A SNEAK PEAK INTO SCATTERBRAIN MAGAZINE! Where The Underground Gets LOUD
There’s something brewing between Montréal and New York City, and no it’s not just overpriced matcha and trend fatigue, It’s the steady rise of Scatterbrain Magazine, an arts and culture zine that’s quietly becoming the go-to bible for the next wave of creative misfits, beautiful minds, and fashion anarchists.
Born from the bones of youth art mags from the ‘80s and reimagined by a crew of Gen Z & Zillennial artists, Scatterbrain Magazine is more than a print publication, it’s a stitched-together snapshot of our time. With roots in outsider art, street photography, post-Y2K fashion, raw blog energy, and hyper-local music scenes, it’s the kind of magazine that makes you feel seen and cooler just by picking it up. It doesn’t scream for your attention, it hums with it.
The word “Underground” has to be the most brilliant way to say not-popular-YET. It implies that it’s good enough to be popular but at the same time, there is an essence in its core meaning of never quite selling out. This is the kind of magazine that one SHOULD but never WOULD find at a popular hair salon lobby.
I dove into the Spring Issue, and here is a SNEAK PEAK! They sell their issues directly on their shop along with other things for sale like shirts and totes, see here for their past issues.https://scatterbrainmagazine.ca/pages-main/issues.html
Every launch, every collab, every softgrain photo in Scatterbrain magazine feels like something whispered from one downtown to another. Whether it’s a fashion show bedazzled with rhinestones and chaos, a DIY gig at a skatepark, or a heartfelt blog entry on love and Fleabag, there’s an intimacy to it all like being handed a love letter in the form of a magazine.
The heartbeat of the magazine is unmistakably early 20s energy: sharp, curious, chaotic, kind. It’s refreshingly earnest in a world addicted to irony. And somehow, everyone wants in. Everyone wants to be a part of whatever this is. We attend a lot of events, launches, reviews and they are good fun but this one was special in not juust a nostalgic way of re-visiting my Gen-X years, but of watching what I believe are creative flickers that are going to start a fire soon. Keep your eyes on these kids some of them will actually go somewhere and I’m here for the journey.
Times don’t actually change that much. My college and university parties looked so much like this youthful takeover of the S.A.T.. but one thing I consistently do notice about the younger generations is that they are literally nicer lol. It’s just not ok anymore to form alienating cliques and bully everyone else outside of them. Girls aren’t trying to be “Heathers” anymore, they are still trying to be cool but on their own terms and not at the expense of anyone else. And maybe that’s the charm: there’s no red velvet rope. Scatterbrain magazine invites you in whether you’re a seasoned creative director or a kid from Chicago with a camcorder and a dream.
It lives where underground becomes overground, in the spaces between bedroom walls covered in xeroxed flyers and late-night subway rides. In a culture obsessed with polish, Scatterbrain magazine celebrates the glitch. The rawness. The soft-core chaos of becoming. It doesn’t care if your art is perfect—just that it’s yours. And that kind of energy? That’s what movements are made of. That’s what we at BestkeptMTL LIVE for.
Thanks for inviting us to the Scatterbrain magazine ISSUE 5 launch party and throwback fashion show. We are honored that you felt aligned with our online magazine and can’t wait to catch more great vibes and think of ways to collab.
That was Art in the underground. Now, we can skip to the overground and commercial with PLURAL!
