Editorial

Did the Fall give up when no one gave a shit? No. No they fucking didn't.

Peace of piss

After being thrown out of England for instigating riots and whatnot Charlie Peace has become a spokesman for disaffected youth in Detroit. While UK music fans may know him for his pioneering, pre-exile “electro-hop” work, he is now firmly ensconced within the Detroit sound art scene. Our correspondent Chris Carmichael met up with Charlie in Lisbon.
Gnome: I see you’re sporting a new tattoo Charlie, what’s the inspiration behind that?
CP: Well, it’s the USB logo. I primarily chose that because it represents the yin and yang of contemporary IT culture. We can interface with machines but in the end we are just a component part of a larger system. My wife has the same tattoo on both of her tits.

Some words with Jordan Cruise...

Our landlord was a Mexican homo who spoke Old World Spanish with a lisp. I swear he smoked fifty a day and Charles said he once caught him masturbating loudly in the downstairs John. I called him Ruby after the ring he wore on his wedding finger. So begins Jackhammer Jumpsuit and Other Stories by Jordan Cruise. A novel which has already inspired one critic to dub the 27 year old former athlete “a Kerouac for Generation Jpeg”. I met up with Jordan after he had just won his second medal…

Gnome: Jordan you’ve just been awarded the Studious Ballentine Medal for the greatest fiction paragraph of 2007...
Jordan: Yeah, that really psyched me out. I got all dizzy on champagne and offended the committee. But fuck, that’s my shit.

Gnome: So it is. But it’s not the first medal you’ve won is it?
Jordan: In a previous not-so-hip life I got thrown a Bronze at the corporate spazz fest they call the Olympics.

Gnome: What sport?
Jordan: Modern pentathlon.

A Brief History of Music

As this ‘zine is all about music, we thought we’d give you an overview of where it all came from.

Music was made up in AD35 by the Emperor Claudius. Claudius stumbled upon music while jerkin’ his gherkin upon the sandy beaches of Laconia. As he pleasured his purple dome he began to wonder how he could recreate the beautiful sounds of the waves and birds in his palace. He employed three engineers to fashion instruments for this purpose. The engineers became musicians and pretty soon they had dumped their shit onto Cubase and mashed up the resulting Wavs in Fruity Loops. Claudius termed these new sounds “Reggae”.

With the decline of hard disk technology in the late second century AD Claudius’ work was lost and it is only known today through fragments of Jpegs off of ebay.



It was to be another 1,940 years before music was rediscovered by David Bowie in L.A. Bowie was taking time off from inventing the internet when he stumbled upon music in a club in South Central. The centuries had not been kind to the beast but Bowie soon whipped it into shape with a rigorous fitness regime and some crack cocaine. Of course, once set free by Bowie music was able to conquer the world and diversify into the many different soundforms we know today, such as Rock and Pop.

Now, feel suitably prepared as you peruse the allowed pages of Gnome, the REAL music ‘zine for REAL music (not shit).