PIST
ISSUE
ONE
ISSUE ONE
Rhyan Santos // jimmy kleiner darshana seneviratne // merryweather Thomas Hancock PISTZINE.tumblr.com
SKATE
BEERS
ART
PUNX
INTERVIEW
PHOTO
RHYAN SANTOS
rhyansantos.com | weekdaysareweakdays.tumblr.com
Okay, first things first, tell us a little about yourself.
Any cool people you’ve been working with we should check out?
I’m 19 year old kid from the Sunshine State of the west coast, California. I shoot photos and intern for Hall of Fame.. When i’m not doing that, I like to do hoodrat things with my hoodrat friends. We’re a bunch of ratchets.
A lot of cool people... Kris Mars, SLik d, Josh Farria and the rest of The Hellas, Socked Eye Crew, Shepard, Weird Eye aka Loofy aka K. Solar, Native Noise, The Family, Captain Noah.. A ton of brands too.. Like Plus One LA, Paper Dreams, District Goods, Brothers Stret lux., Hall of Fame, The Divinities, Wolf & Man. There’s a lot, but this is all family right here, give them all a peep, google them all.
How’d you get into photography? I’ve always been into it as a kid, just never really knew until I started coming up with lame ideas of shooting the things I liked. Was really inspired by my uncles back in the Philippines, and over time through othert photographers back home in Cali.. And from there, my inspiration grew from different artists, music, and many other cool stuff. What’s your favourite thing to take a photo of? I like documenting.. Especially the subculture/ people that i’m surrounded by. I know and I have met a lot of interesting people that I now call family, shooting them never feels like work and I always come out with the coolest photos because they’re all personalities.
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I’m gonna take a stab and say Bud, but what do Americans drink beer wise? Americans man, I don’t know to be honest.. But I like Blue Moon, Miller High Life, Heineken (my first beer), Mickeys (40oz), i’ll drink a Mike’s Hard when i’ve had too much beer and I just wanna chill and sip semi fancy, it’s kind of frowned upon because of how feminine it is but I don’t want to keep on drinking beer if i’m leveled, you know? Bud is okay, maybe during beer pong or other drinking games. Ever drank an Australian beer? What is Australian Beer!? I’d love to try though.
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What equipment are you using? Right now what I have in the bag is a Canon: 50d, A2, Ae-1, Ae-1 Program. Yashica t4, Instax Wide, and about two polaroid cams I do not use. Lenses, I only have a 24-70 and a 50mm. What’s happening with you and dinny? I hear you guys are cooking up a collab of some sorts. Ah man, that’s a secret.. Check him out, he’s a pretty dope photographer. Whose work are you currently digging and we should checkout? are there any people doing things we need to know about?
(Dubgiant), Johnny Theophilus, TheLeagueOfUs, Alex Aimaq, Victoria Jin, Darshana Seneviratne.. Damn there so many I can’t even remember.. But I always find myself looking at their work, whether it’s their blogs, Facebook, websites.. All of it. I probably don’t miss too much whenever they post something new. Their sites are either book marked, or I remember by heart. You’re given $10,000 out of the blue for a start up for a project of some sort. What would you do with it? Travel. Next big project has to do with my travels.. Stay tuned.
Man there is so many awesome photographers out there in the world right now.. But the people I always check up on and that people should know about is: Ed Templeton, Dylan Forsberg, Josh Farria, Ja Tecson, Minami Haynes (halfwaycrook), Rebekkah Castellanos, Amber Mozo, Daniel Yoon (Little Hills), Ryan Hunter, Aimee Nicolas, Gian Torres, Wayne Lu
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Photos and Front Cover photo by Rhyan Santos. The photo of Rhyan himself was taken by Aimee Nicolas - aimeenicolas.com
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INTERVIEW
skate
JIMMY KLEINER
First things first, how old are you, and what’s your local?
the taste of alcohol. Worth going to Wasted Years just for it.
I’m 19 and my local is Maroubra skatepark (maroubra scoot park).
What pros are you inspired by?
According to Facebook you’re working at Monster. Is that the best job ever?
Thats a bit of a toughie. I’d have to say David Gravette. I like riding transition and he is the king. Also Ben Raybourn, he has a cool style that I try and.. copy almost..
Yeah, I recently quit working there. It was pretty cool for a while but it gets pretty boring after a couple of years! You’ve skated at Q Bar for Wasted Years and Hot Damn a few times, how was that? I’m currently promoting and helping to run Wasted Years so I’m there every saturday. It is one of the funnest things to do. Get messy and try and ride a mini ramp inside a bar - its makes for some fun stories. The Hot Damn night was a one off but it felt just like wasted years but with more “hardcore” kids. Have you tried those moonshine jerry cans? They look sweet.
Okay, i’m probably going to sound like an idiot here, skating while under the influence, have you done it? was it different? I absolutely suck a skating and i’ve never really progressed past pumping up and around the transitions, mainly because i’ve never gotten past the nerves, so I’ve always wondered if rocking up to the park slightly pissed would kill the nerves, hahahah. I do it every week! I end up doing some stupid shit when I drink and skate. Like, skating bondi bowl at night after a few humble longies. Last week at Wasted Years I snapped my board jumping off the Q bar rafters.
Moonshine is gonna kill me one day. That stuff is so great. Its one of those lethal drinks that mask
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What’s the latest big trick you’ve pulled off? The newest one I’ve got pretty much down is the 540 boneless. Its still fairly small, height-wise. You can see it in my latest video that I made for the band, Perspectives. How much pairs of ripped jeans and thrashed shoes do you think you’ve gone through from skating? Oh man, there have been countless jeans come and go. Its funny, i have a wardrobe full of my old shoes because I use them when I go to festivals/ gigs and all the left shoes are pretty much in tact but all the right ones are fucked.
If you were given a free ticket to anywhere in the world, where would you skate? Woodward. Hands down. Ive had a few opportunities to go there but it never really worked out. Really keen to go there. How much do you hate scooters? So much that I’ve been in the southern courier twice for it! The older guys who know what theyre doing can do some pretty gnarly stuff. I’m friends with a few pros who are flipping and spinning all over the joint but those kids on scooter, man, theyre a killer.
What’s your favourite park in Sydney? Favourite park in Sydney is probably Maquarie Fields. Such a great park and cool people too.
Videos of Jimmy skating can be found on the PIST blog pistzine.tumblr.com
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INTERVIEW
PHOTO
DARSHANA SENEVRITATNE
darshanaseneviratne.tumblr.com
How long have you been shooting film, and how’d you get into it?
What cameras and lenses and film are you currently shooting with?
I picked up my dad’s old Pentax and started properly learning and thinking about my photos with that about one and a half years ago now, but before that I’d been playing with those stupid lomography cameras for a few years, and then with disposable cameras before that.
Pentax ME with a SMC 50mm, Hanimex MC 28-80, and Sigma Mini-Wide II 28mm.
After mainly shooting photos for fun, how has going to COFA affected your photography? It’s made me pretty inspired to try new things that involve actual concepts and ideas, but at the moment I’d still rather take my camera out and photo my mates doing stupid shit over photographing leaves swimming in water or something like that. Has meeting assignment deadlines drained your creativity, or has it been the opposite? I work pretty well under pressure, and I have a bad habit of working hard on the assignments I like and not working at all on the ones I don’t. My photomedia assignments were bawss, I got all HDs for them so no complaints there haha, so I’d say they boost my creativity a tad.
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Canon 600D with a 50mm and 18-55mm. You also dabble in a bit of drawing and painting, what made you focus on photography and not give design/illustration a good try? I was basically pretty shit at it hahah, I used to ogle all these mad artists and just straight up rip their work. So I stopped that and decided to try some new things; I’ve been looking up a heap of Signpainting recently and that shit is so good. How much more of a man do you feel after sinking a few Toohey’s Old’s? That’s my dads beer, I stick to Super Drys and Dry Dock
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I love working with video, and I’ve always wanted to start filming shows, but it seem’s like such a hassle. Don’t you just wanna drop your camera mid-set and chuck a stage dive? Hahaha yeah funny you mention that, in my Basement video I actually put the camera down onto one of the amps and was preparing to chuck myself off the stage, but then decided against it. Regretting it now. Yeah filming shows is both fun and shit, but usually if it’s not a band that I 100% know then I’ll be keen to film. Sol or Corona? Corona
Martin Kirby’s doco-style photos are always sick, and the king of the jack-of-all-trades Joel Birch is always a fave. A whole heap of phtoographers are always on the blog rounds. My mate Rhyan Santos from LA also creates real ace stuff, I’m doing some collab stuff with him at the moment and hope to do more in the future. Some bands/artists you’ve been listening to recently? The new Landscapes album is mindblowing, House of Balloons has been getting regular plays recently, and Basement and Break Even records have been doing the rounds since their recent shows. From pushing the shutter button, what work process do you take to give you a finished photo?
with lime, or without? Without. Whose photography are you digging the most right now? A whole heap, but my main inspirations would be Sisillia Piring, Charlotte Moulard, Nick Onken, Estevan Oriol. Melissa Findley’s photos are really cute and interesting, Oystein Knutsen (knutsenphotography. tumblr.com) produces quality work all the time,
I don’t edit my film photos, and for digital I tend to do a bit of curve adjusting and just try to enhance the photo a bit. I try to do that usual ‘construct the photo using the camera’ shit. I’m just learning photoshop at college.
All photos by Darshana Seneviratne.
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INTERVIEW
PUNX
MERRYWEATHER THOMAS CAFE GUITAR/VOCALS
facebook.com/merryweathersydney
For those who don’t know you, who are Merryweather? Well my name is Thom and the rest of the boys are Chris, John, Daniel (better known to the world as Frosty) and Alex (also preferably known as Pinko). We’re a bunch of dudes that as well as being best friends play together in an emo-homoerotic punk band Merryweather. We like to drink beer, jam, hang with the boys and all that kind of shit. Guess it would be right to mention most of us are twenty years old and studying at uni or working full time. How’d it all start? We’ve all been close mates since those crazy melodramatic and angsty high school years. I think the whole musical business started in year 9 or 10 when our local area was putting on a bunch of crazy punk, metal and hardcore shows. After hitting up a number of these, developing some form of consistency and ability with our instruments we decided to give making our own music a crack. Our first band we named “The Harvest”, we released a demo under that name but toward the end of our HSC we were kind of growing out of that style of music, plus I’d taken up smoking a shit-ton and being the pussy I am couldn’t really deal with the whole screaming shit. So that was when we wrote a couple of punk-ish
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rock jams and decided to explore a new sound. The name came to us one night, relatively drunk at our mates house getting gee’d up for a Gymea Vinyl Room session. Out of the blue Merryweather came to mind. We finished writing, recorded with Dave Petrovic out at Electric Sun Studios, dropped our E.P and the rest is history I guess. What are your influences? Musically, we draw a fuck ton of inspiration out of Brand New. They would have to be hands down my favourite band of all time. Jesse Lacey is the man. There is also heaps of inspiration taken from bands like Balance & Composure, The Swellers, Daylight, Title Fight, etc. Lyrically I’m inspired by whatever I’m feeling at the time. Usually this consists of relationships, breakups, etc. Wehhh.
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You released your debut EP, Wallflowers, last year - is their anything new in the works? Yeah we did, was nice to finally release something with good quality production, have it pressed and get some real positive feedback. In regards to what’s in the works… We’re looking at recording a much bigger EP toward the end of 2012 or early 2013. If you come to check us out live we play a butt-load of new stuff. I play guitar now as well and we’ve adopted a new tuning, so it’s different but we’re still trying to stick with them catchy punk vibes. How’s the song writing process go down? For “Wallflowers” essentially all the guitar parts were composed by John. Then we would come together, Chris and Frost would do their thing on drum/bass while Pinko learnt the leads. Then once we had the structure and the musical aspects down I would go home get really upset, cry a little bit and write the lyrics/vocals.
If Merryweather could get an endorsement from any beer company in the world, who would it be? Haha this is a risky one. I could get in plenty of trouble for saying the wrong thing. If it had to be beer I’m gonna go with Rech’s or Carlton Draught. If it were down to the spirits Captain Morgan is the way to go but only the original spiced gold. That Jamaican rum shit is fucking foul. You played Harry’s last show with Bridges at Space 44 the other week, and i’m so cut I didn’t end up going. It looked like the sickest show, how was it? Such a good show and a real positive thing to be a part of. Harry is a close mate of mine and as sad as it was to see him go from Bridges he truly deserved the ridiculous send-off that he got. That Space 44 is the tiniest of all places we’ve ever played, something I never thought possible after trying to fit three guitarists, a bassist and drummer into Yours & Owls down in Wollongong. The best thing to come from Harry’s Last Show was that it proved the Sutherland scene isn’t dead despite so many of our precious venues being shat on and shut down.
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I’m not too sure on whether or not they want to do any more shows at Space 44, but I would love to see the scene here spark up again. Not only because shows are good fun it’s just that it helps foster young kids especially those in High School who can play music, have the talent but just not the exposure to what a great, positive thing hardcore and punk shows are. If you could choose any two band’s to take you on tour, who’d it be? If it were down to Australian bands, I would love to tour with Paper Arms, Arrows or maybe even the Smith Street Band. Such great musicians. Would love to tour also with the boys in Harbourer, would be such a sick time! If we were to tour with any International band I’m gonna have to go with someone like Seahaven or Basement. Young dudes making really fucking good music. Would love to be a part of something like that.
Whitmore & Jen Buxton there and it was off tits. A real nice venue. What are your favourite band’s to play with? Basically playing with our mates is the best. Northern Lights, Harbourer, Laugh Riot, Unbranded Animals, Yo Put That Bag Back On are all great dudes making good music that you should check out. What should we expect to see for Merryweather in the future? Hopefully a heap more shows and a new EP. We got some great spots coming up and lately have played more shows than we’v ever done before. So hopefully if all goes well and you’ll continue to see us around playing!
What’s your favourite venue in Sydney? We havn’t really had the chance to play at many. But my favourite is most definitely Manning Bar. Such good vibes. I had the pleasure of seeing Frank Turner, Smith Street Band, William Elliot
Photos by Zack Prestoe facebook.com/prestography
PHOTOs
THOMAS HANCOCK
deaths-photos.tumblr.com
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