Zine - The Light Between

ezine - The Light Between 6/1/10

With the ezine and print zine, how has progress/development been?

We started the ezine in April 2008 with the intention to do a zine that was a bit different from other zines. I love reading interviews and articles, but it seemed to me that the interviews are all the same, it's always the same questions, so you learn nothing new. It's not like hardcore bands are rockstars, but I think a lot of bands put so much effort into every detail. That fascinates me, Shipwreck is the perfect example, they really want a record to be something more than music, so there is a whole concept that includes, music, lyrics and the artwork. So, therefore we decided to start something on our own and to ask the questions that we want to ask, no matter if i'm the only one interested in the answer or not.

Anyway, we started in 2008, and slowly grew. Another issue that we wanted to tackle was the international aspect of hardcore, so we started working on a sampler called "the sun never sets", that features 9 bands from South America and 9 from Germany. A total financial disaster but a success nonetheless as we got in touch with some really good people in South America. (I want to mention Reconcile/Varsity Records from Argentina and Step Down Records form Bogota, Colombia here).
Afterwards, the whole zine slowly evolved and we tried several things for example to include a section about books, but I have trouble with reviewing something, I love talking about books and music but it's hard to write about them. So, I actually focused on doing interviews. And then in July 2009 we released our first print issue, that contained mostly interviews that were already on the website.

What issues or areas of interest will you focus on in the future?

We started out with two areas of interest, politics and international aspects of hardcore. I still think the international side is important but it takes a lot of effort to really find interesting bands and to come up with good interviews, so I actually always hoped to do something like you are doing, getting scene reports from all over the world.
While I was compiling the interviews for our printissue #2 I realised that talking about politics doesn't give me much satisfaction anymore. I still believe it is very important that bands talk about politics and I love political hardcore. WIthout the political aspect hardcore would be useless, but the problem is that we all are relatively aware and all have a similar mindset. We all think about capitalism and the environment but we don't have any solutions or extraordinary alternative ideas, so I had the feeling that I've asked all these questions before and got the same answers before. Maybe the fault is that I'm asking the wrong questions... but anyway I kind of stopped talking too much about politics.

Also, the interviews change as my interests change, so I think some interviews in issue #2 are more philosophical (that's too big a word though), more about ideas of life, happiness etc. That really interests me, to hear how people think about their lives and how they try to make sense of it. So, maybe it will go more in that direction in the future, but then it might get really hard to find someone who is willing to talk about that... and I can't put all the effort and time into doing interviews ... ;)

Why do you do both types of zine?

A ezine is rather easy to start, it doesnt take much money and effort to get something going. And I think it is perfect that way, so you can see if you enjoy doing it and maybe it grows into something bigger. But I felt that it doesnt give me much satisfaction. You upload a new interview and that's it. You don't get any response. You can check the statistics of your website, but that bores me too. Also, we had a lot of "sun never sets" cds that we didnt know what to do with, so we thought we have to get them out to the people in some way, so we decided to do a printversion and include them. And that is a lot more satisfying (and exhausting), you have something in your hands and you can be creative... Therefore the printzine. I don't know how much longer the ezine will exist in that form. Or if there will ever be an issue #3 for that matter...


How did you go about producing the compilation The Sun Never Sets? Was it difficult?

No, I wouldn't say it was too difficult and if we can manage it everybody can. At first we only had the idea to promote some bands from South America here in Germany. My friend Henning, with whom I started the zine, speaks spanish pretty good, so that was one reason why we chose South America. So, we had the idea, then we checked if it is possible for us to finance it and then we did a couple of days of "myspace research". We contacted the bands and especially the South American ones were very enthusiastic. So, it took a while to get all the music together but we managed that and we pressed the CDs. Actually it wasn't that hard to make the sampler but I doubt that I would want to do that again. Not in that format. And you have to be better organised when it comes to distribution than we were.

tobi

www.thelightbetween.com