This 40-page, digest-sized zine with spray-painted stencil covers was published in 2016. That might seem like quite a while ago, and it was, but the editor is currently working on #22—and plans to publish it later this year, in 2022. So this is indeed the most recent issue.
Publishing since 1987, Iron Feather Journal has gone through a number of formats. When I first encountered it, somewhere around issues #13-15, it was an incredibly thick, full-sized magazine format. Corresponding with editor Stevyn Prothero was by turns inspiring and overwhelming. I had so much to learn.
This issue is a little more back to basics, featuring a more diminutive trim size and handmade craftsmanship. I’ve always been impressed by Prothero’s combined love of DIY computer programming and electronics, the esoteric and the occult, and electronic music, bridging the best of hacking and phreaking culture, industrial music, rave culture, and other countercultures of the spirit. Computer scientists as DJs. And everyone’s dancing ecstatically. (This issue was accompanied by a 2016 compact disc by Multicast, Multicaster, which was released by Obliq Recordings. I have yet to listen to the CD, but I know where it is. Perhaps it’ll show up in my random record reviews.)
The zine contains a number of relatively short interviews with artists, musicians, technologists, and writers, including Kate Moussouris, Larry Niven (an extremely terse one-question interview!), Pinguino, and Unii. There are also several brief news reports on the activities of Steve Andrews, Multicast, and R programmer and artist Ben Young.
Among the longer features are Dave Alexander’s article, “Vintage Phonographic Toys,” an interesting survey of dolls, games, trading cards, and other toys incorporating records and record players; the UB World News Report, “Reality Check for Humanity,” which clearly delineates the differences between theism and atheism; a reprint of Anais Nin’s travel writing from a visit to Japan; a poem by Chris Mosdell, “Infernopolis;” and a brief play by Seth Iniguez, “Precoital Disclosure.”
Add to that a simplified language primer, a fascinating semi-fictional timeline, playlists offered by Cozmos Mudwulf and DJ Mayuko, a guide to license plates in Hokkaido, a legal psychedelic recipe, and an excerpt from The Black Art courtesy of John Major Jenkins, and you’ll develop a beginner’s sense of what interests and intrigues the editor.
This issue is available—complete with the CD—for $13 from Multicast’s Bandcamp. Other inquiries can be directed to Stevyn Prothero, 1-6-22 Yamato, Chitose, Hokkaido, 066-0066, Japan; http://ironfeather.com.
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