Karl Henkell, Record Culture
After a four year hiatus, Record Culture magazine is back with its eleventh issue, another close-up look at niche music and its relationship with art, fashion and culture.
Australian writer/editor Karl Henkell founded the magazine in 2016 in New York, and continued to publish it as he moved around the world. Now living back in Melbourne with his wife and children, he tells us about the new issue and explains the long wait for a new issue.
What are you doing this morning?
We are in Paris at the moment, still happy to have pulled off the launch event at Oddity on Thursday night. It’s been an unusually hot week, and the city is alive. I travelled here from Melbourne with my wife Hannah and two young kids—we’re staying in a lovely Airbnb in the 11th, right near Square Gardette—a big green city square with a nice playground we discovered last time we were here. There is a café across the road that opens early so it ticks all the boxes. It allows for a very relaxed daily rhythm that is separate from the hustle and bustle of the rest of the city.
Describe your work environment.
Right now I’m sitting at the dining table in the lounge room of this Parisian apartment, hearing the buzz of Vvenue de la Republique outside. There’s always something happening. After living in cities like New York, Madrid, and Berlin, I feel quite comforted by the buzz of activity.
Now living back in Melbourne, it is much calmer. Much of this issue was made at the State Library of Victoria in Melbourne, where many people go to work. I find being around other people doing stuff definitely helps my own work. It reminds me of the public library at New York’s Bryant Park, where I worked on early issues of Record.
Which magazine do you first remember?
I had a big appetite for German Donald Duck magazines when I used to travel to visit family in Germany growing up as a child. Then jumping to teenage years I was obsessed with skateboarding so aside from local magazines like Slam, there was Thrasher and Big Brother. Being pre-internet they were very important as a live feed to the US and I suppose world skate scene. Aside from skate videos that would come out regularly, you had these magazines which were very important.
Big Brother was much more than a skate magazine, it was pretty crass and probably more about the shenanigans that would go on as skaters went on tour. It was the precursor to the show ‘Jackass.’ We loved it. Dave Carnie was the editor, and was definitely inspiring to me.
Aside from yours, what’s your favourite magazine/zine?
One that comes to mind is Purple magazine. I appreciate what Olivier Zahm has created over the years, and continues to create. It’s world building, culture documenting, and he cleverly disguises an art magazine, as one about fashion. It’s very multi-layered and international.
What other piece of media would you recommend? And why?
I’ve been enjoying Seb Emina’s Read Me substack recently. I find it really clever. I imagine he puts a great deal of work into it.
Describe the new Record in three words
Dream come true.
Welcome back! What have you been up to since 2022’s issue 10?
It’s hard to pin the delay down to one thing, but we probably got a bit carried away with promoting issue 10, which in many ways was a full circle moment for Record. We made other products, had pop-up shops and so on.
We had kids, and spent several years in Berlin adjusting to and enjoying parenthood. We moved back to Australia with our kids and cat. The whole time I was working on something to do with Record, so for me I never really stopped. I did need to take a bit of a breather though. The making of it takes a great deal of effort, and that led to opportunities that created more work. It’s a good problem to have, but it became a bit exhausting.
I think the time has helped me to feel our value beyond hype, to know what we are about, and to define a path forward. I think I had to hop off the treadmill of publishing to allow myself the time for that. Otherwise you are often launching an issue, only to put your head down again to make the next, without time for reflection.
Issue 11 is us starting again.
What can we expect from the new issue—more of the same, or have you shaken things up?
Each issue is slightly more ambitious than the last. We still have around 10 long-form interviews with music as our central theme. We did a supplement booklet with Nicky Siano about his legendary club in New York (above left), The Gallery. New to this issue are a short story from The Rapture’s Luke Jenner, a supplement booklet exploring the Audio-Technica headquarters in Japan (above right), and our new tagline for the magazine — Lost in Music. Other than that the format is the same, and I find it still works very well.
The lyrics to ‘Lost in Music’ by Sister Sledge were on the inside cover of Record Issue 1, and somehow this phrase just kept coming back to me. The subject matter that we are involved in is endless, in a nice way. So Lost in Music describes a state of being that is quite pleasurable.
Highlight one element that sums up the new issue
I’m going to say my interview with Nicolas Godin. I found his answers really surprising. One thing that comes to mind is that he can’t listen to his old music. As a big fan of ‘Moon Safari’ and other Air albums I just find that so surprising. But of course I can relate to it too—I wouldn’t read back issues of Record. The photos that Emma Le Doyen took are, as always, really good.
What has publishing taught you that may be helpful to anybody else planning to make their own magazine?
To be courageous in your curation decisions. I think it needs to scare you a little bit. When I plan an issue I’m still a bit like, wow I’ll really have to get to work if I want to pull this off. I think it has helped me grow as a person. I am still very familiar with the feeling of cold calling someone, and having to really build trust from scratch. What publishing has taught me is that you are your own best asset.
What are you most looking forward to this coming week?
Seeing the issue roll out around the world is of course very exciting. We’ve got the issue in windows around the world, so I’m just very happy to see it leave my hands and go into those of others. It also allows for fresh ideas to come, which is always exciting.
Art director: Holly Canham