It’s Transfiguration Time
Extratone will be refocusing as a dedicated electronic music magazine with print issues on hand before 2018 is out.
It’s been far too long since I last came to you with compelling news truly worthy of anticipation, but I’m relieved to do so today in a somewhat-epiphanous certainty that the past two and a half years of my very meticulously-documented struggle to give this project a clear direction will soon feel well worth the experience for all involved.
This week, we’re inaugurating our new top-shelf Music section with a comprehensive tour throughout the history of the streaming platforms who’ve both nurtured and ripped off the voices from an entirely new generation of artists followed by an album review which will be sure to blindside you in your kidneys with a fundamental truth I know you’ll love, (but could never guess.) Don’t think we’re crying wolf (or is it “passing go?”) this go-around: /music is going to become the singular subject of our attention for the foreseeable future.
We’re going to take Extratone full circle and make an Electronic Music magazine for the new underground (who are more logged on than they are subterranean.) The online community of friends who’s talents have continued to compel me to figure this thing out have only become more and more extraordinary in their crafts, pushing the whole network further and further upward toward its inevitable penetration of the churning, relentless surface discourse in what has become an awkwardly treacherous Indie Ocean. While a few flagships of the American underground techno magazine like Trax have managed to remain afloat, they’ve been worn down into complacency by the mellowing of their scene and unavoidably shifting priorities after the years they’ve got on us. It’s been alarmingly apparent since 2012 that music journalism would be totally unequipped to spot the heroes of the genre and DAW busting Twitter gang in the crucial moment.
For this moment, suffice it to say, the destiny of our music is at hand, and I’ve happened to acquire just about got all we need to build a big fucking boat.
Here’s what the rest of 2018 is going to look like.
For the next two months, I’ll be combing through the entire King James’-worth of stories we’ve published since launch and meticulously arranging the best of them in a hefty, visually-unbelievable sort of print anthology, which you’ll soon be able to preorder. This issue will represent the whole of my being’s effort for like… half my 20s (if you’re rounding up,) and I know getting my hands on the first proof is gonna make me cry like a toddler, so you can be damned sure it’s going to be something very special and you’d better feel damned guilty if you pass it up.
However, it’s also not something I intend to do on my own. I will undoubtedly be paying for art, illustration, and help with print design, so do please email me with your favorite pitch for magazine art and/or that secret masterpiece of an InDesign template you’ve been sitting on. (Cover art is way more difficult than I expected. Please help me.) Don’t be afraid to join in the novelty of seeing a message (or dumb anime reference) of your own in print — I plan to pepper the issue with little messages, so stop by our Discord and chat me up.
In the meantime, you can help tremendously by forgoing just one soda every four weeks for a hardcore cause to subscribe for $1 via Patreon. As of today, our new support goal is to raise $30 to pass immediately along for a single freelance album review per month.
By winter, we’ll be set to hose down the server in digital baptism so that we may start anew on the future from the best possible foothold when 2019 rolls around. I’ll be in touch with regular updates and more specific calls for freelance art very soon.