THE PAPER THAT ITS PRINTED ON.

About two years ago i was on the dole (job seekers allowance.) it was probably the most creative couple of months of my life. i'd just finished a course learning to teach english as a foreign language and was feeling pretty pleased with myself / like i deserved a rest after zero educational breaks between age 3 and age 21. my housemate ralph and i would subsist on a diet of free tofurkey schnitzels and purdy's multivitamin juice from the holland and barrett down the road (when company policy is don't lock eyes they might be dangerous, then every one is a delicious winner) i had a gigantic room, staying up until 8.30am was totally legit, and you could see the sea from my bedroom. what came out of these months, otherwise lost to binbags full of empty cans, was modern hate vibe.

ISSUE ONE - Completed the first week of december, 2007



this is what i said about it at the time (i used to write in an annoyingly slangy way, i've tried to curb that)

"shit is getting ragged. its freezing outside, shoes are soaked, no amount of gravy can heal this. xerox salvation is on its way, modern hate vibe issue one, a fanzine in the fine tradition, high contrast black white and nasty. expect nice design and rude talk. i’m starting off local(ish), interviews with shitty limits and cold ones, some insight on the overrated/venerated/oughta-be-cremated holy trinity of opinion forming, an informative how-to of hardcore tiers, diggin in the crates for the record nerdarious, and samples of the kinds of aimlessly bilious rants that are an everyday feature in our house"

there are none left. i'm a bit embarrased by it, but it's out there. may reprint at some point.

After that, I moved to London.

ISSUE TWO - MHV 'Chronicles of Gnarlier' (Completed last week of July 2008)

I tried a bit harder with the interviews in this.

- Mob Rules
- DFJ (Mind Eraser)
- Ironclad

‘Columns’ if you will include amongst others:

- Review of the last Lintfabriek gig
- Panic on the streets of Brixton: South Wales to South London
- Five things I learnt from the Wu Tang Manual
- Why you should listen to Poison Idea
- Rinko Kikuchi, Lil Wayne and Chloe Sevigny
- Five things I learnt from the Anti-Matter Anthology
- Citalopram is the new Cocaine: Batshit Grans & The Flatline Generation
- A (Drunk) Treatise on 'Saving' Hardcore

I caught a reasonable amount of shit for some of the opinions in this, and generally felt a bit weirded out by its 'reception.' nothing that controversial, by most people's standards. despite the fact that everyones got a messageboard opinion, i guess these zine starved times (in southern UK at least) meant that a lot of people took it to mean that if i'd bothered to 'publish' something, i thought my word was absolute truth. There are some left, I think.

ISSUE THREE MHV - Triceraflops/Fluxine (finished May 2009)

Interviews with:

Brian Walsby - Double Negative
Tommy Stupid - The Stupids
Chris Bickel - In/Humanity

I got into buying weird books about fluxus happenings, june paik, site specific art and all kinds of stuff i was trying to challenge my (by then half flayed from the below employment) brain into processing. didn't write about it, mind, i'm not a total idiot. I got really gripey about referential hipperati, resulting in an article entitled 'No renaissance: cutting through fuzz pop's shit caked underbelly.' Mediation on Immigration, Belgium as a state of mind (basically a shitty/sceptres tour report but hopefully less boring) lessons learnt from Crucifix.

I have just reprinted this one.

Including all fees and postage, paypal this address:

Including all fees and postage, paypal this address:
£1.50 in the UK
£1.80 in the EU
£2.20 to the US
£2.40 to CAN
£3.00 to AUS

ish. or buy it at shows, i always have some on me, they might be a bit dogeared. get in touch for everything else. i love trades. comment here.

JUDGE/KIERAN/SMOKE THAT BUTT

kieran (above) is moving to australia. i fully endorse that my attempt at a pisstake when referring to punks from 'mega'buckinghamshire (more backyard pools per capita than any other county in the UK, maybe less than surrey, i don't know?) has been fully coopted into icing maxims. i've written extensively in previous printed output about Judge, they will always remind me of the above man for his ability to punch a steering wheel to 'whilst maintaining complete cruise control of his hatchback down the M1. I've no doubt the sensation felt having eaten that entire cake would be akin to owning that disgusting looking LP discog someone put out recently, all shiny and orange splatter vinyl (yuck) or realising you're Mike Judge, you look like a little pug, and you wrote those Old Smoke songs. Barf.

Still, judge wise i reserve the right to love those overegged bassline and the total absurdity of 'a joint like a gun at your head' and that i just went to check up that i'd got that right, and saw someone had transcribed the lyrics to fed up as 'smoke on that butt, it makes you mature.' very well done all round.

DISCONNECTING

full circle;; back story: spent too much teenage time on the internet, got good at it, whatever in god's name 'it' is meant to be, then somewhere between a degree in reading stuff and the dole queue (they don't make you queue) i realised there was money in it. sunk my freakishly small, blunt teeth into that, spent eighteen months of my young adult life reading and writing about 'digital and social media engagement' (amongst many other ever so slightly less vacuous, more detailed things) for one of "london's top firms." i went to events, dutifully, drank free booze, bizarrely engaged with this realisation that people were making careers out of what, for most people, is idle distraction at best, observation, i stood on the sidelines of a whole new weird subculture of blogger meetups and smiled at the men and women there: mostly loose, desperate, functioning alcoholics. started to believe it, present it, put an amiable face to the blind panicked fear of one thousand greasy execs turned pale as they realised this might be one hurdle too far. trained fifty people how to use fucking fucking fucking twitter, gripping hard at their employability as not-so-empty threats management about new requirements to be a 'digital native' began to take hold.

more recently i started to reach capacity. resentment bubbled over as i heard my own mouth spout about 'viralising' and 'seeding' with a second nature stumble - dribbling out this heinous future semen, smeared all over everything that is ostensibly useful about the internet, giving it that predictable echo chamber glisten. dried up and full of dead ideas. i thought having a "career" and a life/label/band/whatever would be the neatest jugglers act, but only dropped balls ensued, and there are some things not up for sacrifice.

this blog is how it is for a reason. be assured (why would you be) that i could bells and whistle the shit out of it if necessary, but all that shit loses its lustre when you have to deliver fifty deck power point slides on what some dipshit blogger who can't fucking spell said about adidas. or hamleys. or business process management software. i'm not kidding. i'm on the run. digitally. and i hate how that sounds too. knowing how SEO works (aka the ability to terminally scupper myself by having an unusual real life name) only makes me more determined. still, even under duress, you try saying the anonymous onandonandonanist. viralise that, fuckheads.

anyway, you don't like your life you can change it. did i hate every second? no, but i'm tormented by how lucky i am every day anyway (so should you be), so i'll add my ability to piss bile about choices i made for myself as another middle class privilege. i guess.

the upshot? i dipped out graciously on the premise of going to do an MA (i got on, but its five grand i don't have) and joining friends on their US tour (tell me you wouldn't do the same) and the clear desk policy puts paid to grandiose 'shit on it and run' notions) but as i dutifully work out my notice these next few weeks, i'm resolutely leaving this particular breed of suckers in their rancid (gold) dust.