INTERCHANGE MAGAZINE
Interchange was a magazine dedicated to electronic and experimental music that ran for four issues between 1982-1986. These postings reproduce all the issues, made from scans of the original masters, together with a few anecdotes regarding how each one came into existence. The online images are low resolution but you can also print out your own copy of the magazine via a link to a hi-res PDF. A short piece on the genesis of the magazine and scans of Interchange 1 can be found HERE. Interchange 3 is HERE and Interchange 4 HERE.
There were also three cassette releases. A c90 compilation tape Inter 01, a c60 by The Adventures Of Twizzle, The Great Waster and a c46 by Ward Phillips, Cyclades. I discuss (and post the artwork for) The Great Waster HERE). The Ward Phillips link HERE will take you to the artwork and within that piece, another link to the music itself.
A short piece on the genesis of the magazine and scans of Interchange 1 can be found HERE. Interchange 3 is HERE and Interchange 4 HERE.
INTRODUCTION TO ISSUE 2
The second issue of the magazine is primarily a local affair featuring pieces on Adventures of Twizzle (A.O.T.), Ian Boddy, Ron Berry, Metgumbnerbone, The New Blockaders (T.N.B.) and zoviet*france, who all lived in the Newcastle area.
The electronic-keyboard based artists Boddy and Berry were largely based at Spectro Arts Centre which is where I interviewed them. Spectro was a large Georgian building in central Newcastle which offered cheap recording studios, darkrooms and project spaces. The basement of the Centre was run by six artists collectively calling themselves ‘The Basement Group’ and organised various experimental art/performance events. I attended a number of these events, mainly those that I thought might have a music element in them. The audiences were miniscule (ten or fifteen would be a huge crowd) and you would have thought everyone knew everyone else, but that was not the case. Some years later I learnt that David Tibet had lived in Newcastle (about five minutes walk from me) and looking at photos of him in the music press, realised that I had seen him at various Basement events. Being too shy to say boo to a goose I never attempted to speak to him.
Another (really the only other) venue for strange music was Morden Tower- a tiny (20’x 12’) medieval room which was part of the old city wall and accessed down a back alley.
 |
| Morden Tower |
The Tower had a poetic past. Beat poets Allan Ginsburg and Gregory Corso had read there as well as famed locals such as Tom Pickard and Basil Bunting. The keys seemed to float about and somehow The New Blockaders had got them. They performed there a few times (once with Sir Ashleigh Grove) and organised the Whitehouse/Ramleh/TNB gig there in October 83, scene of the infamous 'riot'. I’ve already given my recollections of that event in As Loud As Possible #1, but you can hear it yourself on the live recording.
Interchange arranged a performance at the Tower for the Threepenny Group, who would later become Metamorphosis. I had come into contact with them via Y magazine, which was produced by group member Matthew Collin. That evening also saw a rare performance by Citipati, a group who were later to become Metgumbnerbone.
I was extremely friendly with A.O.T. and Metgumbnerbone and T.N.B. were often in Newcastle, so we were a pretty tight knit group. I was more socially distant from zoviet*france, but still visited them fairly regularly. They had a lot more to do than us anyway as their exotic record sleeves were all hand-made. For a reason I couldn’t fathom, during the construction of the hardboard (masonite if you live in the US) sleeves for Mohnomishe, the electric saw had been sited at the top of a flight of stairs. The air was full of noise and the sawdust was gently cascading down them like a waterfall. Downstairs in the kitchen were lots of metal bowls containing the newly dyed strings that tied the sleeves together, which were dried in the oven. I believe the piece in Interchange is their first, certainly the only one I am aware of with a prose text by them. I really wanted to do their piece in negative (white text on black) but it never occurred to me to make a photographic negative. Thus I spent a long time with biros and felt tip pens colouring closely around the text. The piece looks strange on this blog because the blacks run edge to edge into my black background.
It must also have been a very early outing for the Coil manifesto. I believe the Interchange item is the first Coil interview, if you can call such a short piece that. I cannot remember when I first came into contact with Geff Rushton (I think I had maybe bought a single issue of his fanzine Stabmental back in the day), but in any case my contact really began in the early days of The Temple Ov Psychick Youth (T.O.P.Y.) as he had probably written to me answering my enquiries about it. I was a short lived member of T.O.P.Y. but never met the London group and it saddened me that it quite rapidly became so much a personality cult, as it seemed to have had so much potential.
After Geff/Sleazy split from P.T.V./T.O.P.Y. we stayed in touch, Coil being infinitely more interesting musically than PTV, but we met only once, at the Chiswick address. Everybody I knew lived in usually rundown, rented flats, so I thought I was in the wrong street as Beverly Road was very nice indeed. I was on time and rang the bell and waited. I rang again. And waited. This process was repeated a number of times. I waited and wondered what was happening. It began to rain. After about an hour a young Temple-ey type of young man opened the door and said that Geff was in, but that his snake had died that day and he was too upset to do an interview and could I come back tomorrow. Somewhat damp around the gills I left. Of course next day Geff was very apologetic and we chatted in what I guess now (I thought nothing of it then) was a spare room, as it was virtually empty and seemed unused. At the end of my visit he kindly gave me various back issues of Stabmental. We corresponded on and off for a few years after that, the ‘off’ eventually becoming permanent.
I have no wonderful story to tell regarding the S.P.K. interview. Leichenshrei was on extremely heavy rotation on all our record players (along with Mohnomishe, and 23 Skidoo’s The Culling Is Coming) so it was natural for me to write and ask about a piece. I sent a list of questions to Graeme who dictated his answers on to cassette. Given that I was less than delicate in my query over Metal Dance it might have been more than I deserved.
The magazine was typed up at a community law centre conveniently located a few minutes walk from my flat. It was open between 10am and 4pm but it was a struggle to get there much before 2pm as I was slowly becoming more nocturnal in my habits. I typed it (with my usually lack of attention to grammar or spelling correction) on A4 and then pasted the cut up sheets onto larger sheets of paper (35 x 25cm) which I then photocopied down to A4 again so I could cram more text in without it being as small as issue 1. It was photocopied in London (on A4) and then side-stapled.
Assiduous readers might notice on page two the Inter 01 compilation tape. At some future point I will post all the paper material from that project, but not the music. In the editorial I say that the next issue “will probably be available Sept/Oct ’84”, but it was, as usual, late.
A NOTE ON THE SCANS.
The scans are made from the original masters. In making them I was in a quandary over what to do about various images which in the original magazine reproduced poorly. For this version I have, where possible scanned the originals and re-inserted them. It then begged the question as to whether I should ‘neaten up’ my Biro drawn lines, remove paste up marks or realign bits of skewed text. I have decided against this as I did not want to sanitise the look of the original, but have adjusted some of text to make it more legible. The online images are low resolution, but you can print out your own copy of the magazine via the compressed hi-res (10.6mb) PDF HERE.
INTERCHANGE 2
