Hi guys, after some consideration, we’ve decided to start a new feature!

At least once a month, we’ll accept a copy of a zine to review. It’s first come first served, so get in there using the contact form! If no one requests their zine to be reviewed that month, the writer doing the feature will decide on the zine themselves and purchase the zine. Our inspiration for this feature came from George, over at verynearlyalmost, who asked us to review his zine, which we’ve been obliged to!

Anyway, enough of that introduction, let’s get down to the actual review!

Verynearlyalmost ~ Issue 8

To start off this review, I have to compliment George on the quality of the printing. I think it’s printed really nicely, and has come out well I had a quick glance through this the moment it landed on my doorstep, and it looked really nice inside, just on first glance. I started properly reading it last night and finished it this morning. What stuck out was a really good mix of both art and interviews, and I think George balanced the two out really well. You open the zine, and one of the first things that strikes you is a gigantic face staring out at you, painted on the side of a building. While I’ve seen this picture before, I think it’s been really well placed.

It’s not only the quality of the painting which stands out here, although that definitely does stand out. It’s also the quality and quantity of the interviews. It’s not overly stuffed with them, but it’s hardly lacking in them either! I’d heard of I think all the artists that were interviewed, and it includes the likes of Kid Acne, Nylon, Herakut, and Adam Neate. I thought it was really interesting to read them, and to asee their views on both the general street art scene, and how they paint.

There was some really inspiring street art and graffiti there, which gives a lot of inspiration. It was refreshing to see quite a lot of stuff that I hadn’t seen before.

I can’t really think of a lot to say against it, although perhaps it could do with some other stuff, such as possibly articles on aspects of the street art/graffiti scene? Also, while I like most of it, I don’t particularly enjoy the tags, and it feels as if they’ve been put in to fill out the page-count and increase the list of things inside. However, there’s only 2 or 3 pages of these, so they’re easy to skip out if you don’t want to look at them, and I’m sure there’s some of you out there who really enjoy seeing them.

The overall product though, is great, going 100 pages strong, with minimal advertising, you couldn’t avoid buying this! Great work guys, and I can’t wait for the next issue!

~Joe

http://www.verynearlyalmost.com

VNA 8

(more pics coming soon when I get my digital camera working and the pics uploaded )