Conventions of the underground/alternative music magazine Genre
- Will Steele
- May 7, 2019
- 3 min read
Updated: Jan 24, 2020
Many of the genres represented in the genre are what can considered to be unpopular in the mainstream audience. For example a lot of the music that is underground is very experimental and unique, for example a lot of the music that features in alternative music magazines is from mixes of elements of different music genres.
A lot of the magazines go against typical mainstream and consumerist music conventions like the artists they choose to represent on their covers.
They often have a focus on promoting political or social justice movements. This is because many underground music scenes can focus on political movements because underground music artists are often motivated for political reasons. This can include semiotic symbols of pride and oppression for certain communities.
Along with this they often have very minimal layouts of front cover which goes against a convention of the house magazine style. They do this because it gives the magazine a unique aesthetic which makes it more memorable and because they cover connotes it is unconventional the reader may assume that the artist on the cover is also unconventional or that the magazine has a whole is about unconventional things.
A lot of the cover stars are either pictured in or dressed in positions which make them look very striking, bold and reflect the artists individuality from other artists.
In the wax poetical cover above the photographer has decided to use a colour scheme made up of only colours which are white, black or pink. Since the black and white colour scheme is a colour scheme that contrasts it is very visually striking. This makes the cover look very bold which expresses the cover artist Jenelle Monae as being a very bold personality.
We can also see here Wax Poetical's emphasis on representing black artists. We see here that they use (like most of their covers) a font which symbolises Motown, a music movement which was created by African-Americans which makes it a symbol of pride for African- American musicians symbolising that Wax Poetical is a magazine of promoting the black artist movement which shows it keeps to the convention of representing a social movement.
On this issue of Wire magazine the artist they feature is Gaika. An artist who has been described as combining Caribbean dance hall and London grime. This shows Wire are using a music cover star who goes against typical mainstream and consumerist music conventions and since his sound is something that would likely never be largely popular with mainstream music listening audiences showing they use the conventions of using non-mainstream artists who go against consumerist music conventions.
Wire also uses a minimalistic design as their cover lines only take up the centre of the page and doesn't visually interfere with the image of Gaika. And additionally the title of the issue is very small. This shows they stick to the convention of having a minimalist cover.
Trax magazine a french alternative music magazine for a period had a style using only the Magazine masthead, anchor, cover picture which would be in a smaller ratio to a border and a border with one colour. This is against the conventions of house style magazines as house magazines typically uses spread images rather than use a smaller image which shows Trax's design uses the convention of going against typical house style conventions.
The cover is also very visually striking because they have blended the image into the orange border. Since the sky has a very blue colour and the background is orange it creates a very bright image. This shows Trax keep to the convention of having a visually striking image.
After analysing these magazines I came up with a final checklist which I will stick to when creating my cover for my underground music magazine.
Source for magazines: https://www.djbroadcast.net/article/123113/top-10-best-alternative-music-magazines
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