What is ‘Ply’?

Ply is a magazine about music, based in New York. Our first issue is slated to appear at the end of this summer.

But there won’t be, for example, any record reviews, at least not in the traditional sense, or any top-10-, desert-island, or check-lists; it won’t serve to say, “Here, check out this record;” but only “listen to what’s going on here.” Listen to what this does, why does this sounds good? what does this evoke? Some pieces are about the nuts-and-bolts of music: the experience of certain tempos in certain instances, or about the effectiveness of a particular phrase in a song; but others are more generally about the personal contexts and experiences that so dramatically color our experience of it.

We don’t specialize in any particular styles or eras—apart from merely what our writers happen to be into—and unlike commercial magazines there is no interest in being especially current. The art for the magazine comes from a variety of places, and serves not as illustration but only to, we hope, give a kind of color to what’s going on behind the words.

Ply will be printed in one colored ink on colored paper, seven inches square, and set in Times.