CONTRIBUTORS

Writer

In 1975, Legs McNeil co-founded Punk magazine, serving as the publication’s “resident punk,” which involved drinking, interviewing rock stars, and spreading chaos wherever he went. In 1988, McNeil’s drinking privileges were permanently revoked, and he became a senior editor at Spin before releasing the books Please Kill Me (1996), The Other Hollywood (2005), and Dear Nobody (2013). In this issue, McNeil spoke with Blondie’s Debbie Harry and Chris Stein about making the cover art for KooKoo, Harry’s debut solo album, with artist H.R. Giger.

London-based Nell Kalonji is senior fashion editorat-large for AnOther Magazine and a guest fashiondirector-at-large at Luncheon. She has collaborated with photographers such as Alasdair McLellan, Collier Schorr, Craig McDean, Jack Davison, and Nadine Ijewere. For this issue, she styled cover star Shygirl for her fantastical 1950s-inspired shoot. “Shy and I love collaborating on editorials like this,” says Kalonji. “It allows us to play with a wider range of characters than we can for stage or carpet looks. Shy was transforming in front of our eyes and getting into character, but it felt really natural— like this is her world.”

Writer madison moore is a writer and DJ based in Providence, Rhode Island. He is the author of Fabulous: The Rise of the Beautiful Eccentric a 2018 ode to fabulousness as an act of queer resistance published by Yale University, where he received his PhD in American studies. moore has contributed to The Atlantic, Theater, and the Journal of Popular Music Studies. This summer, he will be the scholar-in-residence at the Sag Harbor arts organization the Church. In this issue, the writer introduces a conversation between the genre-defying musicians Steve Lacy and Brontez Purnell.

Founder | Editor-in-Chief

SARAH G. HARRELSON

Senior Editor

MARA VEITCH

Senior Creative Producer

REBECCA AARON

Fashion Directors

ALEXANDRA CRONAN, KATE FOLEY

Associate Editor

ELLA MARTIN-GACHOT

Editorial Assistant

SOPHIE LEE

Copy Editor

EVELINE CHAO

Junior Art Directors

HANNAH TACHER, ORIANA REN

Contributing Art Directors

MAFALDA KAHANE, SARA PENA

Editor-at-Large

KAT HERRIMAN

New York Contributing Arts Editor

JACOBA URIST

Podcast Editor

SIENNA FEKETE

Chief Revenue Officer

CARL KIESEL

Publisher

LORI WARRINER

Italian Representative—Design

CARLO FIORUCCI

Contributing Editors

JULIA HALPERIN, LILY KWONG, MARTINE SYMS, FRANKLIN

SIRMANS, SARAH ARISON, DOUG MEYER, CASEY FREMONT, MICHAEL REYNOLDS, DOMINIQUE CLAYTON

Interns

LAINE ALLISON

ISABELLA BARADARAN

CAROLINE BOMBACK

MARIA CLARA COBO

ELIZABETH COHAN

SOPHIE COLLONGETTE

MARIANA DE JESUS SZENDREY

AMELIA STONE

Prepress/Print Production

PETE JACATY

Senior Photo Retoucher

BERT MOO-YOUNG

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ISSN 2638-7611

WALTER PATER, THE 19TH-CENTURY ART critic, once wrote that “all art constantly aspires towards the condition of music.” It’s true— when a meal or a painting or a piece of writing comes together perfectly, it sings. Our summer music issue takes a deep dive into this idea. We turned to artists, writers, musicians, and people who do a little bit of all those things, and set them the insurmountable task of defining their relationship to sound. Studio Frequencies, our portfolio focused on the music that keeps artists company in the studio, is one approach to this. In it, Jordan Wolfson points out the absurdity of the exercise, responding to a question about his earliest sonic memory with, “Insane question.”

Wolfson is right. Music is so intimately intertwined with daily life and with memory that it’s almost impossible to account for its influence on our lives. We discovered this ourselves while putting the issue together.

The following pages celebrate a group of artists who pull inspiration from across disciplines and channel it into music. Brontez Purnell—novelist, poet, and a musician in his own right—speaks with alt-R&B icon Steve Lacy about “flow, melody, and cadence,” three formal qualities shared by musical composition and narrative form. Martine Syms and Ben Babbitt, frequent collaborators who teamed up to create a soundscape for Syms’s first solo exhibition at Sprüth Magers in Los Angeles, discuss music’s centrality to their existence, and their anxieties about and experiments with A.I.-generated vocals. Poet and cultural critic Hanif Abdurraqib contributed three graceful paeans to the albums that changed his life. Our summer poetry portfolio, curated by Associate Editor Ella Martin-Gachot, sees three of the form’s boundary-breaking contemporary voices share sound bites from their summer hideaways. Shygirl, the issue’s cover star, talks to playwright and critic Jeremy O. Harris about building the music career that she fantasized about during her early Tumblr days in Southeast London.

Summer is about experimentation and creativity, but it’s also a time of unexpected community. For this reason, we’re thrilled to present our special limited-edition artists cover—shot by William Jess Laird as part of our first of two Hamptons issues guest-edited by Joel Mesler—which spotlights a spectacular group of artists who have found camaraderie together during long summer days out east. The limited release, which will be available in select locations starting in late June, is a testament to coming together and the intimacy of the season, and we’re very proud to see it out in the world.

I hope that this issue provides you with some inspiration—for your summer playlists, dinner table conversations, and beyond.

Sarah G. Harrelson Founder and Editor-in-Chief @sarahgharrelson Follow us @cultured_mag