Alright folks, we’ve got a lot to talk about and an ever-depleting word count to do it in, so let’s get right into it.
This March 2015 issue is a special one for a couple of reasons. It marks a satisfying personal payoff for me because it’s a near exhaustive realization of a goal set back in the summer. At a strategic planning meeting, Discorder’s finest came together to talk about what we’d like to see in the next year from the magazine. We agreed that one of the things we do really well is highlight content that’s hyper-local and generally emerging, but something I’ve had the personal desire for is pursuing stories beyond our bread-and-butter band profiles. I wanted to showcase other areas of the Vancouver music scene and a result of this is our latest issue.
We’re taking a look at areas that don’t always get the same attention as the musicians performing on stage in front of you, like our cover feature on Silver Fox Postering, a local postering company with an amazing outlook on building community, or our profile on prominent recording studio Little Red Sounds and the man at the helm of it, Felix Fung. We also caught up with Noise Floor Recording’s Jordan Koop and talked about his recent experience as an understudy for Steve Albini in France, as well as a piece on Pacific Rhythm’s new brick and mortar location, some of our regular columns, and, just because having no band features would be ridiculous, we have a piece on electronic ambient duo Sur Une Plage. It’s a fairly unique issue and I’m immensely proud of everyone who worked so hard to make it a reality.
Now that you’re familiar with what to expect in the pages to come, I guess we should address my note’s titular “farewell”: mine, to all of you. March 2015 will be my last issue as editor-in-chief of Discorder.
It’s not like this editor’s note is my literary equivalent to dropping the mic. I’ll be staying on through next month in a supporting role but as far as having a direct, open channel to our readers, this is it.
After suffering stage-three writer’s block for the last several weeks, I found myself pursuing the Discorder archives and gandering at previous editors’ farewell notes, hoping for some inspiration or maybe a hint of what direction I should take my goodbye in. The general consensus of exiting editors seems to be the same every time: their experiences at Discorder were incredible (like mine have been), they enjoyed getting to know the rad staff and students at at CiTR and Discorder (sometimes they’re too rad), they couldn’t have been prouder of getting to watch countless writers, photographers, and illustrators develop (I know I couldn’t be), and no matter how amazing all of these things were, it was time for them to move onto other things. Paraphrasing aside, I couldn’t have put it better myself.
Twenty months—or just over one-and-a-half years—may not seem like a lot, but it’s hard to quantify this kind of a job with increments of time. The reality is this was the kind of job that permeated every aspect of my life, ranging from being introduced at shows as the editor and getting to hear some of my favourite albums before their release date, to getting texts from writers at 3 a.m. and checking my emails nine times a day. It’s an encompassing, fast-paced, fun world to be a part of, but with my time in post-secondary nearing its twilight, it’s time for me to leave this rollicking position for someone new to enjoy it.
In the meantime, until your new EIC takes over at the start of April, I feel great knowing that the magazine is in good hands: for the next month, our two section editors Alex de Boer and Robert Catherall will be co-helming the April issue as co-editors. In my time at Discorder, I’ve known both Catherall and de Boer as talented writers, supportive editors, and dear friends, and it’s fitting for me to see these brilliant, capable individuals join editorial forces in my absence. Working alongside them has made a dream job somehow even better and I’ll miss it probably more than I should.
In whatever capacity we may have known each other in—whether as a contributor, a reader, a friend, an online heckler, a co-worker, a collaborator, or even just someone I got to talk to at a show—thanks for having me. I’ll let my friend Vonnegut lead me out via signoff, one last time.
So it goes,
Jacey Gibb
Editor-in-chief