It’s offbeat stimulation, it’s sort of post drug culture; you’ve got a whole generation that’s being taking drugs; they’re a lot more open, they’re a lot more into discovering the obscure.

Tristan: Drugs aren’t an issue really. Other parts of the media still treat it as an issue.

Steve: And that’s the sort of media hyperbole that doesn’t fool anyone anymore. People make their own decisions and are encouraged to. I think that’s why we do the more oddball, obscure stuff like random features about duelling or gout. I think what people like about that is that it encourages them to be into whatever they fucking want.

Justine: I think it’s quite refreshing because it didn’t push people into one train of thought. It doesn’t say you have to be this or have to be that, it’s more like whatever you think about or look at, just enjoy it because you don’t buy into a product at the end of it by reading it; you can’t buy into gout. You don’t feel like you’re being sold to.

Sleaze stands out from other music and style press because it successfully marries the vacuous world of clubbing with an extremely diverse spectrum of editorial which can read more like the Guardian than a style or music mag. What’s all this about?

Steve: Well club culture’s not a particularly high brow thing is it really. It’s just getting a balance. People don’t really want to read about clubs, like I said they’re more into this offbeat stimulation.

Tristan: That’s where music mags get it wrong because basically clubs aren’t that interesting, there’s only a certain amount you can write about them. To turn various people that work in that industry into gods is dishonest. It’s a listings mag, it’s got it’s roots in club culture but that’s not the end of it.

Someone brings up the arch toilet of magazine publishing; The Ministry Magazine.

Justine: Bringing out another magazine like that. Who cares, who fucking cares. It’s crap, it’s buy into our club, buy into our clothes, buy into this buy into that, it’s crap. Nobody needs another magazine like that. It’s low brow, in fact it’s pavement brow, gutter brow.

It struck me that I was sitting with some people who are forcing an important shift in emphasis away from the all too familiar agendas of the style and music press which is mainly driven by advertising. In the pub Justine talked about how they had been conscious not to put a face on the front of the mag, flirting with the potential buyer but also supporting the illusion of that star’s omnipotence. By not kow towing to established codes like the cover face, Sleaze Nation sets itself out from the rest.

It’s a good mag; it’s a fucking good mag and I am ready to die for it.

Apparently it’s available in R.Newbold shops across Japan if you too have been starved of meaning.