Forward-thinking record label Coyote launches charitable new zine

Tomas Fraser founded forward-thinking underground record label Coyote back in 2012. It was, he tells It’s Nice That, a chance to “give instrumental grime a home and put out music I felt was under-represented at the time.” You’re right, we don’t often cover instrumental grime on INT, but go with us on this one.

Since the heady days of 2012 — that magic year when Julian Clary won the tenth series of Celebrity Big Brother — the label has gone on to rack up 27 releases by the likes of AJ Tracey and E.M.M.A. Today, Tomas and the team has announced an exciting new proposition: the first edition of a potentially annual new physical zine that’s been put together with the aim of making money for Crisis, the charity for single homeless people up and down the UK.

A “physical newsletter of sorts, full of exclusive interviews, op-eds, charts, release re-caps, photos and more, designed to bring label fans and artists closer together,” the first issue of Cyte Recs is on sale right this second.

“I was thinking about the idea of community at the back end of last year quite a bit and thought, I should give something back to all those people around the world who constantly buy records from us direct and come to parties and listen to our Rinse FM shows and just try and engage from wherever they are, because they keep me and the label going,” Tomas says when we ask why he’s decided to dive headfirst into the world of print. “I still think a physical product is incredibly important – and worth the effort – on a time when everything is so readily available online.”

Tomas admits that he’s out of his depth when it comes to “anything technical or software-based” in the realm of design, so he asked his good friend Tom Cotton to work on the zine. Handily, Tom is a senior designer at Atlantic Records, which is always useful.

50% of all sales of the first issue will go directly to Crisis.