I started EST in 1991 after a couple of years of growing fascination for unusual, underground music, matched by a growing annoyance at the lack of information on it. As luck would have it, the first issue of EST appeared almost simultaneously with several other similar zines, notably Music From the Empty Quarter and Fractured. At the time, my main interest was in the various forms of industrial music, however, later issues of the magazine have reflected a growing interest in other innovative areas of music, such as free improvisation and contemporary "classical" music.
The seventh and final issue of EST was published in June 1996. I collated quite a bit of content for issue 8, but other pressures in life made me decide to fold the magazine before it was ever published. Since then, I've contributed a couple of articles and many reviews to The Wire magazine, but time for writing about music remains short.
Most of these web pages have been extracted with minimal alteration from the original issues of the magazine. Please be aware that addresses and other details will therefore be out-of-date. The Directory, which draws on material from issues 1 to 6 is for historical reference only!
All contents of these web pages are copyright © 1998 of the original authors and artists, unless otherwise noted (this mainly applies to the Unacceptable Face of Plagiarism? article, which is copyright-free), however permission is (of course!) granted to make WWW links to any of these pages. In particular, you may not reproduce my web pages at your own web site without my permission.