The London punk newsletter - September 2025 listings OUT NOW

Hello paper punks. Another Subculture’s September 2025 issue is out in the wild, and ready for you to pick up and stick to your fridge. It’s great to be back, it’s great to hear the laser printer sweating under the weight of letterheads, it’s great to work out how to get to between ten and twenty shops in one day when the Overground isn’t running!

You can download the listings grid right now, or:

• Find a copy at the following places: All Ages Records, BOOKS Peckham, LALA Books, Housmans, South London Gallery, Peckham Pelican, Tome Records, WASTE!.

• Upgrade your subscription here on Buttondown to get a copy sent through the post. Set up a subscription for £3 and if you do it before the end of this week I’ll get it sent your way.

There’s been a few tweaks and experiments as I return to getting this grid together. The zine is A4 once agin, but with over 2,000 words across two sides. A couple new fonts and a new key, the return of the map and a commitment to filling the back page with evidence of what’s been happening.

To begin, a reprint of sorts - I played Supernormal with my band Rubber, and for the newsletter of Repetitive Strain, the non-standard music show I co-host with Vanity Crystal, we both wrote down our thoughts on finally getting to a meeting of minds. If you haven’t read it, enjoy and please check out every act written in all caps immediately.

Future months will all be new stuff - reviews, photos, all sorts - and if you have an idea for the page it’s yours for the taking, as long as it pertains to punk rockers in the present! (Or, make your own and send it to me, I’m all ears!)

A note on printing too: I decided to try getting a template printed that could span multiple months, and then print on top of it each month using our trusty laser printer. A partial success, and a tactile one at that, but after a “3000 page capacity” cartridge spluttering out after printing 600 sides, you can expect October’s to be on good old riso once again. Worth a go, and not as bad as when I went through 30 inkjet carts during lockdown. JME said it best…

As ever, please pass on the listings to whoever you reckon would benefit from them and let me know what’s happening next month. And make sure you get to at least one zine fair this month - the Anarchist Bookfair back under the bowels of Waterloo? Irresistible, I wonder if there’ll be fumes.

Take care, free Ola + free Palestine, GET TO THE GIG.

B P / A S