Rough Trade Edition Series

Nothing Feels Natural is an abridged editions of the zine that originally accompanied Priests' debut LP of the same name in 2017. It features a series of interviews conducted with the band by journalist Jenn Pelly in Washington, DC during the first days of November 2016.

A: Oh, They were sick to bloody death. They were ten years old, and already half of their lives had been spent sitting in that bottom group— Q: How else—A: —dealing with teachers who asked the class to do one thing, and the bottom group another; teachers who couldn't subtly differentiate their lesson plans; teachers who asked the class to turn to page fifteen in the workbook, while handing the bottom group a separate sheet…

Things are not always what they seem in these poems of trauma and transformation. Reflections and shape-shifters move through them: a child's balloon like a fish with a hook in its mouth, a raven disturbingly alive and dead at the same time. Pain is tracked to a bad tooth, but the source is uncertain, the memory unstable and changeable; the picture splinters into refracted light. Remembering, refusing and reimagining create mirrors, doubles and oppositions that tangle the thread, rejecting the simple, single way back.

Have you heard the story about the android that took to the operatic stage of eighteenth century London? Of the inventor who used musical chords to power an engine and fire a canon? What about the composer who helped the most beautiful woman in the world build a missile guidance system? Three True Tales About Music and Technology re-imagines these episodes from the sometimes tumultuous history of interactions between the sonic arts and technoscience as a series of folk tales and fairy stories—that just so happen to be true.

James Endeacott is the teller of many tales. The Tall Short Stories of James Endeacott range from psychedelic experiences when he was in the band Loop to making dreams come true as a judge on The X Factor, or looking after The Libertines at the beginning of their musical career and hanging out with Robert De Niro lookalikes in New York with The Strokes.

A collection of 13 pieces of courage and resistance, this is work inspired by protests and rallies. Poems written for the women's march, for women's empowerment and amplification, poems that salute people fighting for justice, poems on sexism and racism, class discrimination, period poverty and homelessness, immigration and identity. This work reminds us that Courage is a Muscle, it also contains a letter from the spirit of Hope herself, because as the title suggests, Pessimism is for Lightweights.

With one eye on social media and another on mental well-being, Luke Wright looks under the hood of a spluttering nation. Eschewing the formal verse structures of his previous two collections, Wright presents free-wheeling splenetic poems on the joys of pretentiousness, late-night carb-heavy FOMO, and the lay-bys and bypasses of a country that 'doesn't make anything anymore.' Shout these poems aloud in pubs, or whisper them in B&Bs. Keep an eye on the ones you love.

Do you count the number of adjectives you use, and the number of syllables in the words? Do you put things down only with your left hand or step with your right foot forward so that the left is always last? Counter Reform is a glimpse into the world of obsessive compulsive disorder, how it shapes every corner of your conscious mind, from the intellect to your social or anti-social life and sexuality. It is rarely tidy but often darkly funny, absurd, mathematical and something that needs to be resisted at every opportunity. This is an exercise in that resistance.

The Other Side of Nowhere is a radical, psychedelic journal of the end- times, whose poems portray a world of intransigence, a world where the safety of words like place or home have started to unravel. This pamphlet finds the author of The Promised Land: Poems from Itinerant Life (Penguin, 2017) exploring the American West, from forgotten gold rush towns in Arizona to the lives of historical figures from the Golden State's xenophobic history, allowing Naffis-Sahely to turn his wry worldly gaze on some of our era's most pressing subjects.

Cut & Stitch collects together some of the in-betweens and afterthoughts of Petrol Girls' latest record of the same name, from the perspective of lead vocalist and lyricist, Ren Aldridge. In a similar process to speaking between songs on stage, Aldridge develops and contextualises the ideas and lyrics on the record, writing in and out of them, and making links between them. Through a series of mini-essays, she explores cutting and stitching as a way of thinking about topics such as community, the environment, building solidarity, resisting perfectionism, emotional labour, gender and craft.

Steam Down or How Things Begin is a celebration of an influential weekly jam in Deptford, which author Emma Warren uses to explain the universal ways things are when new culture is being generated. She should know—she's been there when new music has evolved on multiple occasions. It also draws a line between the young London jazz musicians making waves internationally and the reggae soundsystems that operated further down Deptford High Street in the 1980s. It extends that line to the site of Deptford Docks, ten minutes walk down the same street, where ships left for the Caribbean hundreds of years ago.

Originally a one-page manifesto, this poignant and funny pamphlet documents over a decade of experiences, both supporting musicians with learning disabilities and being part of a D.I.Y. punk scene. Through anecdotes, observations and the voices of the people he's met along the way, artist Richard Phoenix shares moments that have stayed with him, and shows us how he re-evaluated his perception of Do-It-Yourself culture. Featuring Daniel Wakeford, Pertti Kurikan Nimipäivät, The Fish Police, Beat Express, Robyn Steward, Electric Fire and more.

These are words written during Patrick's mother's diagnosis of leukaemia and after her death—mostly under a tree on the mountain where he would speak with her. No perfectly crafted sonnets but the raw breath of grief—of trying to work out what was, is and will be. We write to escape ourselves and to find ourselves—these poems are a testament to a life and to love. We are alone in our grief but connected to others' grieving and words are the threads stitching us together. With an introduction by Patrick's brother, Nicky Wire.

A revealing examination of the dysfunctional songwriting partnership at the heart of one of Britain's most unpredictable and controversial contemporary rock 'n' roll bands, Sweating Tears with Fat White Family  features candid interviews by author Adelle Stripe with Fat White Family singer Lias Saoudi and guitarist Saul Adamczewski. From childhood traumas to adult squalor and critical success, it is a tale of bitterness, humour, excess, cruelty, and the vile affections that bind this exceptional pairing on their continued Orphean descent into the underworld. This exclusive edition features demonic engravings by printmaker Lisa Cradduck, inspired by Berber folklore and the grotesque 16th century drolleries of Richard Breton.

Nearly everyone who works in the bar is trying to make it as an artist or something. We are trying to make it as dancers, writers, shoe makers and DJs, actors, tattooists, costume designers and developers. We do not care about the bar and yet we find we cannot help but care a little. This is the story of how we became an odd family. In it you will also find lots of smaller stories, about rescuing a nest of swan eggs, pulling a corpse from the canal, and giving birth to half a watermelon.

Briony Bax leads the reader through the brutal world of mental illness and specifically an account of an individual's journey with schizophrenia. A world where sections, court rooms, locked wards, tribunals, and assessment centres form the backdrop of the daily living of sufferers and caregivers. Through honesty and testimony, it shines a light on the disastrous effects of government austerity measures on the mentally ill.

Acme Attractions tells the story of a place, and its people, that found themselves at the heart of one of the country's great cultural moments. While living and working through a now-legendary period of the capital's history, Don Letts and Jeannette Lee found themselves simultaneously experiencing the pleasures and pitfalls of youth while witnessing the birth and heady, early excitement of punk. Their story, told here through a conversation that is warm, intelligent and compelling, touches on the revolutionary feelings of that time, as fashion, politics, music and art were all re-made in real time and, as we now know, things would never be the same again.

We Are But Nothing takes place during a funeral in Argentina, when the unnamed narrator meets some of his old school friends after a long time away. What is a sad albeit boring occasion serves here as an excuse to explore the drudgery of our hyperconnected present and the thin line that divides life and death. We Are But Nothing is at times a hyper-realist fly-on-the-wall survey of human behaviour and at times a fantastical satire about the meaninglessness of life. Originally written in English and translated into Spanish by its author. Please DO NOT use the words 'magical' and 'realism' around We Are But Nothing.

 In Egg and Spoon, the artist and illustrator Rose Blake tells the story of a childhood fuelled on art and creativity, infused with travel and steeled by the more quotidian aspects of family life growing up with the artist Peter Blake. Surrounded by a cast of originals and eccentrics and taking in backdrops such as London, L.A. and Paris, Blake creates poetic snapshots of a family, with the joys of a life dedicated to art and the inevitable fragilities and poignancy of age and, pertinently, ill health. The effect is that of a literary photo album, with all the charm and character and emotional intensity those documents communicate.

Noting Voices: Contemplating London's Culture is author Haseeb Iqbal's take on the bubbling 'London Jazz Scene' and live music explosion that has consumed the capital in recent years. Having grown up within it all, Haseeb focuses on the spaces that have aided a scene so rich and layered, basing his reflections on five conversations from his 'Mare Street Records' podcast. He maps the scene's growth via the perspective of those who have provided the space, appreciating the instrumental role of such environments and the figureheads who have driven them. He navigates the unconventional template many of these spaces have observed, dissecting how a cultural movement, now internationally acclaimed, found its voice and established its identity. This story takes it back to the grassroots spaces and DIY communities who can be forgotten when an underground movement turns more mainstream. It appreciates a set of community-based values that have underpinned a radical cultural shift in London's sound, acknowledging the role of gentrification throughout, and the threat it poses to the spaces that birth and nurture this culture.

Algorithm Party is a debut publication in which an utterly original, fully-formed literary voice announces itself, somehow full of life, on the page. Liverpool's spoken-word performer Roy's deft, articulate and startlingly observed stories veer from the comic to the calamitous in a breath, cutting to the quick of the broad swathe of people and personalities that comprise his native city, from struggling parents to small-time criminals, pent-up white-collar workers to drinkers long lost to the ale. Roy's eye is as keen as it is generous, presenting, in the great tradition of English realism, the real lives of people up against it in all sorts of ways, muddling through, trying to make the best of it.