose on a bit of programming. I managed to get the team to let me book Nicolas Jaar at Colston Hall for a silly amount of money. Making that happen was one of my proudest moments.

Jake Applebee: It was a good opportunity for us to be the face of what Crack represents musically. To do a festival for 5,000 people coming from all over the country was definitely a huge step up for us. The year afterwards we invested in a pub in Bristol – The Christmas Steps – which became a hub for people associated with the magazine.

Davy Reed: I remember 2014 being a pivotal time. When Alfie joined, our photography put us above all the other free publications in terms of how polished, interesting and left-field it was.

Alfie Allen: I always wanted it to be a music magazine that looks like a fashion magazine.

One of my first cover shoots was at a Slayer press day. They were confused because all the other magazines had guitar sponsorships for the cover but we didn’t want them to pose with a guitar. Instead, our photographer Elliot Kennedy got Tom Araya to scream in his face – it was so sick. Jeff Mills came round to my mum’s house for a shoot once. And can I add: I would love the photographer who stood me up for cover shots of Pixies on one of my first issues as Art Director to read this so he knows I have never forgiven him.

Davy Reed: There are a few dream cover stars we’ve chiselled away at with persistent email

079

requests. I think Tom had been trying to get Ricardo Villalobos on the cover for five years. MF Doom was one of those. We were told that Doom doesn’t really do press but that he’s recording an album in London. So me and Jake were on distribution in London, hanging around at this studio for ages.

Doom came into the room not wearing the mask so there’s a couple of seconds where I wasn’t 100 percent sure who he was, but then you see the big belly and hear his voice. Getting out of that studio with photos and an interview in the bag was honestly one of the biggest buzzes of my life.

We did that cover in 2014 and it was huge.

Then FKA twigs had her album campaign and did Dazed, the Guardian and us. We also did our first stage at Field Day with Danny Brown headlining. Before then, I’d definitely seen the Crack logo beaming onto empty dancefloors a couple of times.

Louise Brailey (Head of Digital): Fever Ray’s infamous ball gag earned us a 24-hour ban

Dean Blunt and GAIKA in Issue 71, by Joshua Gordon

from Facebook, which was disconcerting.

We eventually circumvented the censors by pixellating the image. Website traffic spiked after that.

Davy Reed: The cover I’m proudest of was Dean Blunt and GAIKA. Dean Blunt doesn’t really do any press. Our only contact was his booking agent, who said, 'Just book a studio where we can smoke. I’m gunna record this on my phone and send it to you via WeTransfer, you guys transcribe it and I’ll run it past Dean just to make sure there’s no censorship.’ That was extremely nerve-wracking – waiting for Dean Blunt who allegedly had our cover story on his phone.

Eventually I got the audio and it was the most amazing, strange, dark conversation ever. I can’t think of any other publication who would publish that cover story – to be dropping this really thought-provoking, risky cover story in cafés across the country.

Duncan Harrison (Creative Projects Manager): I think our recent Aphex Twin cover was the epitome of what makes Crack great. As soon as we knew he was going to do it we were thinking about the craziest stuff we could do.

How can we make this as memorable, but also as accessible as possible? While we report on niché music and underground sounds this isn’t a niché pursuit – we want people to see what we do and enjoy it.

MF Doom in Issue 39, by Elliot Kennedy

Jorja Smith shot by Laura McCluskey for Issue 89, behind the scenes still by Ben Brook

CRACK 100

Anna Tehabsim: When Helena Hauff played her cover launch in Berlin in 2017, she smashed through hours of psych and punk records, Queens of the Stone Age, Funkadelic, and it was a nice reflection of what we’ve tried to build with our editorial approach.

We’ve had fun clashing covers across the years; artists from different worlds who somehow have a shared sense of purpose. And it’s allowed us to be quite unpredictable. Because we’re small and independent we’ve been able to take risks.

Like Fever Ray wearing a ball gag on her cover, I’m pretty sure we got complaints for obscenity.

Below: Slayer’s Tom Araya in Issue 55, by Elliot Kennedy

‘Every month’s distribution is genuinely hellish’ Anna Tehabsim: It’s been cute but it’s also messy as fuck. Obviously we’re professional but behind the scenes, under a lot of our biggest moments has been pure chaos. Oh, and the distribution...

Thomas Frost: Unfortunately for all the staff who distribute the magazine I attribute a good percentage of the mag’s success to the selfdistribution model.

Jake Applebee: We’d rock up in a white van in central London, drop magazines into stockists, then rub the ink off our fingers and try to quickly squeeze in a meeting halfway through. telling people this is what we do. Every time I’m at the pub the night before I’m like, 'Yeah, you know we actually do our own distribution, 'cause it saves us so much money and that’s how real we are!’ But then when I’m in the van and it’s 9pm and we’re in the Blackwall Tunnel I literally just want to buy a suit and get a proper job.

Thomas Frost: Distribution is an evolving beast. The London distribution run has been been refined...

Jake Applebee: ...It’s a work of art.

Thomas Frost: When me and Alfie, or me and Duncan get in a van and do London it’s like poetry.

Duncan Harrison: I remember Tom once saying that he’d shown our London route to a professional courier and they said the amount we try and do in a day was completely insane.

Every month’s distribution is genuinely hellish, but we’re an independent magazine and I love

Below and above: Issue 59 Distribution, shot by Will Dohrn

Luke Sutton: You could write a whole article on distribution stories, to be honest. I almost ran someone over in Covent Garden before, and basically had a panic attack behind the wheel because I thought I crushed his leg under tonnes of magazines. He was fine. I was not fine, but he was fine, which is all that matters really.

Duncan Harrison: There’s never been a moment where there was outside investment or a massive turning point. You just keep working, keep pushing. Distribution is definitely a handy metaphor for the perseverance that’s required.

‘Better than it has any business being’ Duncan Harrison: For a long time it felt like the online presence was purely there to promote the printed magazine but it doesn’t feel that way anymore. When Louise joined we found a voice and a rhythm that felt reflective of the print edition but distinct from it. Our online audience already know quite a lot about what they like so our job is to find interesting details and show them things they might not have seen yet. We’re the 'wider reading’ department.

CRACK 100

Louise Brailey: Crack is just non-stop in-jokes – there should be a whole glossary for the amount of in-joking that goes on. To come into a space where human connection and the old fashioned notion of ideas being exchanged is

Buzzfeed laid off 250 staff, VICE laid off 200, people are losing their jobs elsewhere and more magazines are scrapping their print runs.

It’s painful to watch the industry keep taking hits. It reminds us that we’re lucky to have been creating this print magazine in this landscape, and to make it work for 100 issues in whatever way we can.

Anna Tehabsim: We’re passionate about making the magazine feel like it’s part of a wider conversation. If you look back at the magazine’s lifespan, politics has been in a downward spiral.

So platforming the people trying to be a vibrant presence or voice or represent resistance in some way in this landscape is something we’ve always strived to do.

Ade Udoma (Art Director): Crack Magazine’s power is that it very much feels like a family, it doesn’t feel corporate and we can express ourselves freely. The magazine has such an authentically independent story which is rare in these mass media times.

Anna Tehabsim: In the process of compiling the 100th issue, the landscape of the media industry has been really bleak. This year so far

Middle page poster by Caterina Bianchini, Issue 88

Michelle Helena Janssen (Art Director): For us it’s important to build on this post 100; covering more cultures and stories from around the world that deserve to be told in an honest, uncompromised way.

Jake Applebee: We’ve never had outside investment. Everything we did we invested back into the magazine, either by increasing wages, employing more staff or putting out new editions in different cities. So, we’ve always just done it as and when within our means, as we’ve grown.

It’s a surreal feeling to be reaching 100 issues, launching our first edition in New York, and having one of my favourite ever artists on the cover. It feels too poetic to me, I can’t shake the feeling we’re living in a A.I. simulation.

Thomas Frost: We’re essentially a small independent publishing house now – we create all kinds of products for all kinds of clients. We were being told at the start that print was a dying art form, it was dead. But it’s always been the physical copy first for us.

Geraint Davies: When I left, I left what I knew was the best job anyone could ever have.

I’ve been utterly in awe of what they’ve achieved since – they’re making the magazine I daydreamed about when I first got that intern job in the scruffy three-man office.

The Divine Queer Secrets of Berlin’s Post-Drag Sisterhood, Issue 88

Duncan Harrison: The most impressive thing is that there’s still a printed magazine that goes out every month and we’re not all completely broke.

Crack Magazine office

What makes me think that Crack’s succeeded, cheesy as it sounds, is the team. Everyone is doing absolutely everything they can to make it as good as it can possibly be. For me, that’s the defining experience of working at Crack: work as hard as you possibly can for this thing to be better and bigger than it has any right being.

Louise Brailey: We’re closer to our work, somehow. It’s an edifying feeling to take a swing at something and pull it off. If we were a larger team that sense of ownership would probably be a little more diffuse, which would certainly lead to less stress, but it wouldn’t nearly be as much fun.

Find out where you can celebrate with us at Crack100.com CRACK 100

Davy Reed: Around 2016, with the EU referendum and Trump, there was a point where we were like, we don’t necessarily want to shove politics down people’s throats, but actually it’s really important – with the rise of intolerant attitudes – to try and fan the flames of a more compassionate culture. That has been the backdrop.

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really exciting. That sums up Crack, this sense of alchemy. A sense of strange haphazard chance. People with different interests, different strengths – it just somehow works. And we’ve always been very careful to give our platform to voices and perspectives that other platforms maybe haven’t in the past, and it’s a point I’m quite proud of.

Eyewear for every side of you. aceandtate.com

Artists BEA1991, James Massiah and Maison Hefner in the WORD UP collection.