I thought you looked a bit different…

You may have noticed we’ve made some changes to our look and content.

Welcome to the new Cream. New, but fairly retro.

The end of last year marked the 25th anniversary of Cream magazine. Yay us! But instead of looking back at our past, we’ve decided from now on to look back at the past: to the attitude and styles of the modernist era, which is looking pretty damn good in contrast to today’s mad world.

Not to get meta on you (God knows it isn’t working for Mark Zuckerberg) but we will be subscribing to the new metamodernism. I kid you not and, yes, it is a thing.

The magazine will continue to present new products, ideas and ideologies, but ones that hint or even hark back to a time when things were, well, more pleasant. Of course we’ll also be championing brands whose primary aim is to make our future a safer, fairer, more eco-friendly and fun one.

While we’ve been progressive for the most part over the past quarter of a century (admittingly mixing up popular culture on the side), we’re kind of tired of trying to keep up with the ‘new’ thing – especially when the thing we’re supposed to be keeping up with is hocking stuff we’ve seen before (but boy was it done better back then).

In regard to reviewing movies, music, books and games, we’ll be looking more toward covering quality reboots and reissues, new takes on classic gems, credible sequels to excellent franchises, anniversary editions, biographies of brilliant peeps in the arts… you’ll get the gist.

What we’ve decided is this: the present entertainment industry is stuck in a sad state of sameness and stupidity, which is a shame because it could be taking advantage of the beauty and credibility of hindsight, and delivering bigger, brighter, better versions of the past.

Instead, there are just too many crass people making headlines these days – for not doing much at all; dying to be noticed by being trashy, messy, happily dumbed down or just plain lazy.

Since crassness and homogeny are words we rarely even like to write down, we find ourselves halting at Madonna and Sam Smith’s Vulgar duet, taking a deep breath, and turning around to face the opposite direction.

Cream Issue #01 cover redesign by Australian fashion designer Akira Isogawa.

Cream will now avoid promoting the tryhards and hype-inflated celebrities of today – little people, really, when you compare them to the greats; egomaniacs who worry to ensure their star shines bright in an Insta without realising their future legacy is going to be very dim.

Instead we’ll be presenting people, places and products that are, to various degrees, influenced by the best of yesteryear. Musicians, actors, designers, inventors and brands that, like us, realise pop culture has hit a proverbial brick wall.

 

It’s time we did a Take 2. To re-present quality pop culture. Tweak it | upcycle it | remix it | reboot it | heck, even shed some new light on it, but do it with a sense of respect, style and dignity. Heck we’ll even forgive Doja Cat for her trashy ways thanks to a killer Dionne Warwick sample in new single Paint The Town Red.

People used to say “let go of the past” but our new motto is to “let go of the future”. Forget trying to be fashion-progressive; stop worrying what might be, or how long you’ve got to go. Pause and take a moment out of every day to realise the marvellousness of life right here, right now.

Myself and Cream‘s contributors look forward to adding a little to this marvellousness with our stories, reviews, occasional hacks and fabulous finds.

Here’s to filling life with fantastic thoughts, brilliant events and awe-inspiring thingamajigs, even if at times you might sense you’ve seen it somewhere before.

Welcome to the new retro-modern.

Antonino Tati, Editor

Cream

PS: Cream welcomes your feedback; feel free to hit us up at cream@pobox.com.