A STRONGHOLD OF PROFESSIONAL ARTISTS, MUSICIANS, WRITERS, AND CERTIFIABLE A-1 LUNATIC GUERRILLA PROMOTERS OF OUR GREAT FROZEN TUNDRA. WE GOT WHAT YOU'RE LOOKIN FOR....

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FOR ALL LAWYERS AND CONCERNED CITIZENS

THE METHODS OF PERSUASION USED BY THE ISSUE ZERO MAGAZINE "STREET TEAM" ARE COMMITTED BY A FACTION OF OUR ADMINISTRATION, AND THOUGH WE SUPPORT THEM IN VOICE, THEIR ACTIONS ARE NOT OUR OWN.

OBJECTIVES SUCH AS:
1 STICKER PLACEMENT ON SOUGHT AFTER, GENRE AND STYLE-SPECIFIC PRODUCTS, I.E. CD'S, CLOTHING, BOOKS AND SIGNS,
2 USE OF STENCILS AND AEROSOL, INK,
3 POSTERS AND TICKET TAPING,
4 RAISING AWARENESS IN ANY FORM, AND IN ANY ELEMENT, OR MEDIA.

THESE ARE THE ACTIONS OF RENEGADE, GUERRILLA PROMOTIONS OFFICERS WHO RAISE OUR FLAG.

THX, MGMT

Wednesday, June 3, 2009

ISSUE ZERO MAGAZINE: HOLY HELL ON EARTH, IT'S ABOUT TO GET SUMMER IN THIS PIECE.


Well, well, well, Summer, we've been expecting you.

This summer is gonna be sick as fudge. Between different projects, I'm going to try and find some time for the truest of summer pass-times: getting half-naked, sweaty-drunk.
Not like power-drunk, more like, been-at-all-day, I'm-down-for-whatever drunk.
Which brings me to this: I have a problem with Summer, even though I really like luke-warm nights passed out on a dock, and that's there's not always something to do.

Here's a couple of suggestions, should boredom strike you.

1 Get to the lake. It's perfectly human to get a lift off that.
2 Call your girly up... (awe... that's just nice...)
3 Create company. Build stencils, t-shirts, posters, and stack up on aerosol glue. Print stickers, fliers and banners, and blanket them everywhere. Bomb out a bunch of canvasses, murals, and gear, and create stock. Design a route to take advantage of people flow, and sell pieces while doing radically under priced performance art. By night, poster and stencil company logo over, beside, and under every damn thing from here to there. Gate-crash elitist designer parties and Wreakhouse. (See: gate-crashing a RGD seminar.) Dominate a 15 by 20 foot section of Queen and Spadina sidewalk. (with fuckin lead-based paint in case someone was looking to have it stick around like the yellow line on the street.) INVADE YORKVILLE. Eat breakfast. BUY A BULLHORN, or "find" one. Hassle advertising agencies and design firms, relentlessly. Orchestrate a series of publicity stunts and guerrilla advertisments. Draw something "nice." DONT LEAVE THE FUCKIN BBQ ON. Invite a gang of people over to your joint, crack drinks, crank tunes, and light it the Helloff. Lake-side jams, all night. Brand your lifestyle, and introduce mandatory membership. Hammer like 20 beers down and go tubbing with your crazy buddies. Urban exploration: under-rated. "Crash" and "Parties." Hard. Powerfuck. Get lifted.
Find that little thing that does it for you.
Take in a sunrise with having actually slept the night before.
Listen to the birds.

Raise Hell, and relax in Heaven.

Yeah, so there's three good ideas.
Oh yeah, one last thing...
DO NOT MISS THE LCBO BEFORE HOLIDAYS. ("Man that sucks")

ISSUE ZERO MAGAZINE STRONGLY ADVOCATES THE SECOND AND THRID IDEA...It's because sweaty summer sex and ruthless guerrilla campaigns keeps things interesting. The lake's nice, but not that nice.

-keep it real.

Monday, May 4, 2009

ISSUE ZERO MAGAZINE: KRS ONE @ THE OPERA HOUSE, JUNE 12, 2009.


I got my ass learned some realness on Saturday.
Yesindeedy, I did.

We hit the Freedom Festival. The weed march, as some call it, we got the tail end of it. Within an hour, Queen's Park was getting tight at the seems.
And that shit smelt lovely. Lovely, like rolling in a grow show. There was plumes of dense white smoke billowing out of every third person, every second in front of your eyes.

We made contact with a stencil/poster/guerrilla promoter, known for work with Tapeminati.com, a mix tape distribution company (re: look down if you're on Queen and Spadina for the mix tape stencil) who gave us a proposition:
Hand out Volcom shwag, lace the crowd with KRS ONE posters, and in return, get on the guest list for KRS ONE, (and rock some sexy backstage passes) at the June 12th show at the long standing Opera House, where other brilliant speakers such Hunter S. Thompson have inspired before.

Sounded dope as figidiuck to me.

So we did it. Oh yeah, we sure did.
We dropped over 2000 pieces (conservative estimate) of Volcom hats and vinyl stickers, many, many ISSUE ZERO MAGAZINE stickers, and hundreds and hundreds of KRS ONE posters for the show, all under about four hours.
Like hell-bent vending machines.
Yes, the force was strong here.

We interviewed Jace and Hex of WildCore, the organizers of the event at the Opera House, a righteous pair of Hip-Hop advocates. These guys live it, and you can tell from the way they talk, it’s a lifestyle. The words, the actions, everything ties in to it.
Here at ISSUE ZERO MAGAZINE, we are all about living it, what ever it is you do, if you love it, you become it. Simple enough.
When KRS ONE hits the stage, it will have been after doing two seminars under the “Stop The Violence Movement” group, responsible for awakening the public about the nature of the Hip-Hop communities.

What’s the good news? The tickets are $28. The Show is going to be gnarly, and the talent is legendary. Get stoked, this one is for the hardcore Hip-Hop Heads.

BIG UP TO JAS AND HEX OF WILDCORE.
MAD METAL HOLLARS OUT TO THE ORGANISERS OF THE FREEDOM FESTIVAL.

WE HERE AT ISSUE ZERO MAGAZINE ARE GETTING A LITTLE FIRED UP OVER HERE. THIS SHOW IS GONNA BE EPIC.

AND LASTLY, FORTIES UP!
TO KRS ONE, “THE TEACHER”...
WE CANT WAIT TO WELCOME YOU TO TORONTO…

#0M

Monday, April 13, 2009

ISSUE ZERO MAGAZINE: How to Save Face.

NEVER BACK DOWN.
REMEMBER WHO YOU FRIENDS ARE.
BURN ANYTHING IN YOUR PATH DOWN.

Thursday, February 26, 2009

ISSUE ZERO MAGAZINE: TRIPLE SICK SKIN REVIEW; GRAVENHURST.

URSA MEGA AND CHEMICAL ROBOTIKS OF ISSUE ZERO MAGAZINE WOULD LIKE TO THANK BILL ORCHARD AND JOHN PURKIS OF PSYCHO WARD CLOTHING COMPANY, TONY THEOS AND PETER WOODS OF TRIPLE SICK SKIN TATTOOS AND PIERCINGS, CHRIS CAMPBELL, THE BANDS AZENITH, RAIGN, MASTER OF WEAPON, AND GODKILLER.

AND A HUGE SCREAMER OUT TO MY BROTHERS STEVE CAIRNS AND KARL FLAGGAR OF SCDIGITAL FOR FILMING THE PROJECT.


STAY TUNED TO ISSUE ZERO MAGAZINE AND PSYCHO WARD C.C. EVENTS AND ENTERTAINMENT FOR MORE COLLABORATIONS


video

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

The Wrestler

Darren Aronofsky's The Wrestler poignantly and poetically presents a multidimensional portrait of a professional wrestler's undesired retirement. Randy "The Ram" Robinson (Mickey Rourke) lives life the hard way and when things come crashing down does his best to reign in that which he unfortunately let go during the more belligerent days of his career. Dashing dancer Cassidy (Marisa Tomei) and estranged daughter Stephanie (Evan Rachel Wood) do their best to help piece together the puzzle, but it's a heartbreakingly byzantine panorama requiring a sincerely dedicated degree of patience to comprehend.

The film's strong and Rourke's performance is my pick for Oscar's best actor of the year. The grainy shots and promotional poster credits establish a prominent yet passionately melancholic aesthetic that aptly reflects The Ram's troubles. And it hurts to see him go through it, a spur of the moment man crippled by the financial and humanistic consequences of responsibility. Things happen, not everyone can deal, and not everyone chooses a comfortable career with a pension, regular pay, and wide ranging benefits. The Ram's predicament generally functions as a representative of the aging economic other, the dedicated destitute artist doing what she or he can with what little he or she possesses to bring a bit more cheer to the members of her or his community. And each particular performance electrifies and holistically humanizes what it means to live according to your own individual rules with their own attendant predilections.

There are feelings and points of view that get lost in the rush as you travel from one dimension to another in order to reconstruct daily routines, get by, important pieces of your personal constitution that lie dormant in the unconscious waiting for a specific smell/game winning touchdown pass/deal breaking decision/surprise dinner/work of art to bring them back to life. And The Wrestler really made me feel a lot of the convictions that I had been simply thinking for who knows how long (providing them with an outlet to be revitalized) and that's just one of the reasons why I found it to be such an exceptional film.

Rourke's powerful portrayal of a dislodged, dominant demon, stalwart yet dainty, determined yet spellbound, vigorously demonstrates what it means to succeed while simultaneously pointing out the lesions of loss. Aronofsky once again provocatively illustrates his evocative chops, presenting another infinite requiem for a courageously clandestine character.

Monday, February 23, 2009

ISSUE ZERO: ChemicalRobotiks: Paper Zombies


*Fold on the Dotted lines
*cut along the solids

Its easy to assemble and makes a creeping looking zombie when finished. If you find yourself bored, and near a printer give it a whirl. Its pretty funny.

Enjoy

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

ISSUE ZERO MAGAZINE: THE ISOSCELES PROJECT @ SNEAKY DEE'S. FRIDAY THE 13TH 2009

The first time I met Eric Euler... actually, I don't remember the first time. but around the second and third time I'm sure was in the alley behind the Elmo on Spadina. The Issue Zero Magazine triad was ripped from pounding "road-pops." I can't verify this, because, I myself, the person actually involved, was pretty twisted when I smelled the weed.

If it was Eric Euler smoking weed, the guitar player and duck-stepping, mop head-banging front man of the Much Music-raping Isosceles Project, then I am even more impressed than I was when I wasn't sure.
Ob(li)viously.

On Friday the 13th, at Sneaky Dee’s, at College and Bathurst, three guys without a singer got more people rowdy than a band with two singers. The Isosceles Project headlined their CD release party for “Oblivion’s Candle” after the performances by a brit-punk combo I don’t remember the name of, and a second act with some ska that made me feel like it was summer, (some sick saxamaphone actionamon) and made me drink the same too. I don’t remember their name either.

But by God in heaven, when the Isosceles Project got on stage, the whole place went to Hell. Fifty people at the front holding their thumbs and fingers into Isosceles triangles, and the second the was an excuse...Slam-o-Rama. I’ll just start off by saying, I like mosh pits. I do, really. Usually I leave them completely unharmed, part of God’s cruel design, minus some neck pains and some liver issues. But this time, I left with a couple of real nice goose eggs, and somebody’s blood on my face. That’s what I call a good show.

They performed their new song (a Chrono's-melting 15 minutes long) “March of the Obsolete” where some douche bag knocked out the bass feed. They fixed it really quickly, but not before Scott informed us all someone was gonna get it good if they fucked up his chords again.

A stocky 5’10”, easily 180-pound, fully-bearded Scott didn’t have to pound anyone, but it wouldn’t have taken long to do it by the looks of him. They started their "March" again, and it was like there wasn’t ever a cloud in the sky of glorious epic heavy metal and tossing your good friends on the floor and thrashing around all Superdrunkass.

I've seen some killer drummers in my time. Oh, you better believe it, (Ryan Chalmers wrote out bass tab for me once, while playing, a complete mindfuck,) and after that night, I'm putting Justin Falzon in that category, under "unstoppable force of nature." That kid kills it, but good.

Five bucks. I’m not gonna lie, it was the best spent since my LSD days. And in all fairness, I got enough food and beer into me downstairs before the show to justify drinking the good old C.C. I “found” at the liquor store and brought in with me.
I bought the Isosceles Project’s CD. For ten bones, you get it all. The sound is level and strong.

My insulting them in categorizing their actual musical style is more like a fond fantasy of mine where a transport truck called Tool and a full load of Frank Zappa is high jacked by a screaming mad man, who falls asleep at the wheel and drives full speed into Funky Town, slowing for nothing, taking everything out on its magical ballistic and euphonic trajectory.
Oh yeah.

The songs come on a disc that has some sick texture on it; I don’t know what it is, but that shit wont come off. When you pull the CD off the case, you see some Dante’s Inferno artwork that immediately reminds me of a bloody fistfight in a fire pit. (This is a compliment.)

And, finally, when you turn that album on, you can kiss off forty-five minutes of your life you ain't gonna want back.
No fluff.
No bullshit.
No filler repeated chorus’ (there’s no fuckin lyrics AT ALL.)

GO TO
WWW.ISOSCELESPROJECT.COM
AND ORDER YOUR HEAVY METAL VACATION SOUND TRACK.

You wont be disappointed.

ISSUE ZERO MAGAZINE WAS PROUD TO BE A PART OF THE FRONT LINE AT THE ISOSCELES PROJECT’S CD RELEASE PARTY.