Praised as “proving bookish folk are the coolest folk…the literary fashion zine” by Time Out, “artistic & fabulous” by the performance poet Dr John Cooper Clarke, and “the scruffy literary mag” by Le Cool, Cold Lips enthusiastically celebrates “the accidental, the corruptive, the corrosive, the powerful, the beautiful” in the face of a host of urgent contemporary tribulations, from corporate control to data surveillance to celebrity glamour. This issue features interviews with and works by a slew of alternative creators working in visual arts, music, and writing.

Working from London to Berlin to Dublin, the individuals featured in this issue discuss a plethora of topics, from their creative interests and processes, to 1960s English rock, to the infiltration of old-school rap, to the future of counterculture under technological capitalism, to electro-psych music, to goth vintage boutiques. In between these interviews and essays, other sights and reads litter the magazine: poetry; photos from fashion shoots; paintings inspired by agoraphobia and Homer’s Odyssey; short stories on potage and poverty. The issue ends with reviews on new music and artwork, from harp to Dada electronica to handmade poetry pamphlets. An undercurrent (sometimes intensifying into overcurrent) of the issue is a reminiscence of late 20th-century Western underground culture, and reflection on the possible futures for such resistance and alternative imaginings in the 21st century.