Meet the brother and sister who started their own art zine in Salinas with a focus on the local music scene.

They fight sometimes, but mostly they complement each other pretty well.

Karina Beltran, 19, and her brother Fernando Beltran, 24, started Lowpass Magazine about four years ago. She does photos and layout (a business student at Hartnell College, she has been pursuing photography since the eighth grade); Fernando, a musician and communications student at CSU Monterey Bay, is responsible for stories.

First glimpses of the project can be traced back to the siblings’ Instagram accounts circa 2018, but the debut issue of the actual physical zine (a word for a self-published print-work) dropped in 2019. Since then they have published four issues, producing about 40 copies each time.

“We wanted to have a magazine so people can flip through pages,” Fernando explains. The modern age has its disadvantages, it turns out. A link can expire, but a magazine is something concrete in your hands. “A piece of history,” he adds, with the same nostalgia that pushed Millennials and Generation Z towards vinyl and flannel shirts. “It may stay here longer than us.”

Their motto is: “We are here for music and art.” Lowpass Magazine can be purchased online and at a few select locations, such as the Monterey Museum of Art or Old Capitol Books in downtown Monterey. They also do “shows,” as they call them at various venues, such as Salinas’ Downtown Book & Sound, selling their zine and promoting Fernando’s debut album.

The name of the zine is related to a music term. A low-pass filter is an audio signal processor that removes unwanted frequencies from a signal above a determined cutoff frequency. But there is also an aspect of “low passing” that means passing something precious or secret from one person to another.

Editions include interviews with local musicians, other artists and even small businesses like Siren Records in Monterey. There’s also an appropriate amount of goofiness – crazy collages and semi-serious quizzes like “What musician spirit are you?”

Karina is the engine of the duo, outgoing and active, her brother says. He is the structured one; stuff in his room is always in order, Karina laughs. Both believe that, thanks to their differences, the final product is “way better.”

Learn more about LOWPASS MAGAZINE at Lowpassmagazine.wixsite.com or on Instagram at @lowpassmagazine