Volume magazine

🐠 Appreciating a defunct but unique music magazine and CD compilation series from the 90s.

Volume was a British music magazine that was published several times a year between 1991 and 1997. Each edition combined a compilation CD of new tracks from current artists with a magazine that included interviews with the featured musicians, album reviews and all sorts of other nonsense. The magazines were about the size of a CD case (and just as thick), so you could fit them into your CD collection.

The music featured was mostly indie, spanning from guitar-heavy Britpop to trip hop and electronica. Volume also released a few special issues, like a trance music series and some "best of" compilations featuring favourite tracks and interviews. However it became more common for other music magazines to give away free CDs, and with bigger names now eating their lunch, Volume went under after five years of business.

I first came across Volume while trawling Wikipedia for 90s media stuff (here's the article). It sounded interesting, and you can find some issues on eBay for a few pounds each, so I ordered a few. (And then I realised I had nothing play them on, which led to me buying a CD player, which... yeah.)

Honestly, this was a great impulse buy, because I think these are really cool! The compilation CDs are really interesting – even for the artists I was already familiar with, the tracks are usually alternative recordings, remixes or other rarities. And for the artists I don't know, it's great to be able to open the booklet and read an interview with them to learn more.

The graphic design is also amazing(ly 90s). Every Volume cover features a different tropical fish photo taken by underwater photographer Linda Pitkin, the magazine's justification being that "even the worst-looking fish is better-looking than the best-looking pop star". The insides of the booklets are absolutely eye-popping. Whoever put these spreads together was not afraid of colour.

I'd love to do some proper scans and share them somewhere, but I don't have a scanner. So for now here are some low-quality photos:

The covers of Volume Six and Seven, showing the trademark tropical fish photos and a list of artists included

The covers of Volume Seventeen and Sharks Patrol These Waters, showing the trademark tropical fish photos and a list of artists included

The inside back cover of Volume Seven, showing the enclosed CD

A colourful table of contents spread, showing photos of the artists

A spread featuring the band Elastica

A spread from an article about Bjork

As far as the writing goes, it's definitely a 90s Gen X time capsule, for better or worse. The whole tone is pretty typical of British humour at the time, very tongue-in-cheek, edgy and self-deprecating. The interviews are accompanied by comedy bits (like jogging advice from Kate Bush since she's such an expert at running up hills), regular columns, letters from readers and so on. Some of it's a bit dated, but, well, it is 30 years old.

I haven't read through all of the issues I have yet (partly because that tiny font gives me eye strain!) but the magazines are very fun to flip through. Definitely interesting little cultural artefacts. I'm glad I discovered them.

Listen to Volume

This YouTube channel has uploaded tracks from many issues of Volume if you'd like to do some virtual crate-digging.

One of my current favourites is "On & On (Pass the Snake remix)" by Longpigs.

Issues I own

Volume Six (published April 1993)
Volume Seven (published July 1993)
Volume Eight (published November 1993)
Sharks Patrol These Waters: The Best of Volume, Part II (published May 1995)
Volume Seventeen (published January 1997, the final issue)

Dickhead warning

One of Volume's contributing writers was a certain sitcom creator now better known for ruining his own life by being a raving bigot and a colossal twat. I figured I should mention this to avoid any jumpscares if you ever pick up a copy yourself and see his name pop up. But he didn't run the magazine and he's not benefiting in any way from me buying these off eBay so whatever.

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