Loud and Quiet magazine has been going for 5 years, founded by 22 year old Stuart the magazine has reached nothing but great heights and has formed a free online/print world for the music massive.
From features with the likes of The Horrors, The Teenagers, Jeremy Warmsley, The Maccabees and my personal favourite Dizzee Rascal! L&Q are defiantly upping the stakes of new music, bringing diversity, freshness and attitude to all underground, rising and well established acts.
Name Stuart Stubbs
Age 27
Job Editor/founder of Loud And Quiet
Location London
Website www.loudandquiet.comTwitter twitter.com/loudandquietmag
Welcome to DEER BRAINS, How are you today?I seem to constantly have the flu between the months of December and March, but apart from that I'm very well thank you. We took January off from producing a mag because it's the only time we get off all year, but we're back to it now, finishing off our issue that's out Feb 22nd.
Can you tell us a bit more about L&Q the background behind the forming?It started as an idea between my friend John and I, 5 years ago. We weren't into any music mags at the time so thought we should start our own one. We called it Loud And Quiet because we were going to make half of every issue about music and the other half about art and literature. John's dead clever so was going to do the art and lit side mainly, and I'd concentrate on the music side, but we couldn't really get that together so I printed the first issue in my bedroom, writing about music and then took all 150 copies I'd made to places like Rough Trade and Select-a-disc where you could pick up free fanzines. But yeah, the reason for it all was that we felt that new music wasn't really being featured throughout entire magazines, just being squeezed into small sections, leaving us cover feature after cover feature about Oasis, who we already know everything about.
Who is your favourite artist you've worked with for the magazine?There's four that jump out, and that's The Horrors, HEALTH, Bat For Lashes and Metronomy, in terms of who's music I like the most. Fortunately, they're also all really nice people. The Horrors, for me, are exactly what every band should be, in terms of how they present themselves, their ethics, and their music, of course. HEALTH I still believe are one of the most orignal sounding bands around today, Metronomy's 'Nights Out' is my favourite record of the last 5 years and Natasha Khan is definitely the most interesting interview I've done - I've never heard anyone speak so passionately about what they do without sounding like a righteous idiot. Marmaduke Duke though, has probably been the most fun. They were up for anything and are incredibly friendly guys.
The most famous person you've met? Were they nice?The most famous person I've met is Paul McCartney from that band Wings. I was a gushing mess I'm sure but he was super nice, which was a real relief to me. It's something that everyone says but The Beatles are a huge part of my life and for him to not be a cock was brilliant. If it was Paul McCartney, or even Ringo, I'd be a right prick.
The rudest famous person you've met and why?I was forced to meet Ricky Wilson once. I've never met anyone so arrogant. It was around the time that 'Ruby' came out so I don't know what he was so proud about. He was talking about the NME Awards and he actually said that Kaiser Chiefs won't be given another NME Award now until they get the Godlike Genius Award, because they're not new enough anymore. It's easy to have a go at the Kaisers, isn't it, but sometimes you meet someone in a band, and you might hate that band but they prove to be a very nice person and you walk away thinking, shit, I wish he'd be an idiot cos I'm always shouting at the TV when he's on. When Ricky comes on my TV I shout louder than ever.
Your feature page displays mostly unknown bands how do you find out about these bands?A lot of myspace trawling goes on, but we're also very fortunate to receive brand new music from PRs who've always supported us. I've always appreciated that, because without access to bands we'd still be making issues like our first once, which was 28 pages of me rambling on about how The Libertines are better than Babyshambles.
Is there anyone you wouldn't do a feature on?Kaiser Chiefs. There are a lot of other people too though. We're very fortunate being a free mag. We don't need to worry about 'will the public buy this', and that's great, so we can put someone weird like HEALTH on the cover and people will still pick it up because it costs nothing for them to give it a try. Bands we wouldn't feature are simply bands we don't like. That's the golden rule - we started Loud And Quiet because it seemed like mainstream music mags weren't honest, and featured bands that would advertise or give them a trip to LA, not bands that genuinely excited them. Although, I am fully aware that that's a really righteous thing to say. Natasha Khan wouldn't say it like that.
Do you put on club nights? or is it purely left to print?We do. We spent last year hosting monthly club nights with friends of ours who go by the name of Dirty Bingo. It was great fun, but for me it got a little stale, because we were doing them at the same venues on the same day of every month. We're taking a bit of a break from that now. Dirty Bingo are still soldiering on and putting on some great bands but we're stepping back and are going to put on some shows a little more sporadically. We're 5 this year so we're planning some birthday parties at the moment.
Do you like the music that features on the page?We could never do this if we didn't.
Where can people get L&Q from?As of October, you can pick up a copy all around the country. We're still most heavily stocked in London but we're slowing expanding our regional stockists list. A list of places we stock is at
http://loudandquiet.com/lq/pickup.php and you can order copies to be sent to you anywhere in the world on the website also. AND, if you're in the UK you can even subscribe to make sure you don't miss an issue.
What's your inspiration?The bands. Loud And Quiet really is a labour of love. It's a 24/7 thing, like Kruger, Stool Pigeon, The Pix and all the independent free press titles trying to give people something other than the same old. We just really like music, and there's something very satisfying about hearing a band or seeing a band live and instantly thinking, we've got to tell people about this! There's design too. Our designer is a guy called Lee Belcher who used to design The Face and now works with great looking mags like Wallpaper and political broadsheet Frontline. We'd never want to be just an online thing because we love the look of design on pages far more than on screen, so the finished product is a continual inspiration.
Which websites do you visit regularly?www.thisisoffset.co.uk features my kinda thing, so I visit that a lot. And then it's just myspace really, which is still the best site in the world for finding new music. You have to look hard cos there's some right old shit on there, but there's good stuff too. I've still not got a facebook, which I'm not proud of, just relieved.
Where is your favourite place to be?My shower is amazing. The rest of the flat is falling apart, but if it's a skin-blistering, powerful shower you're after, it's the place to be.
We appreciate how busy you are and would like to say a massive Thank You! XOXO Any thing else to say?Thank you for caring about Loud And Quiet. As I've said, we're 5 years old this year and will be celebrating with some parties and a special 12" release, hopefully. Stay tuned at www.loudandquiet.com and remember that Loud And Quiet is published on the 3 Saturday of every month.
