Zine Scene: roughcast

In this issue of Zine Scene, we clamber under the skin of roughcast mag: A ruffneck publication from Simon DohertyErin Rimmer and Josh Eustace that celebrates the anarchic freedom of freelancing.

Why was a print mag the answer to a publication that treats freelancers fairly? Why not an [on trend] Substack newsletter or podcast?

Algorithms have watered culture down, we think print is the best way to rail against it. When you look at how freelancers get treated; paid barely, or in many cases never paid at all, it’s a joke. It’s the talent that makes the publication. Never forget that.

No freelancers means no magazine. If you haven’t got the money to commission something, don’t commission it. We pay upon submission, within 24 hours. The talent that we deal with is unbelievable, that’s the least that they deserve. We will never go to print until all talent is paid in full. Or we don’t print the magazine. It’s called basic respect.

Many mainstream magazines (not all, but many) have taken the piss so much that we’ve now got to the point that it’s artistically interesting to see what a publication that treats freelancers fairly looks like. And that’s what roughcast is: an experiment in not being dickheads.

When did you first come into contact with zine/independent publishing, what drew you into it?

Originally, reading Terry Farley and Andy Weatherall’s Boy’s Own fanzine. Then reading foam. After that ZG Magazine. Then reading Apartamento. Then The Fence. Then we were like, ‘Fuck it, we can have a crack at this.’

The passion in the indie scene is so tangible. When you walk into an indie magazine shop it’s unbelievable how much passion you see bursting out of those multi-coloured shelves. It’s where we want to be. No PR person has ever said to us, “Sorry, no, you can’t say this.” They couldn’t, because we don’t speak to PRs.

When you get to the corporate media world, everything is diluted by the enemies of culture: corporate advertisers and PR companies.

Roughcast seems committed to not sharing and diluting your written content by sharing it online, but your socials are pretty personal and far from aloof. Why this approach?

The revenue from my personal TikTok account pays the roughcast bills, we would be losing a lot of money without it. But for the roughcast socials, what we share on social media is nothing, garbage, it takes 30 mins to make max. You have to be in that world to exist at all, sadly. But the real gear is in the mag. The mag is a top-shelf product.

The social content is like the Greggs sausage roll whereas the mag content is the Sunday roast, with all the trimmings, from a bougie and grossly overpriced pub. The social content is the cheap speed, the mag is a gram of coke direct from the source.

What, if anything, about the zine is roughcast or unrefined and why?

Our freelancers can be who they are, create what they want, and we would never change their art so it can be in line with corporate needs or interests. No personalities are watered down in the making of this magazine. We have no advertisers, or anyone who tells us what to do.

We’re currently half way through issue four––the ‘we fucked up’ issue, after we fucked up the printing of the third one.

Velocity Press specialises in books about electronic music, any electronic artists/labels/parties you want to mention here?

The soundtrack from this film on repeat, forever // Dungeon Meat // RigMouse // Mandidextrous // Tanukichi // Chris Liberator // Subvisions // D.A.V.E. The Drummer // 4am Kru // Anything Andrew Weatherall was even remotely involved in // Samurai Breaks // Ramos, Supreme & Sunset Regime // Mark EG // Billy “Daniel” Bunter // New River Broadcast Company // Ivan Smagghe // Vandal // Nicolas Jaar // Ben Klock // Villalobos // Chappell Roan // Charli XCX // KI/KI // Ralph Lawson // Avalon Emerson // Nicky Blackmarket // Micky Finn // Kiimi // Octo Octa // Orbital // Aphex Twin // Wigan Pier circa 2006 // Helter Skelter circa 1996 // CockTail d’Amore // Same Bitches // Klub Verboten // Gegen // Pornceptual // Joyride // PiepShow // Scene // Balter // Illusive // WHOLE // Unfold // backtobasics // HTBX // Book Club Radio.

Any other zines/blogs/publications/bookshops, music-related or otherwise, you’re into at the minute?

ZG Magazine // The Erotic Review // leafie // Erotic Review // BUTT // The Fence // foam // Boy’s Own // The Face // DJ Mag // the anarcho-punk fanzines of Chris Low // The Bittersweet Review // Strap // Private Eye // New Yorker // The New York Review of Books // Interview.

Where can our readers just fucking read it? Any favourite mag shops that stock your zine?

If it’s a decent magazine shop, it probably has roughcast for sale. Our faves include Housmans in London, Athenaeum in Amsterdam, UNITOM in Manchester, and do you read me?! in Berlin. (All cities we like to hang out in.) Plus many more. To be honest, the fact that anyone would want to sell our stuff is astonishing to us. We’re grateful.

You’ve got an unlimited budget to run a phone-only event: Who’s on the bill? What are you doing to make it extra sterile?

A phone-only event? Firstly, unless you actively boast about having a certain amount of followers, say 50,000, you’d get knocked back on the door. So we know that only utterly intolerable people will be in attendance. The bouncers will be checking the punter’s Instagram stories to ensure there’s a sufficient level of boasting. If someone tries to lie, the bouncers batter them to death with huge piles of old rave fliers while roaring, “The pills were better in the 90s, we were there!!! You never even went to Castlemorton.”

We’d work with some engineers and designers to create a contraption called The Phone Funnel™. It uses cardboard technology to create a cone-shaped device which you place your phone in. Once strapped to the user’s head, they can experience the club night 100% through the phone. They can’t even look at anything IRL anymore (see fig 1, attached).

After the event, in order to boost revenue, we’d mass produce them and sell them on the Japanese market. The tagline would be 現実世界は過大評価されており、現実を遮断し、デジタル空間に傾いています。ピクセルほど純粋なものはないということを常に覚えておいてください。That roughly translates to: “The real world is overrated, block out reality and lean into the digital space. Always remember, nothing is purer than pixels.”

The line up: Boris Johnson, Elon Musk, and J. K. Rowling, playing AI-generated classical music for the first four hours. Then KSI’s recent track ‘The Thick of It’ on repeat, for four hours. At some point dominatrix Liz Truss would arrive unannounced, dressed in all leather brandishing a enormous dildo, screaming, “I’m going to fuck the entire country!!” Later there’d be a live sex show on stage: David Cameron having unprotected sex with a pig while everyone sings the national anthem in unison.

No non-phone users on the dancefloor. If someone unexpectedly unstraps themselves from The Phone Funnel™, a towering bouncer, the same size as a small bear, will tap you on your shoulder and snarl, “You need to come with me, pal.” You’d then be unceremoniously led outside, tarred and feathered, and forced to plod around east London clutching a sign that reads ‘I’m a Waste of Space’.

Any other collabs or events in the pipeline?

We don’t, we want to do all this. Do you want to collab? No, you! Bring out the roughcast annual on Velocity Press? Does anyone want to colab? Give us a shout. We’d love to do an event too, just need to find the time.