Phasis Issue 1

Phasis Issue 1

This fanzine was launched on April 1996.

There were a group of about 10 of us that had been putting on legal and illegal raves for a couple of years under the banner of Sapour Industries. We were DJs, promotors and a group of graphic designers, performance artists and sound and visual creators called Core. One member of the crew was a writer and I was a photographer. After an inebriated shouted discussion in a club we decided to start a magazine. This was issue one of five that we would produce every couple of months. It wasn’t easy as we were skint and pawned jewellery to pay for stuff we needed to get it running. We were able to borrow a Mac (this can be seen on the back cover image of the magazine) and used QuarkXPress to move stuff about till it looked good. Once it was laid out we would use a very basic printer to make a hard copy checking that we were getting as much detail as we could before taking to the local news agents to make photocopies and staple them all together. I seem to remember the first issue was a run of 50 and that we tried to increase each edition by 50 more. The original price was £1.50 so I decided to make these available for 1.50 Tezos as a tribute. We would sell them at independent record shops like Fat Cat, Ambient Soho, Selectadisc and some book shops and art galleries too. Mostly we gave them away. There will be a good story to go with Issue 3 regarding giving a copy to the late great Andy Weatherall who we bumped into in Selectadisc! so keep an eye out for that one. My favourite part of Issue one was covering Ninja Tune’s Stealth Night at The Blue Note in Hoxton Square. This was pretty much the only club in Shoreditch at the time. The photograph of DJ Food’s Strictly Kev’ and PC four dec mixing in the basement has a blogpost by Kev that tells the full story of getting that photograph which is worth finding. Ultimately the magazine was an open submission for collective creativity in the sprit of DIY. I’m sure there is lots i’ve missed and forgotten so hopefully the magazine can act as a tiny time capsule of underground electronic music and creativity for a brief period in London that I feel honoured to have played a small part in.