Masstransfer Zine
What exactly was Masstransfer?
Around the mid-90s, the major print magazines were Magnet, Alternative Press and CMJ, and most of their pages contained what was being hyped at the time, leaving little space for genuinely independent players—with little marketing budget—to be covered. Those magazines are heavily influenced by advertisers and publicists, so there needed to be an outlet for the more space-rock and hybrid electronic music we were discovering.
The concept for the zine emerged in late 1996. I was meeting lots of bands, usually through playing shows or even receiving demo tapes sent to the Mind Expansion record label. Talking directly to musicians, I realized there weren’t many press avenues for these bands to get exposure. I wanted to create an indie music magazine to serve as a base for a wider community of artists and fans that were already mixing and mingling on the tour trails and record stores around the US and other countries. And it didn’t take very long to take off.
Masstransfer was produced between 1997 and 2003 in a comic-book style format. Each issue included a compilation (or “Installation”) CD that featured some of the bands that were in the issue along with a few other bands, likely an unreleased or upcoming album track. The zine covered mostly space rock, post-rock, and dream-pop genres, along with ambient and electronic music. It also included articles that were not music-related, such as stereo-repair tips and home-studio setups. Concluding some issues was an ongoing story about a group of young people who found their way into a mental asylum.
It was my intention to create an experience where the reader could pick up the print zine, put the CD in their player, and read the articles while listening to the tracks on the compilation. At a time just before the emergence of web-based multimedia, this setup seemed to be a rather enticing option.
By January 1997, work had begun and the format was finalized: a comic-book sized zine with a CD compilation of music included. The first issue was mainly composed of Mind Expansion bands (Outrageous Cherry, Getaway Cruiser, Landis, Füxa), some of our Philly space-rock comrades (The Asteroid #4, Lenola) and assorted live reviews from Chicago, Detroit and the Toronto/Buffalo axis (thanks to Carla Pino). It was a rather thin rag, but it put a stake in the ground and laid the foundation for Issue #2, which was a tremendous leap forward.
After hiring a graphic designer to handle the layouts and design of the first issue, that work was brought in-house so we could use the extra money to expand the pages in the zine, from 32 to 48 pages. With each subsequent issue, the breadth of bands exploded and we received an influx of new writers and contributors—most of whom were musicians themselves.
The zine was produced annually until I decided to shut it down in 2004. Print publications were losing the fight against digital technologies, and independent record stores, our main distribution points, were closing for multiple reasons. It didn’t make financial sense for me to keep putting money into the magazine, and by that point I was pretty burnt out.
Taken from the book Masstransfer: A Zinethology.
First Posted: 9/10/2023, 10:34:09 AM
Last Updated: 9/10/2023, 10:37:31 AM
