New Life Soundmagazine

The New Life Soundmagazine was a music magazine that was initially published as Depeche-Mode -Fanzine in Switzerland from 1983 and developed into an important medium for the electronics, wave and independent movement in the mid-1980s. The thematic focus of the magazine was on genres such as Electropop , Electro Wave , Post-Industrial , Electronic Body Music and New Beat . In addition, the New Life was one of the first music magazines to report in detail on the music from the Rhine-Main area that has become known as the Sound of Frankfurt .

The editorial team originally consisted of the Swiss Sebastian Koch, René Gastl, Bruno Klingler and Gabi Achermann, who founded the magazine. Most of the employees later came from Germany. The magazine appeared ten times a year. In the second half of the 1980s, a Swedish offshoot was published parallel to the German-language edition, which also made New Life famous in foreign-speaking countries. In addition to magazines like Frontpage , it was one of the most popular magazines for electronic music. In 1990, however, the publication of the New Life in Switzerland was unexpectedly stopped. In the German edition, authors such as Svenjoy, Ulrich Hinz and George Lindt were mainly active as authors, who later founded record companies themselves and in some cases also became independent publishers, including Kodex Records, Suhshia Light, Favorite Song Records and Fly Fast Records.

In June 1992, the magazine was revitalized by Armin Johnert and Andreas Tomalla ( Talla 2XLC ), who had left the Frontpage Technozine two months earlier or had stopped publishing it in Frankfurt am Main by the Technoclub . As early as the end of 1991, in consultation with Sebastian Koch, consideration was given to reanimating New Life Soundmagazine as a suitable replacement, since Johnert, the former editor-in-chief, and Tomalla, the journalist, were dissatisfied with the development of the Frontpage Technozine . This had shifted its focus from synthpop, EBM and wave to techno and house and has now been published as a techno scene magazine in Berlin (see the frontpage article).

In the years that followed, New Life - now with a new location in Hesse - became the mouthpiece of the electronics scene in the 1990s. The main focus was on electro, electro pop, EBM, IDM , ambient , electronica , crossover and industrial metal .

At the end of the same decade and with the appearance of similar magazines such as Bodystyler , Neurostyle and Vertigo , New Life ceased its activities.