A REAL music magazine on printed paper. As always: substantial content delivered! Maggot Brain returns with issue #21 for Summer 2025. Underground music journalism the way we need it. The way we want it! No corporate sanitization, no algorithm-friendly content, no compromise. Just deep investigation into the music that matters - free jazz, experimental sounds, punk archaeology, and the radical fringes where creativity actually lives.
Issue #21 continues the Maggot Brain tradition of taking music seriously—treating experimental sounds, underground movements, and forgotten histories as legitimate cultural work rather than niche curiosities. This is about making connections, building archives, and documenting the networks that keep creative music alive. On the cover: Michelle Zauner of Japanese Breakfast sits down with music writer Shahlin Graves for a comprehensive deep dive into For Melancholy Brunettes (& Sad Women). This isn't your standard press kit regurgitation—we're talking meaning, gestation, the works. Zauner, author of Crying in H Mart, opens up about the record that rules so hard it hurts. Accompanied by exclusive photography that actually matters.
Kai Slater of Lifeguard gets the treatment he deserves from Sydney Salk, exploring his terrific pure-pop-for-now-people solo project Sharp Pins. At 20, Slater's prolific output demands serious attention. This is the real deal. An amazing, lengthy oral history from the crew behind the 1981 Bronx cult horror masterpiece Wolfen. Behind-the-scenes testimony from the people who were actually there. This alone justifies the price of admission. Underground cinema at its finest.
Kurt Reighley, noted music scribe and DJ, delivers a deliriously well-written tribute to Gavin Friday - covering his entire trajectory from Virgin Prunes through Hollywood collaborations to his solo work today. Essential reading for anyone serious about post-punk evolution. Two charged and cantankerous interviews by Knoxville historian Eric Dawson, stitched together as a tribute to the late, great David Thomas of Pere Ubu (RIP). Thomas was uncompromising, radical, essential. Ubu forever.
