Even When it Makes No Sense: The Broken Flag Story:
Steve Underwood

A really lovely book on the Broken Flag label put out by the Dutch imprint Korm Plastics. The book’s text is comprised of conversations with Gary Mundy, and a wide range of Broken Flag associates, forming a sort of “oral history” of not just the label but a burgeoning subculture. An attempt to weave together stories into a coherent, printed, “definitive history,” one far beyond the reach of the sort of knowledge one could piece together by trudging old blogs. This originally appeared in the form of a zine series, Even When it Makes No Sense, but is expanded here. The rest of the book is comprised of an expanse of scanned ephemera, including j-cards, flyers, and tracts.

Completely essential for fans of Broken Flag, or noise broadly, but still of definite interest to anyone drawn to the aesthetics of transgressive collage art and fringe culture.

Even When It Makes No Sense is a nice-sized paperback. It’s short, at 144 pages, but packed with content. The interior pages are printed in black and white on a simple uncoated paper stock. The actual scans of content from Broken Flag, while high quality, are still leveled in such a way that the paper texture of the source material, turned grey, is still present, which I found pleasant aesthetically, as well as the ink spiders a little bit on the paper stock. As an object, it’s nice to have a collection of this visual material that doesn’t quite fall prey to the trappings of a glossy photo-book prison for subculture.

From Korm: “English cassette and record label Broken Flag was founded in 1982, and whilst not having released anything for a long time, it has never officially ceased to exist. Their primary interest was radical music, noise and power electronics. They first released music by label boss Gary Mundy’s project, Ramleh, but later also by Le Syndicat, MB, Controlled Bleeding, Giancarlo Toniutti and various Mundy solo projects.

Steve Underwood’s text appeared in a 2010 magazine, As Loud As Possible, but it is expanded here with additional interviews; updates; a reprint of two issues of Broken Flag’s fanzine, Even When It Makes No Sense; and reproductions of many of the label’s cassette covers.“