Off-Kilter Media launches Alphabetical Order
Over the years, Felton Kizer and his Off-Kilter Media properties have gained a reputation for consistently thoughtful conversations & tasteful presentation. Carefully curated by Kizer himself, Off-Kilter’s outputs have ranged from profiles featuring some of Chicago’s favorite fashion designers like Sheila Rashid & Chelsey Carter, fantastic community-building events with cocktail menus to match and several print publications - most notably, Off-Kilter Mag’s ‘Womyn Like Us’ issue highlighting dozens of the most inspiring ladies in the city’s creative spaces.
As the decade comes to a close, Off-Kilter shares their latest outlet - a music-focused digital publication dubbed Alphabetical Order. Birthed out of a partnership with Sofar Sounds Chicago, the platform takes the inclusive, human-focused lens we’ve come expect from Off-Kilter and applies it to an endless stream of talented musicians that could use a little more of the spotlight. On the heels of their announce & first public event, we caught up with Felton Kizer to learn more about Alphabetical Order.
From Off-Kilter Mag to KIZER Quarterly we’ve always enjoyed the work you & your team have put together, what are we in store for with Alphabetical Order?
At its core, Alphabetical Order is Off-Kilter Magazine. It’s rooted inclusive storytelling, however, we’re doing a deep-dive within music and music culture. You can expect AO. to be people forward, inclusive, but a bit “funky”, in terms of aesthetic. Yes, we’re still portrait driven and even a bit minimal-- just a bit more playful.
You can also expect conversations about music, but also about people’s favorite cereal. AO. is the place to chat with musicians about any and everything-sometimes non-music related topics.
When we spoke a few months back, you mentioned a priority of Alphabetical Order would be to cover artists that are typically underrepresented. Nearly a dozen interviews in that appears to hold true as each artist covered on the site thus far is a name we’re completely new to. Can you share a little more on the approach to selecting the artists you’ll be covering?
Alphabetical Order was birthed out of a partnership with our friends at Sofar Sounds Chicago. Initially, we wanted to do a deeper dive within music via Off-Kilter Magazine and KIZER Quarterly, but we received a lot more interest than we anticipated. As of now, we’re sitting on a hundred interviews from musicians.
The Sofar Sounds Chicago team pitch us to their musicians each month, and then those musicians recommend us to their fellow musician friends. I never wanted to navigate music journalism because I have a particular taste when it comes to music. Then, I realized that it wasn’t my job to “like” someone’s music. My job is, to tell the truth, first and tell compelling stories.
Alphabetical Order’s content quietly kicked off this October, however, last week marked the first major announcement as well as the first Orderly Session. What did we miss & how can our audience attend one in the future?
You missed two amazing musicians, Alexander Wren and Small Places. Technically speaking, we’re still in our “soft launch.” We have so much content, that we wanted to start releasing it. Sign up for a newsletter- it’s v cute and straight to the point. (we promise not to sell your information to big companies)
As we approach the new year, what do Alphabetical Order’s 2020 goals look like?
Aside from telling the truth and compelling storytelling, we have a few event series that we plan to introduce and an audio series- hosted by Keiph Oliver.