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Straight No Chaser (magazine)

 

 
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Straight No Chaser (magazine)
 
 
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Straight No Chaser was an influential British
United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom , the UK or Britain,is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe....
 music magazine, based in London, which covered various forms of black music
Black music

Black music is a term encompassing music produced or inspired by black people. In modern circles, this has come to usually refer to the great many music genres that have developed as a result of African American music....
 and electronic music
Electronic music

Electronic music is music that employs electronic musical instruments and electronic music technology in its production. In general a distinction can be made between sound produced using electromechanical means and that produced using electronic technology....
.

The magazine was started by music lover, journalist, and general clubgoer Paul Bradshaw, to cover the emerging black music scene that he saw expanding in London
London

London is the capital of both England and the United Kingdom, and the most populous municipality in the European Union. An important settlement for two millennia, History of London goes back to its founding by the Roman Empire....
 and the UK around the time house music
House music

House music is a style of electronic dance music that originated in Chicago, Illinois, USA in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It was initially popularized in mid-1980s discoth?ques catering to the African-American, Latino, and gay communities, first in Chicago, then in New York City and Detroit....
 hit British shores in a big way around Summer 1988.

as published in the UK and distributed for sale across the whole country, much of Europe
Europe

Europe is, conventionally, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally divided from Asia to its east by the water divide of the Ural Mountains, the Ural , the Caspian Sea, and by the Caucasus Mountains to the southeast....
, and also metropolitan
Metropolitan

Metropolitan may refer to:* A metropolis* A metropolitan area* Metropolitan bishop or archbishop, leader of an ecclesiastical 'mother see'* Rapid transit system in an urban area ....
 areas of the US.






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Straight No Chaser was an influential British
United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom , the UK or Britain,is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe....
 music magazine, based in London, which covered various forms of black music
Black music

Black music is a term encompassing music produced or inspired by black people. In modern circles, this has come to usually refer to the great many music genres that have developed as a result of African American music....
 and electronic music
Electronic music

Electronic music is music that employs electronic musical instruments and electronic music technology in its production. In general a distinction can be made between sound produced using electromechanical means and that produced using electronic technology....
.

The magazine was started by music lover, journalist, and general clubgoer Paul Bradshaw, to cover the emerging black music scene that he saw expanding in London
London

London is the capital of both England and the United Kingdom, and the most populous municipality in the European Union. An important settlement for two millennia, History of London goes back to its founding by the Roman Empire....
 and the UK around the time house music
House music

House music is a style of electronic dance music that originated in Chicago, Illinois, USA in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It was initially popularized in mid-1980s discoth?ques catering to the African-American, Latino, and gay communities, first in Chicago, then in New York City and Detroit....
 hit British shores in a big way around Summer 1988.

Publishing

It was published in the UK and distributed for sale across the whole country, much of Europe
Europe

Europe is, conventionally, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally divided from Asia to its east by the water divide of the Ural Mountains, the Ural , the Caspian Sea, and by the Caucasus Mountains to the southeast....
, and also metropolitan
Metropolitan

Metropolitan may refer to:* A metropolis* A metropolitan area* Metropolitan bishop or archbishop, leader of an ecclesiastical 'mother see'* Rapid transit system in an urban area ....
 areas of the US. It also had a slightly differing version that was published and distributed for sale separately in Japan
Japan

Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, People's Republic of China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south....
. Starting out life being published quarterly, it moved to 5 times a year on its second volume, however the actual amount of issues released would fluctuate year on year and it didn't have a regular release date, so regular purchasers of the magazine often had to keep an eye out for its release when it happened. Very occasionally a covermount
Covermount

Covermount is the name given to storage media or other products packaged as part of a magazine or newspaper. The usual method of packaging is to place the media or product in a transparent plastic sleeve and mount it on the cover of the magazine with adhesive tape or glue, hence the name....
 CD was also included with the magazine either only for a limited amount of copies for it's initial print run for that issue, or only for sale on the Japanese edition.

Content and themes

SNC magazines' slogan was Interplanetary Sounds: Ancient To Future, which basically meant it covered Jazz
Jazz

Jazz is a primarily American musical art form which originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States from a confluence of African and European music traditions....
 music at the center, with other black music
Black music

Black music is a term encompassing music produced or inspired by black people. In modern circles, this has come to usually refer to the great many music genres that have developed as a result of African American music....
's from around the world --especially soulfull electronic music-- forming the core of its focus. While most of the magazine contained charts from eminent DJ's on the scene (including a regular chart from Bradshaw's DJ friend Gilles Peterson
Gilles Peterson

Gilles Peterson is a DJ, Record_collecting#Notable_record_collectors and record label owner from London, United Kingdom.Through his labels Acid Jazz Records, Talkin' Loud, and latterly Brownswood Recordings, he has been associated with the careers of countless well-known artists of the 1990s such as Erykah Badu and Tony Rich plus Jamiroqu...
) or articles on underground music scenes around the world, it also had an eye on contemporary artwork, and underground fashionable trends in and outside various music communities usually not generally well-known about outside of the worlds' big urban centres (London, Paris, Tokyo, New York, San Francisco, et al).

The magazine was often compared with the US magazine publication Wax Poetics
Wax Poetics

Wax Poetics is a bimonthly United States music magazine dedicated to vintage and contemporary jazz, funk, soul, Latin, hip-hop, reggae, blues, and R&B in the crate-digger tradition; the name of the magazine is itself an allusion to vinyl records....
 which came along later, and many believed copied Straight No Chaser's style in some ways.

Ending

For various reasons, not least the spread of the internet and declining magazine sales, plus the changing effects in the general music culture from vinyl and CD collecting to more digital downloading, Bradshaw decided to shut the magazine down in 2007 with the last issue being number 46 from volume 2, the Summer edition released around August that year.

External links

  • - the main British edition's website (generally inactive -- back issues available only).
  • - the Japanese version's website (inactive).