Kimberley Thomson

Image: Simona Castricum by Jack Shelton - featured in Swampland Issue 01 

Swampland is a new Australian music magazine. 

Run by a small team, the project was sparked by a frustration at the current lack of print platforms for lengthy, intelligent music journalism. We’re not interested in click counts or amassing vast amounts of content. We won’t publish listicles or irrelevant best-of lists and we're not tied to the PR cycle.

Instead, we’re featuring some of the most interesting music writing and photography in the country. 

Our main aim is to create a space for good writers to make good work and to have a reason to pursue pieces that take quite a long time and quite a lot of thought. We are interested in work that can retain its worth over months, years, even decades; work that asks important questions about Australian music and wonders what that says about our larger cultural context.

We cover all genres, Australian locations and periods in our music history. 

We are paying contributors as well as we can for their efforts. 

Our first issue is due out this November. 

Image: Kirin J Callinan by Mclean Stephenson  - featured in Swampland Issue 01 

Issue 01

Every story in Swampland is the product of months of work on behalf of the editors and contributors. We have tributes to late, great underground heroes; definitive accounts of independent record labels; in-depth profiles of contemporary Australian musicians; plus some top-notch photo essays.

Contributing writers: Doug Wallen (Mess+Noise, The Big Issue), Jake Cleland (TheVine, Strine Whine), Marcus Teague (Rolling Stone, Mess+Noise), Sinead Stubbins (Junkee), Madeleine Laing (Who The Hell), Aimee Knight (Junkee, Rip it Up), Triana Hernandez (Noisey), Kish Lal (Thump, Poncho), Isabella Trimboli (Gusher), Alex Griffin (Overland, Tiny Mix Tapes) and Everett True (NME, Collapseboard).

Contributing photographers: Mclean Stephenson, Elliot Lauren, Jack Shelton, Agnieszka Chabros, Kurt Eckhardt and Jonno Revanche.

Launching a print magazine is an expensive beast, especially when contributors are paid for their work. (The editorial team is not being paid at this stage.) Into the future, Swampland is hoping to become financially sustainable via increased advertising revenue and magazine subscriptions. However, advertisers are understandably nervous to back a project that doesn’t yet have an established audience, and our overhead costs are relatively high. 

Our main costs for issue 01: 

Contributor budget: 5000

Printing costs: 6300

Art and design: 1500

Marketing and launch: 1000

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13,800

We have a little bit of capital behind us, but really need an extra leg up to get going and cover our largest cost: printing. 

As mentioned, our main challenge is getting started without the backing of advertising revenue. Our small circulation numbers work against us in this regard. We’d love to go larger, but staying small is a necessity at this stage; the strategy is to start off modestly and build over time. 

This campaign aims to demonstrate there is a hunger for this type of publication. By donating, you are directly supporting the writers, photographers, designers, artists and most importantly, musicians, that are helping make it happen. 

We are limiting our first print run to 1000 copies. By donating, you are securing your copy in advance. 

*Our header image is Nun by Kurt Eckhardt