As all of our local businesses and lives are adapting to the times that we are in, Activator Magazine is also adapting to the times as well and have announced that they will be skipping the month of April for having a physical print copies. From the Activator Magazine facebook page:

So the world is crazy right now. In light of everything going on in relation to COV-19 we’ve decided to not have a print edition of Activator Magazine for April. We’ll move the cover artist for that issue into May. Hopefully we’ll be back with a full regular print issue at that point.

However in its place we are going to release a special digital “Stay and home and listen to music” edition. It’ll have some good content (we’re still figuring out what that’s going to be). We’ll also be working on some Spotify playlists for the Activator community and maybe some fun surprises.

Happy March, y’all! Did you know it was March? This is a post to let you all know that we now have the newest issue of Activator Magazine. This one features some people we know featured on the cover – that’s right, it’s the band Bottom Bracket, who have their new and debut album Don’t Care Enough To Stay coming out on Rat King Records later this month.

This issue also features an interview with Chicago-based indie group Ratboys, album reviews, live show calendars, more interviews with Mary Jo Curry, Sunshine Daydream, Hot Sauce Universe, Tony Young, and Vertrell Yates. There’s also Springfield and Peoria scene reports, photospreads, and more.

All of this is available for free right now inside of Dumb Records, and various other businesses around town. We also have a few back issues available as well.

It’s February (five days in now), and we’ve got plenty of copies of the new issue of Activator Magazine in stock inside our store for free. What does this issue include? As you can see on the cover is featured local hip hop artist Ty Witty. There is a Q&A with him. In addition to that there are interviews with Americana band Wayward Motel, punk rock St. Louis band “The Uppers,” the 13 year old singer song writer Ella Gibson, local rapper Prez A. Dent, and with electronic/synth artist Ricki Marvel. In addition to that there are photo spreads, album reviews, Central Illinois and St. Louis live music show calendars, and other tid-bits here and there.

Activator is available for free inside of our store and at other locations around town. Consider supporting what they do and signing up for their online Patreon campaign!

Look at that, it’s Jeff. And Jeff is holding the brand new issue of Activator Magazine for December 2019, which we were just stocked up with in our store. The new (free) Activator this month is the special art issue. This means it’s packed with tons of pages featuring works by local artists. There’s a Q&A with Thom Whalen, local painter and professor at Lincoln Land Community College. Also a Q&A with Clare Frachey, local artist, and with Jon Griffin, Decatur-based artist specializing in poster design. Plus there’s a local artist directory! In addition to all of that there is the usual Central Illinois and St. Louis show calendars!

Pick up your copy for free at Dumb Records and many other spots around town. Also consider checking out and donating to the ongoing Activator Patreon campaign.

Wow, and whoops! We can’t believe that we are already nearly halfway through another month over here. We were a little late in getting our fresh stack of Activator Magazine in this month, but now we have them, and we are telling you about them. This is actually the biggest issue of local music free publication Activator Magazine yet, with the most pages (40 or something)!

This time around featured on the cover is long-running Champaign-based indie rock group Elsinore, who recently put out a new album called A Life In The 21st Century. You can read more on that and an interview with them by picking up a free copy of Activator Magazine today! In addition to that there are the regular album reviews, and show calendars, but also an interview with Melody Jane Wachel and Amber Skies about diversity in DIY music, an interview with Sean Neumann of Jupiter Styles, Asa Dawson, photos of Pygmalion Music Festival, an interview with The Homeless Gospel Choir, a Hollowicked Recap, interviews with Wild’ Out and K3hlab, and much much more. Wow, that’s packed.

Activator Magazine can be found at Dumb Records for free at all times and a bunch of other spots around town. Check out their online Patreon campaign and consider donating to keep it going right here!

Yes, it is October we can still hardly believe it. And we can hardly believe that it’s a week into October. And we can hardly believe that we’ve been around here downtown for over nine months at this point and coming up on one year. And we can’t believe that Activator Magazine is on their like 16th or 17th issue and we have copies of that new issue inside of our store right now. We’ve got a big ol’ stack.

This issue is packed with a lot of stuff, as always. This includes album reviews and live music calendars for Central Illinois and St. Louis. This also includes interviews with bands Master Bastard (as featured on the cover), Prevention, Dirty Rotten Revenge, and Radio Buzzkills. There’s an interview with a new festival going on in Bloomington next month called Midwest Extreme Fest. There’s an interview with Gorecore FX and a photo-spread from Fashion Oddities fashion show that happened last month. Also an interview with local hip hop artist Valid Baby. All of that and much, much more.

Come pick up a copy for free at any time our store is open (10:00am – 8:00pm every day). And if you would like to go the extra mile and support Activator Magazine with the amazing things they are doing for our area, we highly recommend paying a visit to their Patreon page!

Oh yeah, what’s up we got a new issue of Activator Magazine in our store *available for free*. In fact, we’ve already gone through one batch of these real quick and have already been re-stocked! On this month’s cover featured is a handful of Central Illinois hip hop artists including TaQsem, T-Roni, Kid Ziggy, Pappa Luke, and Otto Sans. Ken No, columnist of Activator, and host of Hiphophumpday on 88.3 WQNA is also featured on the cover, and Ken put together the featured story recapping the current state of hip hop in the 217 area listing off a lot of the active players.

We are also excited because there is an exclusive interview with Shonen Knife from Japan, who will be playing here in Springfield at Rock N’ Roll Hardee’s on September 30th. In addition to that there are album reviews, local and St. Louis show calendars, interviews with Rather Dashing, Retirement Party, Zzo, and much much more. This is the biggest issue of Activator to date!

Come pick up a copy for free at Dumb Records (we are open pretty much all day every day), or other local businesses around town.

Today we bring you the second Activator Magazine video feature they have done, we are really digging these! The video was put together by Crowdson Creative, who also did the last featured Activator video and interview which was shot partially in our space for the band Blushe. This time around the featured artist is Vincent Sebastian and his backing band, who just put out the album Interference earlier this summer. The video features clips of Vincent Sebastian performing a couple of songs and also sitting down and doing an interview. You can check all of that out on the video below, or also on the Activator facebook page. Vincent Sebastian is featured in another print interview inside this month’s latest issue which is now available for free inside of Dumb Records and other varios locations.

It’s a brand new month so we’ve got a brand new issue of Activator Magazine! The local / Central Illinois D.I.Y. Music-focused magazine has been going over one year strong at this point. Who has collected every issue?

On this month’s cover is local acoustic singer/songwriter Ben Bedford. Ben put out a new album The Hermit’s Spyglass at some point last year. His featured interview in Activator this month was actually conducted by Tom Irwin himself, another long time local musician.

You can also find album reviews, another interview with Vincent Sebastian, who also just put out a new album called Interference earlier this summer. In addition to all of this there is an interview with Pierre Berry – who has started “The Music Program Academy” teaching kids how to record and create music at the Salvation Army here in town. As usual, there is a writeup on the 217 hip hop scene put together by Ken No of “Hip Hop Hump Day” on 88.3 WQNA. Aaron Uncanny Phillips interviews local recording engineer at HISO Music, Shawn P. Christine Pallon of the bands Spandrels and Carly Beth out of Champaign/Urbana does a write-up on the recent “Girls Rock! 2019” event. There is a photospread from Audiofeed Music Festival which took place in Urbana last month, and as always Central Illinois and St. Louis live music calendars.

You can pick up you copy of Activator Magazine for free at Dumb Records and various other locations around town. Also check out the Activator Magazine Patreon page if you want to be a contributor to support what they are doing!