Behind the issue

By Mark Hampson · J26 Productions

AI generated editorial illustration.

New friends, favourite records, six hours and 41 minutes of extra suspense, and a zoom with a mind of its own. Welcome behind the scenes of J26 Journal Issue 003.

The issue had 78 pages. “One last tweak” appeared to have no upper limit.

If you have ever made something you care about, you may recognise the process. You announce that it is finished. Then you spot a photograph. Then a quote needs more room. Then somebody really ought to have their name on the cover. Suddenly, “finished” is looking more like an aspiration than a status.

But before we get to the deadline drama, there is plenty to celebrate. Issue 003 brings together artist stories, questions about image and identity, a look around my studio and records I absolutely love. It also brought some lovely people into my life.

The people behind the records

Berri’s On Her Own Terms feature is an important part of that. We can know a record so well that it feels like part of our own history, yet still have plenty to discover about the person whose voice helped make it.

Alongside Berri, the issue brings in Kelly O, Cappella, and Miriam Love and DJ Dobrel. I wanted to look beyond the familiar names: where are people now, what matters to them, and what comes next? That is the pleasure of having a magazine to fill. There is room to stay with a story.

And some new friends along the way

Getting to know Becca and Vikki, and making new friends along the way, has been a real highlight. They are a lovely reminder that the best things to come out of an issue do not all have page numbers.

There is something special about starting with music you know and love, then getting to know the person behind it. “The people behind the records” stopped being just a line about the magazine and became part of the experience of making it.

So yes, there was work. Quite a lot of it. But there was also excitement, pleasure and the feeling of the J26 world getting a little bigger. I would not want the story of a stubborn zoom button to overshadow that.

Why the image matters

The cover’s “Sex Sells” headline opens another conversation: how sexualised imagery is used to sell music, what AI adds to that picture, and the pressure created by apparently perfect people appearing in our feeds.

The cover illustration is AI generated and labelled as such. Its purpose is to introduce that discussion, not quietly pass an invented scene off as a photograph.

For me, the questions reach beyond artists. When a particular look is presented again and again as the ideal, what does that do to the people looking at it, young or older? Where does self expression end and the pressure to look a certain way begin?

I wanted to make space for those questions without pretending there is one easy answer. Music can be escapism and joy while still giving us something important to think about.

Back in my own studio

Ad disclosure: The GRV6 and Korg links below are affiliate links. J26 earns commission on qualifying purchases through these retail partner links, at no extra cost to you.

The studio pages bring things closer to home: Rekordbox, the GRV6, the Korg KROSS 2 and that M1 piano sound. These are my own choices and experiences, rather than a collection of specifications pretending to be a personality.

With Rekordbox, a big part of the appeal is simply how easy I find it to use. Drag the tracks in and get on with things. Sometimes that is exactly what you want.

Using my own photographs made the pages personal too. It also turns out that nothing encourages you to notice dust on a keyboard quite like preparing its photograph for publication. The Korg had its moment. The dust did not need one.

The ones that stay

I also wanted room for records that need no justification beyond the fact that I love them.

La Bouche’s “Be My Lover” is a personal favourite, and it led me to “A Moment of Love”, a beautiful love song that became one of my all time favourites. That is one of the lovely things about following music: the track that first draws you in is not always the only one that stays with you.

That is what “The ones that stay” is about. We can discuss production, promotion and technology for hours, but sometimes the whole review is: I adore this record. Put it on again.

Six hours and 41 minutes later…

Let’s be honest about publication day: we were late. Six hours and 41 minutes late. The magazine missed its deadline, but at least the lateness was impressively precise.

There were photographs to replace, repeated images to catch, artwork to improve, quotes to give more room and a page to move. Cappella needed their proper place on the cover too. None of those decisions felt pointless, because each made the issue better. Collectively, though, they had very little respect for the clock.

I was tired, still spotting things and repeatedly reaching the dangerous conclusion that this really was the final change. I wanted it out, but I wanted it right. Somewhere between those two perfectly reasonable ambitions, the afternoon escaped.

The polished pages do not show all that checking and second guessing. Or the relief when you can finally stop saying “nearly”.

Then came the pinch zoom problem

Publication was not quite the end of the work. The browser reading experience needed attention as well. At first, the reader showed one page at a time, when simply scrolling through the magazine felt much more natural. We changed that to continuous scrolling.

Then there was the zoom. On my iPhone, a pinch could make the page jump around or snap back to a different size, in both Safari and Chrome. The reader had its own ideas about which bit I should be looking at. We were not always in agreement.

I wanted to publish a dance music magazine. I had not asked the pages to join in.

I made screen recordings so we could see exactly what was happening. The native app, meanwhile, was quietly getting on with its job. This was a browser reader problem, not a problem with the magazine’s pages.

We worked through the changes and I checked them again on my phone. When the zoom finally behaved, the relief was genuine. Reading an interview should not require a small wrestling match with your screen.

Lesson learned: “published” and “finished checking” are not necessarily the same thing.

And then it belongs to the readers

Seeing people share Issue 003 and hearing that they are enjoying it has meant a great deal. After spending so much time with every page, there is something lovely about the issue becoming somebody else’s discovery.

Thank you to the people who contributed, to the new friends made along the way, and to everyone who has read it, shared it or sent a kind word. A finished issue is a lovely thing. Finishing it with new friendships and people enjoying what you have made is even better.

Even if “one last tweak” turned out to be a wildly optimistic description.