Colliding Lines are an international collective promoting and curating events that showcase the best alternative music, alternative art and alternative performance. We take our productions and artists on tour. We publish experimental literature, zines and music – through bespoke physical releases and downloads from our store, currently at our online store.

Want to join us? Here you’ll find open calls for upcoming or ongoing projects that we’d love your input in. If you have anything to pitch to us, please feel free to get in touch at .

Touring and Live Production

Colliding Lines produces and takes its events on tour across the UK and mainland Europe. Each tour is built around a shared bill of musicians, sound artists and performers, with line-ups adapted to the capacities and character of each venue. We work directly with independent promoters, artist-run spaces and small venues, and we handle all advance scheduling, technical specifications, travel logistics and on-the-night production.

Touring under the Colliding Lines banner prioritises fair fees and transparent budgeting. We cover artist travel and accommodation where possible, provide backline and PA support, and publish clear settlement sheets after each event. Performers are encouraged to travel together, share equipment and take part in post-show discussions, so that the tour functions as a mobile community as much as a series of concerts.

We regularly include site-specific and off-stage work in our tour programmes. This can mean a durational performance in a gallery, a tape-loop installation in a cafe, or an improvised set in a bookshop. The aim is to bring alternative performance into everyday spaces and to give each stop its own local texture.

Publishing and Physical Releases

Our publishing programme brings experimental literature, zines and music together in small, carefully made editions. We produce risograph-printed chapbooks, screenprinted cassette sleeves, letterpressed cards and hand-bound booklets, often combining a text work with a download code or a short-run audio object. Every release is designed in close conversation with the artist, rather than against a fixed house template.

Physical editions are usually produced in runs of between 50 and 200 copies. We use recycled and offcut papers where possible, and we bind, fold, stamp and number many items by hand in our Cambridge studio. This keeps costs low, keeps the object tactile, and allows each release to carry small variations that make it distinct from a standard commercial product.

Selected titles are distributed through independent bookshops, record shops and at Colliding Lines events. Artists receive a majority share of sales income, with the remainder put back into materials for the next release.

Digital store

All audio releases are available from our online store as high-quality downloads. We offer lossless formats alongside standard MP3, and most titles are priced on a pay-what-you-feel basis so that listeners can support the work at a level that suits them. Digital sales are split transparently with artists after platform fees, and a small reserve is kept for mastering and archival costs.

Physical items ordered through our online store are packed and posted from our studio, normally within three working days. We use recycled card mailers and plastic-free tape, and we post worldwide. If a release is damaged in transit or fails to arrive, we replace it free of charge.

Alongside formal releases, we periodically upload live recordings, rehearsal fragments and sound sketches as free or name-your-price downloads. These documents are drawn from our event archive and from touring sessions, and they are made available without artwork or fanfare, as a way of keeping the catalogue open and uneven.

Archive and Documentation

Colliding Lines maintains a working archive of recordings, photographs, posters, set lists and printed matter from its events. The archive is used to inform future programming, to support touring artists, and to preserve small-run materials that might otherwise disappear. It is not a closed collection: we regularly lend items for exhibitions, publications and research, and we welcome enquiries from curators and students.

We document each production as unobtrusively as possible. Audio is captured direct from the desk where permission allows, supplemented by room recordings that preserve the character of the space. Photographs are taken without flash and shared with performers before any public use. This means the documentation reflects the event rather than interrupting it.

Highlights from the archive appear in our digital store and in occasional printed retrospectives. We also use the material to make touring pitches, festival applications and funding reports, giving new contexts to work that was first shown for one night only.