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Monster Children 2020 Issue 066
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Austyn gillette Alex Pires
Monster Children 2020 Issue 066
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Aidan Mackey Drop 50-50 Photo Andrew Peters
Aidan Mackey Drop 50-50 Photo Andrew Peters
DEPT: INTRO PAGE: 014 MONSTER CHILDREN 066
Wow. Welcome to the world of 2020. Feel any different from what you did last year? Me neither. The lump and the headaches have definitely gotten worse, but other than that, same old same old. For this first issue of the new decade, we thought we’d hurl together a bunch of stuff from the fascinating, ever-changing, promise-filled world of NOW. Not the future, you understand—we’re talking about this exact moment and what that looks like for art and music, surfing and skate, and all the other baloney you baloney munchers like. It’s gonna be awesome. Can you believe it’s 2020? And can you believe this is the first and only time any of us will be alive for double numbers: twenty-twenty. Last time it happened was nineteen-nineteen (1919), which I’m pretty sure we all missed. Will we all miss 2121? Great question. The simple answer is maybe. The way science is going, you and I won’t be exiting the world until we’re 200 years-old. In February, a scientist discovered a molecular ‘switch’ that slows down the ageing process, making it possible for humans to kick on for decades past their use by date. But who really wants to live that long? Especially when right now everything on this planet is worse than it’s ever been… Or is it? Did you know that in the year 1919 (nineteen-nineteen), thirty-six bombs were mailed to prominent American politicians, the world was in the middle of an influenza pandemic (Spanish flu), and Hitler gave his first speech to the German Worker’s Party? Not eerily similar to what’s happening right now, but you can definitely draw parallels. A hundred and one years earlier, in 1818, a frog plague threw the European economy into turmoil, and the last of the Dodos met its end at the pointy end of a spear thrown by General Andrew Jackson. Roll back the calendar to 1717 and you have the worst electrical blackout in recorded history, a tonsillitis epidemic that decimates half the population of Japan, and the king of Morocco is assassinated by Omar Sharif. 1616: Chewing pieces of lead becomes fashionable in France, Emperor Kim Thayil invades Pearljamistan, and puppets are outlawed in Russia. 1515: the emergence of Donkey Pox. 1414: George III gets stabbed in the head with a heroin needle. 1313: Jesus Christ buys a single-wheel electric scooter and starts saying, ‘My dude.’ I could go on, but I think I’ve made my point—I’m high again.. So, don’t sweat Trump and coronavirus and that fucking Friends reunion, because 2020 is no better nor worse than any other time in human history. Go row your boat gently down the stream. It’s business as usual. X Crom
Art of the Escape. I N T R O D U C I N G T H E S TA PL E
nixon.com
THOM YORKE PHOTO: SE AN EVANS
THOM YORKE PHOTO: SE AN EVANS
CONTENTS 066
DEPT: CONTENTS PAGE: 017 MONSTER CHILDREN 066
031 20 UNDER 20 042 AUSTYN GILLETTE 050 WAVE POOLS 062 MODERN FUNERALS 066 GROUNDSWELL 072 ALEX OLSON 082 SEAN EVANS 090 DAMON GAMEAU 096 JAMES EVANS 102 ONE NIGHT IN LA 109 APOLOGY 110 TYRANNY & MUTATION
MAKING A LIVING LIVING Built around twenty-six profiles of self-made creatives from all over the world, Make a Living Living is a book that highlights how best to live and make a living at… living. From a photographer in Tanzania, a painter in Armenia and a sustainable fashion couple in Berlin, to a weaver in the US, a tiny home builder in Japan and a vegan chocolatier in Australia, the stories—and accompanying exercises—will inspire you to chase your dream creative career and lead a more simple, relaxed lifestyle. thamesandhudson.com.au
Smoke S LOW TI DE TOWE L Towels are basically giant face washers for your body, and your body, when you stop and think about it, is really just a long, weird extension of your face—the face being the first thing that forms in the womb. But regardless of what your obstetrician tells you, the fact remains that your body (which is basically your face) will occasionally get wet and you’ll need a massive towel like the one we just made with Slowtide to dry it off. This towel is made of the best towel fabric in the world and is guaranteed to lay flat on any flat, sandy surface so that you don’t get sand on your face/body. shop.monsterchildren.com
B A L L E T G R I P C O M PA N Y
B RIX TON : LUCAS B E AU FORT COLLEC TION
Ballet isn’t just something your little sister did after school before she discovered boys, cigarettes and huffing
Lucas Beaufort isn’t just a dreamer, he’s
paint—it’s also a rider-owned grip company with a ‘typographic look and disco undertones: clean enough for
a French dreamer. ‘I’m a French dreamer,’
the eyes, dirty enough for the dancefloor,’ or so says the two Aussie chaps who founded the company. Ballet
he says. ‘I hate saying I’m an artist.
reckons it’s about time grips were a complimentary accessory rather than a forced necessity. Check 'em out.
We’re all artists. I’m a dreamer because
houseofballet.store
I spend my life dreaming.’ Technically, patterns, birds and monsters he renders are splashed across this new range he created with our buddies who can do
DEPT: SMOKE PAGE: 019
though, he’s an artist; and the beautiful
no wrong: Brixton. Limited-edition and limitée et très sympa, bonjour, comment ça va? Sauf pour la bosse, je vais bien. brixton.com.au
VA N S U LT R A R A N G E E X O This is one comfortable-ass shoe. The Vans UltraRange EXO is armed with a co-molded UltraCush midsole, updated RapidWeld detailing, a lightweight, die-cut rubber outsole, and a breathable Old Skool-inspired upper, making it a fantastic shoe for running to the hospital with your britches loaded with guts, or even just moseying by a swan pond with your sweater tied around your shoulders like you’re in a TV commercial for the collection of love songs you just released with the money you saved delivering pamphlets for thirty years. vans.com
MONSTER CHILDREN 066
very nice. Or, as the French say, edition
Pete Conforto kept busy shaping surfboards, but always dreamt of a full-time design career. After studying 3 months at Shillington, he uncovered a brand new direction and motivation, leading him to land a job at top studio For The People.
“In a past life I worked in IT, but always loved art and design. Because I had zero formal training, a friend recommended Shillington. I actually considered the course 10 years ago, but you know what they say—timing is everything. Since graduating, I haven’t looked back. As a designer, every day is different. I get to make things that didn’t exist at the start of the day. We aren’t just creating pretty things, we’re helping people change their businesses for the better. I also love the opportunity to work with amazing people who really push you. I’m constantly learning new things and generally just having a good time.”
shillingtoneducation.com
Sydney • Melbourne • Brisbane • New York • London • Manchester
OUTE RKNOWN : R AMB LE R SHIRT Cut from a garment-dyed organic cotton twill that'll break in nicely over time, the Rambler Shirt is now your new favourite shirt even though you didn’t buy it yet. The shirt features a flap pocket to keep stuff like bubblegum and frogs in, with a pen slip for jotting shit DEPT: SMOKE PAGE: 021
on the go. Double-layered from cuff to elbow for added strength, and with seams reinforced with triple needle stitching, you’d expect a shirt like this to be finished with faux horn buttons, which it is. 100 per cent organic cotton mid-weight twill. Conventional cotton
MONSTER CHILDREN 066
accounts for 25 per cent of the world’s pesticide use. Outerknown choose organic because it keeps chemicals out of nature and requires 90 per cent less water to grow. Nice one, Outerknownsssssss. outerknown.com
YETI HOPPER FLIP 18 Guess what. It’s the weekend. You know what that means? It means packing a Hopper Flip 18 personal cooler and heading for the hills. This cooler’s bigger build suits your larger hauls and longer expeditions. Set out with your lunch while you work for your dinner, and have a couple cold ones to kick back with after. Hopper Flip 18 is durable, leakproof and versatile with the HitchPoint Grid for tools and accessories. And like all YETI coolers, it’s equipped with superior insulation to keep stuff cold for days. au.yeti.com
O T I S - E C O - A C E TAT E Like everyone else with half a brain, OTIS want to have as minimal impact on the planet as possible, and they’re taking a small, deliberate and environmentally friendly step forward with the development of their Eco-Acetate collection: a selection of frames made from renewable resources widely present in nature. Derived from cottonseeds and plant matter, the frames in their Eco-Acetate collection have undergone exhaustive tests to be declared 100 per cent biodegradable, 100 per cent recyclable and 100 per cent eco-friendly. Basically, you can be buried in these and no one will whisper, ‘What an eco-inconsiderate bastard’ at the funeral. otiseyewear.com
NIXON STAPLE
EDITOR- IN - CHIEF
JASON CROMBIE
This new Nixon watch is called the Staple and it’s a simple, clean, daily digital watch for anyone and everyone. The end. But no, not the end. This
DEPUTY EDITOR
MONIQUE PENNING
watch also has this weird little heads-or-tails coin flip feature to help you
PUBLISHERS
make decisions. For example, say you get hit by a bus and your guts shoot
CREATIVE DIRECTOR
out your arse: go to hospital or don’t go to the hospital? Open the coin-flip DEPT: SMOKE PAGE: 022
feature on your Nixon Staple and—bingo-bango—you don’t have to go to hospital. nixon.com
CHRIS SEARL & CAMPBELL MILLIGAN CAMPBELL MILLIGAN CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER
RACHEL BLACKLEY CREATIVE PROJECTS DIRECTOR
DALE ROBINSON COMMERCIAL DIRECTOR
JAMIE BREWER BRAND PARTNERSHIPS
ANDREW SPENCE MONSTER CHILDREN 066
SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGER
TOM COLE JUNIOR DESIGNER
JYE KWONG MONSTER CHILDREN FILMS
JAM HASSAN GUY THAT KEEPS THE LIGHTS ON
C
M
KIERAN BURKE Y
ACCOUNTS
GEORGIA SHENTON CONTRIBUTING WRITERS
FIONNA BIRDBATH, BART CLUTTERBUCK, VAUGHAN BLAKEY, TRENT TIMESTEN, MONIQUE PENNING, NAT K ASSEL, BEN BRIAND, NOLAN GAWRON, CAROL DE-LICORICE, GROUNDSWELL GIVING, GINGER GRANT, MARY ANNE SUMMERS, GILLIGAN, RUFFUS POWELL, RUPERT VEITCH, MATTHEW KENNEDY, JENNY DIMSIMS CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS
SEAN EVANS, SAM BRUMBY, DEVIN BLASKOVICH, ANDREW PETERS, MORGAN RINDENGAN, BRENDAN BURDZINSKI, LINNEA STEPHAN, HELEN BACK, RUBY JOHNSON, ALEX PIRES, PHOEBE POWELL, STEPHANIE CAMMARANO, TODD GLASER, COREY WILSON, JARRAH LYNCH, BEN COLEN, SEBSATIEN, JOHNNY CRUSH, OMAR THE INVINCIBLE, DR. FROG, YEAH RAD, COREY WILSON, JOHN RESPONDEK, THOMAS CAMPBELL, TED GRAMBEAU CONTRIBUTING ILLUSTRATORS
RYAN TOWNLEY
APOLOGY Since 2013, Jesse Pearson has been occasionally publishing
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the arcane,’ which is about right. Apology is good. And now there’s
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the Apology podcast, featuring conversations between Pearson and
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folks like Elaine Kahn, Hamilton Morris, Brooks Headley, and Will
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SUPPLIED, PACK THEM WELL. APOLOGIES IN ADVANCE IF WE DON’T USE THEM. ANY SUGGESTIONS, COMPL AINTS OR IDEAS SHOULD BE
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SENT TO MONSTER@ MONSTERCHILDREN.COM. THIS IS THE 66TH ISSUE OF MONSTER CHILDREN MAGAZINE. CONTENT IS COPYRIGHT
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THE CRITICAL SLIDE SOCIET Y Y2K Hands up if you remember the Y2K scare? So stupid. Scientists believed that when the year 2000 clicked around, every computer in the world would explode and send the planet into a fritz. It didn’t happen, of course. Although, an alarm did go off at a Japanese power plant at two minutes past midnight. That must’ve been spooky… Anyhoo, The Critical Slide Society’s latest range is all about that speak to the hysteria of the Y2K phenomenon. Ch-ch-check ‘em out. thecriticalslidesociety.com
RAEN HIRSCH
and timeless. The hard angles give the frame a fashionable edge, while new colours like Seagrass and Brut bring a healthy dose of personality to any occasion. Pictured here is the Seagrass colorway, which combines rich green tones with a gentle olive hue to create an alluring look that works for any occasion. All Raen Seagrass styles feature sturdy hardware, and their new smoke lens treated with HiPro Bronze Mirror helps round out the warm aesthetic of this confident colorway. raen.com
A L A N WAT T S I read Alan Watts’ The Way of Zen (1957) when I was about nineteen and Alan’s words went right over my head. Now I’m seventy-three, though, and I totally dig what Alan is laying down. For those who have heard the name but can’t quite place the face, Alan Watts was the British writer, philosopher and lecturer famous for interpreting Eastern philosophy and religion and presenting it to a Western audience. He was a brilliant man and we’re all poorer for having never attended one of his lectures (he died in 1973). The good news is, hours upon hours of his talks are available online at his foundation’s official website. Really worth checking out. alanwatts.org
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Less is more with Hirsch, an understated modern classic that’s both handsome
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that special time in our planet’s history, with bold colours and strong graphics
New for SS20
Hirsch In Seagrass
https://www.raen.com
ALBUM: THE PLASMIC Asher Pacey took the prototype of this little beauty on a trip to Mexico and loved it so much, Album decided to make a legit model out of it for 2020. It's meant to be ridden short—a bit shorter than you'd ride a fish. Asher rides a 4'10"-5'0" (his normal Sunstone model fish is 5'2"), which fits right under his chin when paddling, and shoots him out of a fucking cannon at take-off. The Plasmic has fish speed and flow, but you can stomp the tail and push it way harder from the back foot where a fish doesn't always allow. You must buy this surfboard immediately. albumsurf.com DEPT: SMOKE PAGE: 027 MONSTER CHILDREN 066
BUBBLE 'O' BILL In literally every meeting we have here at Monster
Children,
co-founder
Campbell
Milligan always manages to sneak this fucking ice-cream into the discussion. ‘We need to cover more stuff like, I don’t know, Bubble O’ Bills,’ he’ll say, or ‘I don’t care, just write something about Bubble O’ Bills.’ Dude is obsessed. It’s a great ice-cream, sure, but
C H A R LT O N
what the fuck? I’ve been at this magazine
With an emphasis on classic style and progressive design, Charlton is an Australian brand creating
since 2012 and he hasn’t fucking stopped.
quality garments with premium fabrics. Charlton is characterised by forward-thinking design and a
Bubble O’ Bill this and Bubble O’ fucking Bill
sense of nostalgia, and their functional and durable pieces have been specially crafted to only improve
that. Give me Bubble O’ strength, Bubble O’
with age. Charlton is an ever-evolving and blah, blah, blah. New brand. Great threads. Check 'em out.
Jesus. bubbleobill.com
charltonstore.com
CK EVE RYONE I have a gay friend who always complains about his boyfriend wearing his clothes. ‘That sucks,’ I say, and then I thank my lucky stars my boyfriend is a girl and my clothing isn’t gender neutral. CK’s new fragrance, CK EVERYONE, is gender neutral, and it DEPT: SMOKE PAGE: 028
smells fantastic, which means everyone who buys a bottle will have to hide it from their life partner. Made from 79 per cent naturally-sourced ingredients, CK EVERYONE will have you and basically anyone smelling wonderful. Go have a sniff today.
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VO LCO M Volcom’s twelve-year sustainability journey has brought them to ‘Water Aware’, a significant new milestone in responsible manufacturing practices and fibre sourcing. By introducing reformulated water-saving techniques in the finishing processes during the production of Volcom jeans, they’ve been able to achieve an average saving of thirteen litres of water per pair of jeans. The release of the collection is marked by the worldwide introduction of this new process across all men’s, women’s and youth styles. Pretty cool. volcom.com.au and sds.com.au
T H E N O R T H FA C E R E N E W E D The North Face Renewed collection features a range of refurbished clothing. Washed up, tuned up, and ready for your next adventure, this gear is about as eco-conscious as you can get without wearing a fig leaf. Every year, 85 per cent of textiles produced end up in landfills: clothing, shoes, gear, all wasted without a second thought. But it doesn’t have to be this way. We can shift from a traditional, linear model to a circular model where people share, resell, repair and recycle clothing to keep them out of landfills and in the value chain. A world where people can have more experiences with less waste. And The North Face are taking steps towards making that world a reality. thenorthface.com
LIGHTER. FASTER. MORE FLEXIBLE.
20 under20 Ruby Johnson
H E L P ! W H AT A R E YO U D O I N G ? D O N ’ T YO U C O M E N E A R M E … I S A I D D O N ’ T C O M E N E A R M E ! N O! N O! N OT T H E N E E D L E ! P L E A S E , N OT T H E N E E D L E ! N O O O O O! L E T ’S M E E T YO U N G , U P - A N D - C O M I N G P H OTO G R A P H E R R U BY J O H N S O N !
Who are you? I am Ruby Johnson. How old are you? I’m seventeen. Where are you from? I’m from the Fleurieu Peninsula in South Australia. Where did you come from? A small town in rural Victoria called Warracknabeal. That’s where Nick Cave grew up. I know. Why are you here? To shoot what’s around me. To take photos. I want to travel and experience different cultures, respectfully turning my camera at people’s lives. When did you begin taking photos? I fell in love with film photography in 2016. My Polish Aunty, Ala, gave me a film camera, which I mucked around with until I had over and underexposed, blanked, loaded wrong, lost, fogged, flared, light-leaked, and made every other mistake in the book. What kind of camera was that? It was a Canon EOS 3000. After that, I couldn’t help but be curious, and I borrowed cameras from my friend Wade Whitington. I just wanted to try everything. What do you shoot with now? At the moment, I’ve got my hands on a Leica Minolta CL, which I’ve been using relentlessly. How would you describe your style of photography? I shoot lots—and I mean lots—of portraits. What is today’s world like for someone your age? It’s good. Better than good. In what era would you like to be a young person, if not the current era you exist? 19th Century Paris. Minus all the plagues and sexism. What’s the best thing about being a very young photographer? I’m at the beginning! And the future looks so exciting. I cannot tell you how good it feels to know what I love and to know that I want to go somewhere with this. What’s the worst thing? Being asked to shoot gigs and then not actually being old enough to make it through the door. What do you have to remind yourself of every now and then? That even the best photographers had to start somewhere. Who are your biggest influences? Henrik Purienne, Dani Hansen, Sophie Van der Perre, and my good friend Wade Whitington, of course. Are your parents supportive? Yes, they are. They’ve watched me spend all my money on film for years and they’ve never questioned me doing that over buying a car or whatever. I always send my mum the newest stuff I’m doing and she tells me her favourites. What are you doing when you’re not taking photos? I love to surf. I also play the violin. Although, no matter what I do, it always leads back to my camera somehow. Do you have any pets? Yes. A sooky mutt named Jimmy, a scraggly mini Irish wolfhound called Narla, and a grumpy old cat named Mr Pudy Man. Is death the end, or do we go somewhere else? I do not know, but I hope I get to be with all the people I will have loved throughout my life. If you could only eat one thing forever, what would it be? Fruit. What’s next for Ruby-boots Johnson? More photos, more experiences, different shoots and cameras. Meeting new people and getting my name out into the world! Instagram: @rubyjfilm
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T H E H EC K I S T H AT ? N E A R A D E L A I D E ? W H AT ’S ‘A D E L A I D E’ ? W H AT D O E S T H AT E V E N M E A N ? WA I T A S EC O N D… W H E R E A M I? H E L P ! H E L P ! I’ M G O I N G M A D !
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W H O I S R U BY J O H N S O N ? W H AT D O E S S H E D O ? W H E R E I S S H E F R O M ? S O U T H AU S T R A L I A? W H E R E I N S O U T H AU S T R A L I A? T H E F L E U R I E U P E N I N S U L A? W H E R E
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The Coturn CT-01 VINYL IS BACK AND BIGGER THAN EVER, WHICH IS A GOOD THING AND TIES IN WITH OUR WHOLE SUSTAINABILITY THEME BECAUSE SECONDHAND RECORDS DON’T HAVE MUCH OF A CARBON FOOTPRINT. IT’S TRUE THAT SPOTIF Y HAS AN EVEN SMALLER CARBON FOOTPRINT IN THAT IT CREATES NOTHING PHYSICAL AND THEREFORE DRINKS NO WATER AND SPEWS NO CO2, BUT YOU CAN’T SMELL SPOTIF Y, AND YOU DON’T HEAR THAT WARM CRACKLE AND POP WHEN YOU ‘CLICK’ ON A SONG. RECORD PL AYERS ARE GREAT. BETTER THAN GREAT—THEY’RE BRILLIANT, BRILLIANT. AND THEY’RE ON A PAR WITH INVENTIONS LIKE THE BICYCLE AND THE TOOTHPASTE AND THE BREAD. BUT IF YOU’RE A YOUNG PERSON WHO MOVES AROUND A LOT, OWNING A RECORD PL AYER IS MORE OF AN INCONVENIENCE THAN ANY THING ELSE, AND THAT’S WHY YOU NEED A PORTABLE ONE. THE NEW COTURN CT- 01 IS A HIGH - QUALITY, PERFECTLY- DESIGNED PORTABLE TURNTABLE THAT RECENTLY REACHED IT’S KICKSTARTER GOAL AND WENT INTO PRODUCTION. WE SPOKE TO A GERMAN MAN NAMED MALTE KRAUS WHO GAVE US THE RUNDOWN.
What in the name of all that is holy is this thing? It’s the new CT-01. Our company name is Coturn, which stands for ‘Compact Turntable’. The 01 is the first series we produced. The Coturn CT-01 is a portable record player with an integrated preamplifier, amplifier, and Bluetooth and Wi-Fi function, among other things. Please tell me all the functions and specs immediately. Extremely compact design, solid aluminum casing, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, an Audio-Technica AT 3600 needle, compatible with 7”, 10”and 12”records, touchscreen display, up to sixteen-hours of battery life, neutral audio output, USB-C charging port, comes with a 7” adapter and USB-C charging cable. Is there a headphone jack? There is a headphone jack. How long did it take to develop? It took us, Coturn and Jakarta Records, about three years to reach a point where we were content with the finished prototype. How does the Coturn Portable differ from other portable record players we’ve seen over the years? Because there have been many, and they have all been pretty terrible. Well, as you can see from the picture, the player fits diagonally on top of a vinyl cover. It is only 26mm high and 120mm wide, making it by far flatter and smaller than regular record players. One of the best features is the extractable tone arm, which can be safely retracted into the case. This allows you to transport the player without having to worry about breaking something. In contrast to other players, the CT-01’s casing and parts are all made out of cut aluminum. Is that a good thing? Yes. And besides that, the record player has a touch display for all the main functions: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, speed, and volume. Fantastic. How’s the Kickstarter going? I think we can say it’s going quite well—we achieved our goal within one week! How much will one of these lovely bastards cost me? About $400 US or $600 Australian. Is it safe to play my really rare and expensive Smiths records on the player, even though Morrissey is racist? As its needle is a high-quality (and replaceable) Audio Technica system, the risks for rare records don’t differ from any other record player. Malte Kraus, thank you for your time. You’re welcome.
C O M I N G M AY 2 0 2 0 . M O N S T E R C H I L D R E N . C O M
Sixty Six Monster Children’s Guide to Eco Brands 2020
By Monique Penning Being environmentally-minded about the products you buy and use isn’t as hard as you think. These days, you can look good, feel good, eat good, and wipe your butt good with a clear conscious. One of the best things about brands and businesses all around the world realising they’ve got to up their game, is that certain sectors that have been pretty damaging to our environment over the years—surfboard manufacturing, banking, the fashion industry, and of course, bottled water—are finding ways to go bigger, better, and greener. Here’s a few of our favourites.
Hayden Shapes FUTUREFLEX ‘UPCYCLED’ MULTIAXIAL CLOTH In the manufacturing of a single surfboard, around thirty per cent of the foam and fiberglass waste by-products end up in landfill. Given that surfing relies on the good grace of Mother Nature herself, it’s a very sucky way to say thanks for the cones. Haydenshapes decided to test a number of design ideas utilising how surfboard manufacturing waste could be put back into the creation of a board, and it worked! The FutureFlex ‘Upcycled’ Multiaxial Cloth is an upcycled fiberglass cloth that’s made with chopped carbon fiber and fiberglass off cuts, aerated, then woven into new multiaxial cloth. After testing it out with solid results, Haydenshapes are tinkering away at high speed to get the upcycled cloth available in the coming months. Stay tuned. haydenshapes.com
Levi’s WATER<LESS™ Jeans are mostly made of cotton, but growing cotton is rough on the planet. It requires a lot of water and is often treated with pesticides to protect the crop. So, does that mean you’ve got to give up wearing denim jeans, start wearing all-organic hemp capri pants and purchase a year’s supply of Nag Champa? No, silly, it just means you need to be savvier when you buy your next pair. We’d suggest getting them from Levi’s, who have been researching how to reduce water in the production process for close to a decade now. Since 2011, they’ve saved more than three billion litres of water and recycled nearly five billion litres by way of their Water<Less™ program. Impressive stuff— impressive threads. levis.com.au
Who Gives a Crap
Bank Australia
Did you know that more people across the world own mobiles phones than toilets? That’s pretty shitty, but luckily
Remember the days when you could just tuck your life savings under your mattress? Well, the Great Depression is
there are companies out there like Who Gives a Crap who are doing something about it. Not only does the toilet
well and truly over, old chap, and unfortunately, being an adult in the year 2020 involves owning some form of bank
paper co. make all their products from environmentally friendly materials, they also donate fifty per cent of their
account. But what if, instead of signing your cash away to some greasy corporate fat cat who’ll invest it in fossil fuels,
profits to help build toilets for those in need. To date, they’ve donated over 2.6 million dollars to charity and saved
you could sign up to a customer-owned, carbon-neutral, green-banking alternative? Bank of Australia is exactly
heaps of trees, water and energy in the process. Speaking from personal experience, the Monster Children staff
that. Along with refusing to put your money into the fossil fuel industry, they’re also customer-owned, which means
bathrooms are the last place you want to spend your leisure time, but if you were inclined to swing by our HQ
instead of answering to external shareholders, they answer to you. You can even vote on their directors’ salaries and
bathrooms, you’d find them fully stocked with their eco-minded and socially conscious toilet paper–because we
where they invest profits. A bunch of Monster Children staff have now made the switch, but go do your own research,
do, in fact, give a crap. au.whogivesacrap.org
‘cause it’s your life. bankaust.com.au
Patagonia REGENERATIVE ORGANIC
JUST Water When did it become normal for humans to feel the need to drink water from a plastic bottle when you can get it for
Patagonia—who’ve been championing eco responsibility since before you even knew what a keep-
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500ml Parfum Paris
Interview: Gustav Trashcock Photos: Andrew Peters
GILLETTE,
Obama was president, poke bowls didn’t
HE HAD A BUSTED KNEE AND A SHOE COMING OUT ON
yet exist, and the internet was still made
THE
LAST
TIME
WE
INTERVIEWED
AUSTYN
HUF. RECOVERING FROM MENISCUS SURGERY IS NEVER
out of wood. It was also a markedly different world in skateboarding, with
GREAT, BUT IT SUCKS THE WORLD’S BALLS WHEN YOU’RE
brands dissolving as quickly as they
A PROFESSIONAL SK ATER WITH A SHOE ABOUT TO DROP.
emerged, and kinships being withdrawn
AUSTYN SEEMED PRETTY CHILL AT THE TIME, THOUGH,
before they had a chance to form. Since
SAYING, ‘I CAN’T DO ANY THING ABOUT IT. I’D RATHER TAKE THE RIGHT STEPS AND GET BETTER SO I CAN SK ATE
then, Austyn’s knees have healed and his skating has gotten better. A lot better. And his part in the hotly-anticipated
FOR ANOTHER TEN YEARS.’ THIS WAS BACK IN THE VERY
FORMER f ilm, Cheap Perfume, will be
DIFFERENT WORLD OF 2015.
testimony to that. Monster Children caught up with Mr. Gillette to see what he’s riding, where he’s going, and what he’s been up to in the last half decade.
INTERVIEW
Austyn Gillette 2020
INTERVIEW
Austyn Gillette 2020
How you been, dude? Good, just getting everything ready. We’re launching a funny motherfucker. Speaking of funny motherfuckers, you’re one of the on the 21st of March. What are you doing? We’re opening up our new funnier people I know. Really? Shut up, you know that. But I have trouble space and doing a little video thingy for it. For FORMER. Yeah. Cool. Okay, consolidating the two Austyns: there’s the one that I know, the one that’s here is my first question: There are rumours you’re starting up a board always up for gags—and then there’s the serious skater Austyn, the one company. Are they true? Can you talk about it? Is that a thing? No. Are I see in videos. There’s probably three people. What do you mean? Who’s you sure? Yes. I’ve just been riding. Riding what? I’ve been riding boards the third one? Well, there’s the music thing. Ah, but that’s also a serious from Bunnings. You’ve got a board company in the works, haven’t you? character. Yeah, but a different character. That’s a vulnerable character. Why do you lie to me? I really don’t. I’m not starting anything. I don’t have That’s another person. And yet, in person, you’re quite cheerful and jokey enough time to do that. I’m just riding boards with photos taken by a good and silly. Am I compromising your image right now by telling people that? friend of mine. She shot photos of some friends of ours, and then I write Because that’s the guy I know. That’s who I think they know as well. I think a word that I like on it, and I print it, and I skate it. I’ve been skating the it’s all pretty genuine. Everybody has those different sides. I guess. It’s same shape for about twelve years, so I’m just putting a new image on that. a weird thing. Everybody is their internet persona, their real-life persona, You’re making your own boards? I’m paying for my skateboards. That’s and then you have the persona you actually aspire to, whatever it is. Let what’s happening. Oh, so you’re getting your own boards made. Yeah, the me ask you this: what defines a pro skater? I guess, getting paid to do same shape I’ve been riding for years. That’s crazy and awesome. Yeah. something because they’re good at it, and people enjoy it enough for you to I think that’s why I’m excited about it because it’s not available anywhere, get endorsed for it. That’s the definition of a professional, right? Right. But not selling it, you can’t buy it... I’d like to buy one. You can have one for I don’t know what defines a skateboarder. There’re so many different types. fifteen bucks. Who’s the friend supplying the pics you’re printing on them? And luckily, we have a lot of freedom and mobility to do what we want with Imogene. Von Barron? Yeah. I like her.Me too. Have you had people asking being pro. Unlike other professionals. Yeah. Do you ever think about how if they can buy boards off of you? Yeah, they have. It’s funny because with skateboarding began as a childhood hobby and how you could’ve just as the company now, FORMER, I have a lot of relationships with distributors, easily got into BMX or something? Oh yeah, of course. I could’ve been a and they’re basically like, ‘Let us know when you’re ready to go!’ and I’m scooter kid, could’ve been a biker, could’ve been smoking ice on the side like, ‘I’m not doing that.’ How many people are on the FORMER skate team of the road. I coulda been doing a bunch of things. It’s weird how it all ends now? Three. So, it’s three skaters and three surfers? Four surfers now. up this way. It truly is. Indeed. What’s been your favourite ‘Austyn’ product We gotta catch up.
over the years, whether it’s shoes or board graphics, wheels, or whatever? Well, the easiest way to answer that is Habitat. Your stuff that came out
How many directors are there? Who’s the boss? I guess I handle the skate on Habitat? Yeah, because they raised me. I aligned with a lot of what Joe side of things. I’m handling a lot of stuff on the back end. My brother’s [Castrucci, Habitat founder] was doing. He was just a person you could trust helping out a lot. Dane (Reynolds) has been doing a great deal of it the past and not have to worry about a single thing, and he would do everything in few years. We’ve had employees along the way and friends, but those things your best interest. But that was a different time when people took time to shift. What, if anything, does that no-good hippie Craig Anderson do? make somebody’s image look a certain way or make a project look a certain Craig just surfs. He just does what he should be doing or wants to be doing. way. Whereas, people don’t take time. Everything seems a bit scattershot Do you ever hear from him? A couple of emails every six months. Have you and silly these days, doesn’t it? Kinda, yeah. I think that it was a more met his housemate, Dunni? Yeah, he’s the best. He’s hilarious. Yeah, he’s patient time when I was on Habitat. That would’ve been ten years ago, so
‘I don’t know what defines a skateboarder. There’re so many different types. And luckily, we have a lot of freedom and mobility to do what we want with being pro.’
INTERVIEW
Austyn Gillette 2020
INTERVIEW
Austyn Gillette 2020
‘I mean, you go to a different country, you spend all this money on accommodation and flights, all that stuff, and you come back with fifteen seconds, but it’s justifiable somehow.’
people weren’t so content-hungry at that time. And Joe more or contribution to the next generation of kids. And you personally skating to Scott Walker; and then, Jamal (Gibbs) was going to less designed my image and I didn’t really have to worry about bankrolled this thing. I’ve more or less self-funded this proj- skate to… Wait, why are all the musicians on the soundtrack it. I cared about it, but I trusted him, and that company built ect, yeah. I’ve tapped into savings and personal savings and deceased? I kinda wanted this video to be an ode to the peomy name. And after that you slowly became a bit of a lone asked [favours from] a lot of close friends and musicians and ple we’ve lost. I don’t know if the rest of the team knows that… wolf, right? You’re a bit of a solo flyer. Yeah, I guess. There people. There’s a lot behind it, and I’m really excited. Hopefully I’m just incorporating that because I think it’s inspiring. It inwas a turning point where I realised, like, ‘Oh, maybe I’m not folks will feel it and support it. We’ve travelled the whole god- spires me, anyway. a focus or a priority at this or that brand. I should probably damned world for a year straight to put this thing together. start developing something to maintain a certain…’ I wouldn’t It’s been fucking hard. It’s been hard. How much footage did And your part has a Scott Walker song? Yeah. Can I guess say maintain a level of seriousness, but for people to take you you gather in that time? Shit, I don’t know. We’re hoping the which Scott Walker song? You can try. Well, it’s gotta be seriously or for you to be... I don’t know. We can control how video is going to be about fifteen minutes. Must be hard to something from Scott 2. Nope. Scott 4. Scott 4? Mm-hmm. much we put out and the quality of that output, or we can leave distil a year’s worth of stuff down to fifteen minutes. Yeah, I Scott 4 is pretty out-there. Yeah, but it’s a feel-good little it in somebody else’s hands; and I realised, ‘I’m already doing mean, you go to a different country, you spend all this money number; I think the only one on that record. That was his last this. I’m already filming with the people that I want to film with, on accommodation and flights, all that stuff, and you come album where he didn’t go completely fucking psycho; slapping and I’m just handing it off to somebody to then do whatever back with fifteen seconds, but it’s justifiable somehow. It’s meat in a closet and stuff. Punching a dead pig. That was they want; or I’m getting pushed aside because there’s young- just a weird thing. It’d be like if a musician went to write some on The Drift, I think. He really went there. He did. So, you er kids getting on the team,’ and then I was like, ‘I don’t know if demos and came back with a quarter of a song and they’re like, financed Cheap Perfume yourself? Yeah, I know it doesn’t that’s the best move for me.’ So, there was a shift when I was ‘Yeah, I feel good about that.’ It’s a weird process. What’s the make any sense, but I don’t know. I was just like, ‘You know probably twenty-two or twenty-three, where I started to realise deadline for this vid? I’m personally setting the deadline for what? Fuck it.’ What’s it going to do when it goes into savings? that my name wasn’t just skateboarding or anything else—it the middle of March, and that goes for myself and the rest of Just sit there. I’d rather it go back into the thing that allowed was malleable. Let us now talk about the upcoming FORMER the guys. We just have to stop because you can get sucked into me to receive it. video, Cheap Perfume. How did it come about? Well, we grew it. So, you’re almost done? It’s pretty much there. The music’s up watching skate videos, and with the company and the peo- getting cleared… I was trying to use only music from people ple that ride for us, we wanted to make a sort of timeless that have passed away. I was able to get Leonard Cohen; I’m
INTERVIEW
INTERVIEW
Austyn Gillette 2020
Austyn Gillette 2020
‘I don’t want a cabin in the woods to hang out by myself. That sounds fucking terrible.’ INTERVIEW
INTERVIEW
Austyn Gillette 2020
Austyn Gillette 2020
Right. That justifies it. I wouldn’t have any of this if it wasn’t in a wave. You can smoke cones while getting coned. How grateful and pretty content with what I have at the moment. If for skateboarding, so I might as well just give it right back old are you now? I’m twenty-eight. Where do you hope to be I’m able to do this shit for another ten, I would be pretty excitand put out something I like. And hopefully people will enjoy at thirty-eight? At thirty-eight? Yeah, what do you want in ten ed. But right now, I figure why not take some fucking risks while it. It’s an exciting time, and I feel like myself and everybody years? A cabin in the woods? I don’t want a cabin in the woods I can? Take a big risk, learn from it, and then that will hopefully else has been skating better than they ever have. It’s motivat- to hang out by myself. That sounds fucking terrible. I think my line me up for something else, but if I don’t take the risks right ing to be around these guys. That’s awesome. Any surprises? happiness is my mobility: if I’m able to move around and do now before I’m thirty, then I won’t really learn anything. Let’s Does Craig skate? I hope so. He’s flying out in the middle of things and I have momentum, then I’m fine with whatever that wrap this up with an easy one: What’s the meaning of life? this month, and I’m trying to get him to go skate with Jake is. If I’m stuck physically, then I’m stuck mentally, and I think What are we here for? What’s it all about? It’s all about prac(Anderson), get those pigeon legs out there and just watch those two go hand in hand. So, whatever it is in the future, I tising the golden rule. What’s the golden rule? Treat others as them crumble. It’s going to be good. It’s going to be a sight. hope that I’m…
you’d like to be treated. That’s a good rule to live by. It really
Can Craig skate? I know Warren [Smith] can. Yeah, Warren
is. But then again, the golden rule could just be a bubbler.
can skate, but I don’t know if it always crosses over. With Mobile. Yeah. Either as mobile as I am now or even more mo- That’s where you pee into your mouth. I know. For hydration. FORMER, do you feel compelled to know a bit about surf shit bile, with the tools to make things a bit easier. I don’t need too I know, I have a hot bubbler every morning. People think it’s now? I feel like I need to understand surfing, yeah; because much, but it would be nice to be in a position where I could for comedy, but there are actually health benefits to it. Last we are a surf brand as well, so I feel obligated to do that. freely travel and share it with people, or raise the next set of question: how should we be approaching the year 2020 and Dane knows more about skating than I fucking do. He knows people to do it. And I don’t know if that’s in skating or if it’s in beyond? God, I don’t know. I only know how I approach shit. the new videos that are coming out, he’s watching everything surfing or if it’s in… Music. Yeah, or designing, or consulting. How do you approach it? When I wake up, I’m like, ‘What can on Thrasher, whereas I could care less to watch anything, to I love consulting. The idea of consulting is incredible. I love I do with my day? How much can I get done since, you know, tell you the truth. But Dane is on top of it. He’s doing his due thinking about how you can make something actually cool and I’m alive?’ That’s how I look at shit. I don’t want to sit around. diligence. Can you surf? Yeah, I can get up and do things and authentic. There’s a lot of people that do that job and have a What about smelling the flowers? You can smell the flowers ride it and, you know, do the thing. It doesn’t look pretty. Have lot of mobility and flexibility. That seems like a cool gig. So, along the way. You take a break, have a smell, and then you you ever been in the green room? I’ve never got in the garage, mobility and flexibility. That’s what you hope for in ten years. get back into it. never did it. Never been coned. Coned? Isn’t that what Austra- You don’t really want much. You just want what you already lians call smoking a bong? Yeah, but you can also get coned have, really. You just want to be mobile. Yeah, I’m pretty
A STORY ABOUT THE RISE OF ARTIFICIAL SURF CONTRAPTIONS THATâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S NOT AS FUNNY AS THE TITLE WOULD SUGGEST.
SMALL BRAZILIAN MAN VERSUS MACHINE
BY ADAM BLAKEY
GOAT SLATER RIPS THE LID OFF HIS GOAT POOL AT NIGHT-TIME. RUMOUR HAS IT THAT BILLIONS OF TINY GOAT PEBBLES, AKA LITTLE BALLS OF GOAT SHIT, HAVE PETRIFIED INTO A FALSE REEF CHANGING THE BATHYMETRY OF HIS OG WAVE POOL DESIGN FOR THE BETTER. NOW GOAT SLATER HAS NEW PLANS TO BUILD AN EVEN BIGGER POOL, RUMOURED TO CONTAIN THE FIRST LEGITIMATELY CHALLENGING ARTIFICIAL WAVES EVER CREATED. WE’RE TALKING PIPELINE AND TEAHUPO’OSTANDARD MADNESS, AND ALL ENTIRELY CRAFTED OUT OF GOAT EXCREMENT. YOU DO THE MATH. (GLASER) INSET: ARTIFICIAL WAVES MAKE LITTLE SUZIE CRY.
SLATER SUCCEEDED IN CREATING THE WORLD’S FIRST PERFECT ARTIFICIAL WAVE, AND ALTHOUGH HALLEY’S COMET SWINGS BY THE EARTH WITH MORE REGULARITY THAN DO THE SETS IN THE GOAT POOL, IT REMAINS THE BENCHMARK BY WHICH ALL OTHER TANKS ARE JUDGED. PHOTO TODD GLASER
ARE YOU FAMILIAR WITH THE TALE OF THE PINT- SIZE D BR AZILIAN NE VE R SE E ME D DOWN WAS SUZIE’S OLDE R BROTHE R ANGE LO. F IR S T S U R F B OAR D F O R S E V E N D O L L AR S — A LOT O F M O N E Y, B U T PRO SURF E R ADRIANO ‘SUZIE’ DE SOUZ A? PLE ASE , ALLOW E LE VE N YE ARS HIS SE NIOR, ANGE WORKE D HIS BUT T OF F DURING TH E G RO M M E T D E D I CATE D H IM S E L F TO S H R E D D IN G O N TH AT ME TO E NLIGHTE N YOU! SUZIE GRE W UP IN THE E ARLY 90S IN THE WE E K TO PROVIDE FOR THE FAMILY, ONLY TO DISAPPE AR TH I N G E V E RY AVAI L AB L E M O M E NT. W H AT H E L ACK E D I N S IZ E A N D A FAVE L A ON THE OUTSKIRTS OF THE CIT Y OF SÃO PAULO. HE INTO DARKNE S S E VE RY SATURDAY MORNING WITH A STR ANGE TA L E NT S UZ IE M A D E U P F O R W ITH G R IT A N D D E TE R M I N ATIO N, SHARE D A BE D WITH SE VE R AL SIBLINGS IN A SHANT Y HOUSE AND SLE E K LOOKING OB JECT UNDE R HIS ARM. HE’D RE TURN A N D H E GOT R E A L GO O D, R E A L Q U I CK . SO O N H E H A D H I S F IR S T MADE FROM MUD BRICK AND CORRUGATE D IRON. ALTHOUGH SUNDAY E VE NINGS, SUN - DRE NCHE D, SALT Y AND STOKE D TO THE S P O N SO R S. H E B E G A N TR AV E L L I N G O U T O F TH E FAV E L A TO S U R F HE LIVE D RE ASONABLY CLOSE TO THE BE ACH, SUZIE HAD NO E YE BALL S. CURIOUS TO KNOW WHAT ANGE WAS GE T TING UP TO, CO NTE S T S A N D, A F TE R W I N N I N G AB SO L U TE LY E V E RY TH I N G , H E IDE A IT WAS THE RE . DAILY LIF E IN THE FAVE L A WAS A BAT TLE LIT TLE SUZIE FOLLOWE D BIG BRO AND HIS CRE W ALL THE WAY B E G A N L E AV I N G B R AZ I L E NTIR E LY. AT J U S T S IX TE E N, S UZ IE FOR SURVIVAL — AGAINST POVE RT Y, AGAINST HUNGE R, AGAINST OUT OF THE FAVE L A AND DOWN TO THE BE ACH ONE MORNING, F O U N D H IM S E L F S TA N D I N G O N A V I CTO RY DAI S I N N AR R AB E E N, DRUG AND GUN CRIME , AND AGAINST DE PRE S SION. SUZIE’S OWN AND THOUGH ANGE WAS INITIALLY BUMME D TO DISCOVE R HIS AU S TR A L IA , B E IN G CROW N E D TH E WO R L D J U N IO R C H A M PIO N, MOTHE R SUF F E RE D SO ACUTE LY FROM THE ILLNE S S SHE ONCE KID BROTHE R TAGGING ALONG, HE E NDE D UP PUSHING THE TH E YO U N G E S T S U R F E R TO E V E R AC H I E V E S U C H A F E AT. H E SE T THE IR HOUSE ON FIRE AND WALKE D OUT INTO THE STRE E T, LIT TLE DUDE ONTO A COUPLE OF WAVE S ANY WAY. THE RUSH M A D E TH E D E CI S IO N TO T U R N PRO A N D F I N I S H E D 2 0TH IN H I S LE AVING HE R FOURTE E N - MONTH - OLD CHILD STILL INSIDE . HE TR ANSFORME D SUZIE INSTANTLY. BY THE TIME HE GOT HOME F IR S T F U L L Y E AR O N TH E E L ITE C H A M PIO N S H I P TO U R . F RO M WAS RE SCUE D BY A NE IGHBOUR.
THAT NIGHT, HE KNE W HE WAS GOING TO SURF FOR THE RE ST OF TH E R E , H E F O C U S E D A L L O F H I S E N E RGY I NTO W I N N I N G TH E
AS TOUGH AS LIF E IN THE FAVE L A COULD BE , ONE GUY WHO HIS LIF E . A COUPLE OF MONTHS L ATE R, ANGE BOUGHT SUZIE H I S WO R L D TITL E .
TH O U G H H E WA S O N LY 5’6” S UZ IE D E V E LO PE D A R E PU TATIO N O N E AR TH). IT WA S A SO U RCE O F IM M E N S E PR I D E F O R S UZ I E , S E E , TH E V E RY DAY A F TE R S UZ I E ’S M O N U M E NTA L TR I U M PH , A S A F IE RCE CO M PE TITO R , SO M EO N E W I L L IN G TO S CR A P L IK E B U T W ITH E V E RY B R AZ I L IA N K I D W H O M A D E TH E E L ITE R A N KS, E L E V E N -TIM E WO R L D C H A M P A N D F O R M E R BAY WAT C H S TAR A L U N ATI C TO A S S U R E V I CTO RY. IT WA S N’T A LWAYS PR E T T Y. TH E R E WA S A L SO A R E A L I SATIO N TH AT TIM E WA S B E G I N N I N G K E L LY S L ATE R D RO PPE D TH E F IR S T M I N U TE S O F F O OTAG E PU N D IT S
AND
PU R I S T S
A L IK E
DERIDED
HIS
STYLE
A N D TO WO R K AG AI N S T H IM . W H E N A N I N E TE E N -Y E AR - O L D S U PE R F RO M H I S IN CR E D IB L E TO P S E CR E T AR TI F I CIA L WAV E - M AK I N G
AG G R E S SIO N. CO NV E N IE NTLY OV E R LO O K IN G H I S I N CR E D IB L E PRO D I GY N A M E D G AB R I E L M E D I N A OV E R TO O K S UZ I E TO B E CO M E M AC H IN E O NTO TH E I NTE R N E T. K AB O O M! TH E CO L L E CTIV E S PE E D
AND
R AI L
U N FA S H IO N AB L E
GAME,
SURFER,
S UZ IE
SO M E H OW
PAR TI C U L AR LY
IN
B E CA M E TH E
EYES
A N B R AZ I L’S F IR S T E V E R S U R F IN G WO R L D C H A M P I N 2 01 4, S UZ I E AT TE NTIO N O F E V E RY S U R F E R O N E AR TH WA S W R E N C H E D F RO M O F S E N S E D H I S N OW O R N E V E R M O M E NT. TH E F O L LOW IN G Y E AR , TH E M A J E S T Y O F PIPE L I N E TO A S TI N K Y B ROW N L AGO O N I N TH E
TH E E N G L I S H - S PE AK IN G S U R F M E D IA . TH I S A D D E D F U E L TO A H E PU L L E D O F F A R E M AR K AB L E CO M E - F RO M - B E H IN D R U N AT M I D D L E O F M AI N L A N D CA L I F O R N IA . GOAT S L ATE R H A D CR A F TE D G ROW IN G A NTI - B R AZ I L IA N S E NTIM E NT TH AT WA S B E G I N N I N G TO TH E CROW N TO W I N TH E S E A SO N E N D I N G PI PE L I N E M A S TE R S, A M IR AC L E – A PE R F E CT H E A D - H I G H BAR R E L TH AT R E E L E D O F F P O L AR I S E TH E CH A M PIO N S H IP TO U R .
A S W E L L A S H I S F IR S T WO R L D C H A M PIO N S H I P. IT WA S A N F O R A N U N GO D LY D I S TA N CE . N OT A S I N G L E H U M A N W H O’D E V E R
F O R TH E N E X T N IN E Y E AR S, S UZ IE CO NTIN U E D TO BAT TL E TH E I N CR E D IB L E PE R F O R M A N CE A N D A W I N TH AT E V E N TH E M O S T S TE PPE D F O OT O N A S U R F B OAR D CO U L D TAK E TH E IR E Y E S O F F H ATE R S A N D IN S PIR E H I S CO U NTRY M E N W H I L E C H A S I N G H I S CY N I CA L S U R F FA N CO U L D N OT D E N Y: A K I D F RO M TH E FAV E L A , IT. M E A N W H I L E , BACK I N H AWAII, S UZ I E WO K E U P TH E M O R N I N G U LTIM ATE D R E A M , A N D IN D O IN G SO H E PAV E D TH E WAY F O R W H O’D S TAR TE D O U T O N A S E V E N D O L L AR S U R F B OAR D, WA S A F TE R H I S G R E ATE S T O F DAYS A S TH E L E A S T TA L K E D AB O U T A M OV E M E NT TH AT WO U L D B E CO M E K N OW N A S TH E B R AZ I L IA N N OW TH E C H A M PIO N O F TH E WO R L D. S UZ IE ’S WA S A S TO RY TH AT WO R L D C H A M P I N TH E H I S TO RY O F PRO S U R F I N G . TH AT I S TH E S TO R M (TO DAY TH E Y AR E TH E M O S T D O M IN A NT S U R F I N G N ATIO N A L L O F S U R F I N G CO U L D R E V E L I N. E XCE P T TH AT IT WA S N’T. YO U TITA N I C P OW E R O F A WAV E P O O L .
WE SENT THE BEST-LOOKING MEMBER OF THE ENTIRE MONSTER CHILDREN OFFICE DOWN TO URBN SURF TO TEST OUT THE FUNNELS, BUT WHEN HE CALLED IN SICK AND COULDN’T DO IT, WE SENT DALE INSTEAD. THE RESULTS WERE IMPRESSIVE. (LYNCH)
THE AGE OF THE GOAT MACHINE COMETH
of swell, favourable winds, and any other number of completely random planet doesn’t heat evenly, hot spots and cold spots form throughout our
To be fair, it’s not Kelly Slater’s fault Suzie’s World Title had the life sucked natural elements (tide, sand, currents etc… etc… etc…) all combining to atmosphere. Where the less dense hot air rises, thicker colder air rushes out of it by his marvellous machine. It certainly didn’t diminish Suzie’s win create waves you will never forget for the rest of your life—is extremely in underneath, thus creating wind. The wind causes ripples on the surface in any way either. But there was something inherently dystopian about a fucking rare! For those of us who are not professional surfers, scoring of the water and those ripples bunch together to form waves. The waves story of human triumph against all odds being instantly upstaged by an perfect surf is a once or twice a year happening, at best. Mostly, we take push onward until the ocean floor rises to meet the surface, compressing invention that cost tens of millions of dollars to design, build and run, and whatever dribble and crud our local serves up to us on a daily basis… not the energy and causing the wave to stand and then break. And this is where that ultimately created something you could enjoy for free. Certainly, a wave that anyone is complaining. At the risk of sounding like a crystal-gazing surfers come in. If you think about it, we’re riding the last few seconds of pool was not something a poor little kid from a favela would have a chance Byron Bay resident, being in the ocean is its own reward. Things like sharing a solar force that started on the surface of the sun and is just about to to ride in any foreseeable future.
waves with mates, blasting your brother’s face with the spray from a big dissipate upon the shoreline. And what do we do with it? We whack it, shred
And yet—and yet! The control! The fantasy? The fun... of man-made waves turn, witnessing a dolphin shove his eight-foot dolphin dick into another it and get fully pitted, and then tell all our mates we were ripping, dude! has been a part of surf culture and folklore since white people appropriated dolphin, getting stung on the eyes by a bluebottle, and so on and so forth… How cosmic is that?! (see: stole) the ancient act of wave riding from the Hawaiians and other these and a billion other things all contribute to an overall feeling of stoke And yet… and yet! It’s not enough. The perfect wave still sits at the top of Polynesians just a couple of hundred years ago. (Why is it never enough to that’s completely unique to surfing and which have nothing to do with everyone’s surfing experience because, ultimately, that’s what we desire just enjoy the elements as they are? Why does Whitey always need to play perfect surf. Now consider this: even the worst wave on the worst beach on most. A moment that makes us feel like we are in the exact right place master over everything? Sigh.) The truth of the matter is that perfect surf, the worst day of the year is a miracle. You see, it starts its journey millions at the exact right time. It’s why fabricating the experience has only ever and what I’m talking about here is truly perfect surf—waves that break in of miles away… on the surface of the sun. Solar energy travels out into existed within the realm of pure fantasy… until the GOAT pool came along. the same place over and over and over again, with just the right amount space and eventually collides into this orb we call earth. And because the Thus, all ye enter here, the golden age of the wave machine.
AUTHOR DEADLY GETS SOME CONE ZONE IN URBN SURF’S ‘BEAST’ MODE.
THE URBN SURF LINE-UP IS LEGIT! TWO FRAMES FROM SURF LAKES, BUILT AND NOW RUNNING UP IN YEPPOON. PLUNGE AND RIDE!
WORLD CHAMP BENNY PLAYER TAKES ON THE SURF LAKES SLAB SETTING. HECKAZ LITTLE DRAINER!
ORGIES, BLOW AND PROTOTYPES
ANDO NO LIKEY CHLORINE
life in a more spiritual way. The classic surf film, Morning of the Earth,
Wave pools have been around longer than Ron Jeremy’s dong, and according Since then, dirt has broken on three different wave pool constructions in captures beautifully this country’s soul movement as it was happening. to Matt Warshaw’s Encyclopedia of Surfing, the first version of man-made Australia alone, all with different science and technology behind them. Enlightenment was happening all over the globe, and thanks to a deep waves appeared in Europe in the 1920s and 30s. High rolling aristocrats The economic feasibility of artificial surf is starting to look less like a sense of connection with nature, wave riders everywhere were leading would doff their caps and bonnets and frolick in fake rollers created by flight of fancy and more like the next A380.
a revolutionary new way of thinking that had nothing to do with careers,
giant paddles before retreating to their mansions to engage in sordid sex The recently opened URBNSURF wave pool just near Tullamarine Airport profits, success, or capitalism. As one of the most influential surfers of acts with barnyard animals.
has been booked out solid since it opened to the public in January this the time, Nat lamented his role in surfing’s path to competitiveness and
Around 500 versions of wave pools were built between the 60s and the year. It can create eight wave sets every two minutes on an average corporatisation when he said, ‘When they asked us “What is surfing?” I 2000s, and all of them were dogshit in terms of wave quality. In 1985, in setting (and more or less at the push of a button, depending on what wish I said that it’s a spiritual activity, and not just a sport, ‘cause that’s Allentown, Pennsylvania, thunder-thigh Aussie World Champ Tom Carroll you’re after). It offers eighteen waves of varying size and quality, including what put us on the wrong track.’ won the first professional surf event held in a tub—by all accounts, a one called The Beast which is a genuinely awesome, super square drainer. Since then, everyone from the World Surf League, to surf media, to the contest more famous for the amount of sizz that got snorted at the after The overall set up is much shorter and punchier than the GOAT pool, and global surf brands that started in a back shed and went on to earn millions, party than for the meagre waves on offer. Still, people with obscene the infrastructure being built around it includes bars, fine dining, surf has been accused of selling out and betraying the essence of what surfing amounts of money continued to flush their cash down the surf tank shops, and live music.
is truly about. And to many, including the lithe freesurfing genius Craig
plughole in the pursuit of perfection. In the 90s, a new form of man-made In comparison, the GOAT pool—or Surf Ranch, as it has come to be Anderson, wave pools represent the worst of the lot. wave momentarily stole the spotlight. Called the Flowrider, it offered an known—offers one perfect 700-metre ride every five minutes, though it ‘It doesn’t feel right. It feels wrong. And it looks wrong too,’ explains Ando, eight-foot tall stand-up barrel, but it pushed water at high speed into a is situated in a town that literally reeks of shit (a side effect of fertiliser a man who’ll drive forty-eight-hours to surf heaving slabs in the South ramp and offered a surfing experience that was more like standing on from the surrounding farmlands). Kelly’s experiment was always meant to Australian desert all by himself. Ando had his first dabble with a wave pool slippery rocks under a waterfall than flying at high speed through endless be a prototype, but it has already been sold to the World Surf League who earlier this year, leaving him with a foul taste in his mouth—and that’s not tunnels. Like Budweiser’s ‘Whaaaassuuuuuuup!’ commercials, the initial have hosted two CT events at the site, complete with ticket sales and live just because people were pissing in the pool while they surfed. novelty wore thin in a matter of minutes.
music, the goal being to introduce surf fans to the idea of a competitive ‘Ethically, I don’t understand why you’d spend all that money making
Then in the noughties—a breakthrough. Wave pool technology made a ‘surf arena’ experience. But the response so far has been lacklustre to something you already get for free,’ he says. ‘I understand it gives people huge leap when the eccentric surfing brothers Monty and Greg Webber say the least, particularly online where keyboard jockeys have shot down in landlocked areas a place to have a surf, I know it makes it easier for began driving a fishing trawler along the banks of the Clarence River in the atmosphere of the event as lifeless and the surf performances of people to get that feeling of riding a wave for the first time, I know they’re Northern NSW. What they observed in the boat wake were perfect cylinders the best in the world as boring. 2012 World Champion Joel Parkinson is great fun and all that stuff, but to me, surfing in a chlorinated goldfish bowl that ran for miles along the exposed low tide sandbanks. A new dawn a surfer famous for his smooth style and supernatural understanding of surrounded by walls and flashing lights and people and noise is the exact of artificial wave engineering followed, as Greg Webber explored the ocean movement. He’s one of those rare people who is always in perfect opposite of the surfing experience. It’s only my opinion, but to me, surfing is dynamics of swell creation and formation. Within a couple of years, he’d position in the line-up and on the wave face, regardless of conditions. already in a bizarre place and those things are taking it in an even stranger released footage of the first downscaled wave tank with what appeared He’s also surfed in four different wave pools, including URBNSURF and the direction. I’ll be making it my mission to never surf one again.’ to be perfect ankle high tubes. It was a revelation, and he was sure he GOAT pool. ‘The race is on, that’s for sure, the race to turn these tanks into ALL HAIL SUZIE! could upscale this thing into the world’s first legitimate surf arena with arenas is right the fuck on,’ he says. ‘If people want to keep throwing their Comparing surfing in pools with surfing in the ocean is a conversation that genuine power and overhead kegs. The challenge, of course, was finding money at these things, that’s fine, and I’ll always put my hand up to try will keep raging, and there are legitimate arguments for and against the someone to pay for it. Meanwhile, a collective energy around not just the them out. As far as what exists right now, they (the different pool designs) effects these contraptions will have on the culture and spirit of surfing— conception, but also the construction, of wave pools began to reach fever all have their strengths and weaknesses. The URBNSURF model makes not least of all, their effects on the environment. pitch. Soon the first legitimate prototypes began to appear. Although still far more waves and looks to have a better business model, while the Kelly But contrary to Ando’s experience, I believe there are elements of true underwhelming (producing surf that was small and weak), these pools at wave is a better shape, even though you have to wait way longer to get one. surfing to be found in these artificial surfing petri dishes. Things like least offered a half decent wave riding experience. Still, all eyes were But if you ask me, regardless of how good they get and the fact that they’re having a hell time with ya mates, laughing at wipeouts, spraying ya bro on Webber. He’d made plenty of noise in the media, had showcased great fun, it’s not surfing.’
in the face and maybe even seeing a dolphin stick his eight-foot dick in
the potential of his design with a convincing model and rumours were PARKO IS NOT ALONE IN HIS SENTIMENTS
another dolphin… if someone ever puts a wave machine in at Sea World.
flying that big money backers were ready to hit the green light. But when The battle for surfing’s soul is, and always has been, as constant as Seriously though, they are incredibly fun, and for those of us who don’t GOAT Slater dropped his pool bomb on little Suzie’s World Title, it also the tides. Nat Young, an Australian World Champ in 1966 and 1970, have the luxury of surfing for a living, maybe that’s all surfing needs to simultaneously extinguished any remaining patience the surf world had for was one of the first professional surfers to turn his back on contests, be. Ultimately, as long as these pools keep popping up, surfers are going Webber’s design. At that point, if the goal of the pool race was to get into leaving the booming Sydney surf scene for the pristine rolling green to ride them. Unless of course you’re from a favela. In that case, it’ll be orbit, Slater had already landed on Mars.
pointbreaks of northern New South Wales to reconnect with surfing and just you and the ocean for a long time to come. Worked out fine for Suzie.
AERIAL SURFING HAS EXPERIENCED THE BIGGEST EVOLUTIONARY LEAP IN MANMADE WAVES THANKS TO SURFERS HAVING, FOR THE FIRST TIME IN HISTORY, THE SAME RAMP TO PRACTICE TRICKS ON OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN. IN NATURE, THAT JUST DOESN’T HAPPEN. THAT’S WHY NATURE CAN GO EAT A BIG FUCKIN’ DICK. FUCK YOU, NATURE. CHIPPA WILSON AGREES WITH THIS GAME CHANGING VAERIAL AT THE TEXAS BSR WAVE PARK. (WILSON)
BY NOWLAN GAWRON WHEN NEW TECHNOLOGY WORKS ITS WAY INTO THE ARTS AT A CONSUMER LEVEL, PEOPLE TEND TO LOOK AT IT ONE OF TWO WAYS. ON ONE HAND, EACH NEW INNOVATION TENDS TO GET SMALLER, QUICKER, MORE EFFICIENT, AND CHEAPER THAN ITS PREDECESSOR—BUT, IF WE LOOK AT THE OTHER SIDE, THE DARKER SIDE, WE SEE THAT THOSE SAME ADVANCES QUICKLY LEVEL THE PLAYING FIELD, OFTEN MARGINALISING THE TALENTS AND LIFE’S WORK OF SKILLED ARTISTS. WITH EVERY NEW SOFTWARE UPDATE, IT SEEMS LEARNING AND PLAYING ACTUAL INSTRUMENTS IS BECOMING A THING OF THE PAST. TODAY, MOST CREATORS SPEND THE MAJORITY OF THEIR TIME IN FRONT OF A COMPUTER, ULTIMATELY DISTANCING THEMSELVES FROM THAT UNIQUE RELATIONSHIP AND INDESCRIBABLE MAGIC YOU CAN ONLY GET WITH A REAL INSTRUMENT. THANKS TO TECHNOLOGY, JUST ABOUT ANYONE CAN CHEAT THEIR WAY THROUGH THE ARTISTIC PROCESS. BUT WILL THEY? WITH OUR COLLECTIVE ADHD AND EVER-GROWING NUMBER OF DISTRACTIONS, IT’S HARD TO IMAGINE ANYONE BESIDES THE ESPECIALLY DILIGENT WILL FIND THE TIME AND CONCENTRATION TO CREATE ANYTHING. STRANGELY, AS MANY MUSIC-MAKING TECHNOLOGIES TAKE US AWAY FROM THE BEAUTY OF OLD TIME ANALOG METHODS, THERE’S A REMARKABLE AND COUNTERINTUITIVE TREND IN MUSIC CONSUMPTION TAKING PLACE, AND IT’S ONE THAT MAY TAME THE TEMPER OF THE INCREASINGLY DISPLACED SENTIMENTALIST: TECHNOLOGICAL UPGRADES TO OUTDATED DEVICES. PRESENTING MONSTER CHILDREN’S FAVOURITE FUTURISTIC DEVICES OF AUDIO PRODUCTION AND CONSUMPTION: CLASS OF 2020. MARKETED AND PRICED FOR THE MASSES, THESE ITEMS EITHER PRESENT AN OPPORTUNITY FOR THE CURIOUS TO TRY THEIR HAND AT TRANSLATING THE SOUNDS IN THEIR HEAD WITHOUT FEAR OF FAILURE, OR MERELY RESURRECT SOME OF TIME’S MOST ROMANTIC TECHNOLOGIES. TRY THEM OUT WHILE YOU CAN, BECAUSE ONCE THE ORGASMATRON FROM WOODY ALLEN’S SLEEPER IS FINALISED, IT WILL BE A MIRACLE IF ANYONE FINDS THE MOTIVATION TO DO ANYTHING.
MC66 THE FUTURE OF SOUND IS NOW
is Now MC66 THE FUTURE OF SOUND IS NOW
BITTY Over in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Curious Sound Objects has in the palm of your hand. Pick from drum, bass, rhythm, and lead, and you can developed a pocket-sized drum machine they call the ‘Bitty’. And while it create, record and play along anywhere, anytime. With feather-like sensitivity, dwarfs and simplifies its bulky, high-priced counterparts from yesteryear, the device not only reacts to your touch, but the built-in accelerometer and it still employs actual buttons and knobs to perform its functions. It’s that gyroscope give it the ability to vary with your every movement. Shake it, strum it, ‘affordance,’ as founder Nickolas Peter Chelyapov puts it, which gives the Bitty do a little dance, you can utilise it all in the creation process. An internal speaker that extra charm. It turns out, it’s still better to push a button and twist a knob makes it portable, and its Bluetooth and USB connectivity makes it convenient. than to click and drag their virtual equivalents. I did my research; it’s true. With Fresh off their successful Kickstarter campaign, the project drummed up 13,000 the Bitty, the need for a computer is minimal. Just load one of the sound banks preorders (the most ever by a musical instrument in crowdfunding history) and provided (or your own) and you are instantly equipped with drums, melodies or has just received additional funding from Warner Music and Shure. artiphon.com atmospherics, all of which can then be manipulated with the turn of a knob. PHONOCUT Home Vinyl Recorder And with two Bittys side by side, you have all of the tools you need to make a People are still amazed at vinyl’s comeback. If you ask me, and probably millions whole song live and on the fly. The drum sounds ‘crunch’ and ‘punch’ like early of others, it never went away. I mean, I’ve seen The Big Chill soundtrack on vinyl MPC’s, and the synths shimmer. Equipped with a built-in car door speaker, the at every Goodwill I’ve ever been to. More so, vinyl’s return is better defined as Bitty stands strong on its own, but plug it into a set of external speakers and it record companies finally deeming it less dangerous and unpredictable as a soars. ‘My one requirement was that it had to be loud enough to be annoying,’ physical medium. Sure, it’s not the most cost-effective way to make music, but said Chelyapov. A musician himself, he sees the pocket-sized gizmo as an that slab of black is the sexiest, most romantic, best sounding (and largest) opportunity to create and jam out with your friends, in a drum circle of sorts— format we’ve ever had. Anyways, yeah, vinyl is back for the rest of the world, but or a drum machine circle… as it were. Finally, we have a gadget fit for the while the avid appreciator may find themselves weary of technology (since they future with a vintage feel and a retro reverence, all brought to you with a price tried to destroy their medium of choice), they just may change their mind when point that takes the fear of failure out of the equation. curioussoundobjects.com they see this. Introducing the PHONOCUT, the world’s first consumer analog ORBA
vinyl lathe. Developed by Florian ‘Doc’ Kaps (also known for keeping Polaroid
Nashville has long been known to the world as ‘Music City,’ and with Artiphon’s film alive as the founder of the Impossible Project), PHONOCUT’s eventual contributions to the future of music creation, it should be able to keep that introduction to the market will mark the first time a home record-making device nickname well into the formidable future. Following the release of INSTRUMENT will be available to the public. With a list price around €1999, it may not be 1, a device that could switch between a guitar, violin, piano, and drums with the for everyone, but the option is there. The machine itself is roughly the size press of a single button, the forward-thinking, Tennessee-based company is of a common turntable and no computer or additional program is required. nearly set to release the Orba on the world. Another multi-tasker, the Orba is a Simply plug in a jack from your audio source to the PHONOCUT and press synth, looper and MIDI control, all contained in a single circular device that fits play. The resulting 10-inch record can hold an estimated fifteen-minutes of
MC66 THE FUTURE OF SOUND IS NOW
sound on each side… and of course it doesn’t have vocables (ahhs, la-las) to create melodies, patterns or something, every track had to be one of merit. There and recorded it with the cassette tape,’ says Sanami to be music. If the analog romantic needs convincing manipulate effects on just about any instrument. You was a certain analog beauty with the cassette player. Kwok of NINM. ‘We got lots of DIY mixtapes in the (and there’s certainly a chance those stubborn don’t even have to have a good voice. Clicks and taps Maybe it was the hypnotic effect of the turning wheels. past!’ As a result, the ‘It’s OK’ cassette player was Luddites might) consider the untapped, previously will work too. Dubler comes with software and a mic. Maybe it was because you could actually see the behind born. Equipped to handle both wireless headphones impossible idea of a vinyl ‘mixtape,’ or taking DIY to Prototypes have already been tested and endorsed the scenes movement that made the machine work. and those requiring a jack, It’s OK not only handles the new extremes by releasing your own music on a record by musicians in the field, the first run of crowdfunded Now, everything is just hidden behind metal and plastic. basic functions of a Walkman, but it also includes a you cut yourself. It’s probably something they had in devices have been shipped, and pre-orders are now Luckily there are still some out there keeping the recorder. ‘We learned slowly to anticipate as waiting mind. After all, tucked away in their FAQ, it says they being taken on their website. vochleaco.uk
analog spirit of the cassette tape alive and well. Right is elegant, and hope is romantic. The cassette tape
chose the 10-inch for its simplicity and because it IT’S OK Cassette Player
now, there’s a good chance your favourite indie bands not only records music, but also the weight of time.’
was Shellac’s original format of choice. phonocut.com Live long enough and you’re bound to see some of the are selling cassette tapes at their merch table. Mine While countless stories (and YouTube videos) have Dubler Studio Kit
favourite technologies from your youth disappear from are. The great Burger Records label actually specialises highlighted kids of today’s unfamiliarity with cassette
One of the most discouraging things about trying plain sight. Actually, the way things are going, you don’t in cassette formats. But now that your car with the players, you may think this concept is just for aging to create music is not being able to translate the even have to live that long to see it happen. For many tapedeck has died, where do we turn? Enter NINM sentimentalists, but Kwok thinks otherwise. ‘Thanks to sound in your mind into a workable recording. Thanks of my generation, the tape player was a tough one to let labs of Hong Kong. With a poetic outlook and extreme Stranger Things, Guardians of the Galaxy, Billie Eilish, to Dubler, that disconnect is closer than ever to go. Things like those mixtapes from your first girlfriend appreciation for vintage gear, NINM are taking familiar, etcetera, cassette tapes are back. IT’S OK is entry-level being solved. Created by Vochlea, the London-based can’t easily be replaced. A mix CD couldn’t take its outdated analog devices and making them tech-ready media for them to get started with.’ It’s OK was made company has developed a real-time, vocal recognition place... and don’t even try to send me your playlist. A for the modern age. ‘When we were young, we always available to the public in December 2019. ninmlab.com MIDI controller. Compatible with any DAW, you can now mixtape required masterful sequencing and strategic listened to the radio with the old cassette player and hum, sing, breathe, beatbox or use other non-lexical planning. Because you couldn’t just easily skip over waited for the DJ to play our favourite singer’s song,
The the Future future of Death is inevitable, but have you thought about what will actually happen when you die?
‘So when you say you dressed her, you mean we bathed her and dressed her and did her who were forced to face the awful reality of wanted to help people in their dying,’ she tells you put clothes on her corpse?’ I’ve interrupted hair all nice and put her in her outfit and just a friend or family member’s death, and she me. ‘But it’s really hard to charge for that, it Nastassia Jones and Kimba Griffith, the two made sure everything was safe for her to come found that she ‘could just say the right thing… feels really gross to be like, “Oh you want me women who founded a company called The home.’
or even the wrong thing that works for those to be with you while you’re dying? Well that’s
Last Hurrah Funerals. They’ve been telling me Nastassia is a Kiwi who has previously worked people.’
eighty dollars an hour.” It just feels so wrong.’
about the service they ran today and how they in the skateboarding industry, at a funeral Kimba is a marriage celebrant and a working She felt better working as a funeral celebrant, were ‘really lucky’ to get to bathe and dress home and as a forensic cleaner (the latter jazz musician. She previously worked as a non- which is what led her creating The Last Hurrah the dead woman before her corpse was taken involved cleaning up dead bodies, crime medical birthing attendant, helping women Funerals. back to the family home for her funeral.
scenes and meth labs). She reckons that with homebirths. She then, in her own words, Nastassia and Kimba both live in Melbourne,
‘Yep,’ says Nastassia, matter-of-factly. ‘So, working in the death industry was the first time ‘started gravitating towards the death thing,’ but they met through Facebook. After hanging we bathe them. This one lady had a beautiful she didn’t feel like she was an imposter. She did a death midwifery course (yes, that is a out a couple of times, they realised that their soap that smelled really “classy hippie”, and regularly saw people at their worst, people thing) and worked at a cemetery for a while. ‘I skillsets were fairly complementary and soon
The Future of Death
The Future of Death
Photography: Phoebe Powell
Photography: Phoebe Powell
Portrait: Stephanie Cammarano
Portrait: Stephanie Cammarano
Interview by Nat Kassel
Interview by Nat Kassel
Death death decided to start the funeral company. Their niche: that are free from religious affiliations. In the 2016
they strongly believe that a person’s funeral should census, more than thirty per cent of Australians chose reflect their personality, so all their funeral services ‘no religion’ as their religious status, outnumbering are customisable. They explain that funerals don’t Catholics who represent twenty-two per cent of the necessarily need to be structured around religion or country—meaning
non-believers
now
outnumber
even tradition. Kimba uses the example of The Tote, any other religious group in Australia. This has been Melbourne’s iconic punk and heavy music venue.
reflected in marriages for a while, with a rise of civil
‘If you love The Tote and you loved getting wasted there celebrants, many of whom are now conducting funerals and playing pool and whatever, why would you go to a as well. Kimba tells me that a family recently contacted chapel [for your funeral] when you never stepped foot in her because they wanted an atheist celebrant. In fact, a chapel? Why wouldn’t you go to the Tote?’ she asks.
this is how a lot of people find her.
Increasingly, people are in the market for funerals ‘I went to the arrangement (at The Tote) and on the table
there was a badge that said, “Even Jesus thinks you’re a cunt.”’ high tech machines can transform the carbon from human my grandma to see the funeral planner. We sat at a table with Kimba’s amused when she tells me this, but she clarifies that ashes into diamonds. There are now ‘digital planning tools’ for a posh older lady in a beige brick building on the Gold Coast. she’s also happy to accommodate those with other beliefs, your funeral and a funeral price comparison service, fittingly My mum and grandma were really upset and kept bursting into including ‘earth-based spirituality, shamanic practice [and] called Funeralocity. An app called WeCroak provides five push tears. The woman kept upselling them on stuff like flowers and pagan sorts of things,’ as well as more traditional religions.
notifications per day to its 30,000 users. Each time they are an obituary in the newspaper. It was all very overwhelming.
‘I’m atheist to the core,’ Nastassia adds, ‘whereas Kimba’s reminded that they are going to die, presumably to help them The only decision I felt like we had really made was to get a quite spiritual. So our whole vibe is that we can cater for all make the most out of life before it slips away.
cardboard coffin, because my grandpa had heard that Frank
walks of life. If you’re Orthodox Catholic, we got you, but having Journalist Eleanor Cummins has described these products as Sinatra had been buried in a cardboard coffin and he liked the that place for atheist funerals and not feeling like there’s any ‘end of life consumerism.’ While funerals have obviously been idea of that. I kept making suggestions for cheaper options, kind of underlying religious aspect or pressure to be that way an established business for generations, there are now more but the funeral director mostly ignored me, deferring to my was pretty important to us.’
options than ever before. I ask Nastassia and Kimba what they grandma, who was barely capable of speaking and, through
Catering to this godless hole in the market with customisable, think about Caitlin Doughty’s term, ‘death positivity’.
her tears, just nodded in agreement. Walking out of there, I
subculture-specific funeral options is part of a larger ‘I don’t like it because it just feels like you’re real stoked couldn’t help but feel that our family had been swindled. movement in the death industry. Hawaiian author Caitlin about anyone dying,’ says Nastassia. ‘It’s more about creating When I mention this to Nastassia and Kimba, they’re Doughty has written three books about the flaws of the industry conversation and I understand that. But just the term “death empathetic but not remotely surprised. ‘We can’t figure out and founded The Order of the Good Death, an organisation positive” sounds wack to me. It’s more like “death truthers”.’
how people price like that, honestly,’ says Kimba, explaining
that promotes something called ‘death positivity.’ The first Kimba chimes in: ‘Death preppers!’
that most funeral homes still do pricing by appointment. (Last
principle of the death positivity movement is that ‘by hiding They both have a laugh at this. But the bottom line with death, Hurrah Funerals have their pricing displayed on their website; death and dying behind closed doors we do more harm than according to Nastassia, is that it’s not a positive thing. ‘It’s a full funeral service starts at $2,200). Kimba continues, ‘You good to our society.’
shit, you can’t be positive about it, it’s going to suck… Death don’t go to the supermarket and have to make an appointment
All sorts of products and trends have emerged out of this is shit. It’s violent, it can be traumatic; it’s never a good time.’ to find out how much milk costs, you just go and buy it. So why movement and it’s probably no surprise that the internet is Kimba more or less agrees, saying, ‘We’re running from it. I’m is there this thing where you have to have a salesperson come rife with wacky new death products. While a website called no different. I wake up at night in a cold sweat about dying.’
to your door to find out how much your funeral’s going to cost?’
FreeWill allows users to create a free, legally-binding will in ***
She says it’s also common for one company to own multiple
twenty-minutes, a National Geographic article explains how I remember when my grandfather died, I went with my mum and brands of funeral homes, hitting various income brackets and
‘I wanted to help people in their dying, but it’s really hard to charge for that, it feels really gross to be like, “Oh you want me to be with you while you’re dying? Well that’s $80 an hour.’
charging wildly different prices for the exact same service. ‘It body releases 400kg of CO2 into the atmosphere on average a bit less freaked out and secretive about it.’ doesn’t matter whether you’ve paid $2,000 or $20,000, at the and it’s much worse when corpses have dental fillings or Nastassia adds that working in the death industry is a good end of the day, everyone’s going back to that same mortuary radiation in their bodies from cancer treatments. As it stands, motivator to live life as best she can. ‘I think it also makes you facility and being cared for by the same staff. Those staff disposing of corpses is pretty carbon-heavy.
appreciate life and your relationships heaps more. And we’re
might be really highly qualified but why is one person paying But there is a movement towards greener methods of body really lucky that every day we’re reminded that we don’t have a $2000 and one person paying $20,000? Those are the sorts disposal. In Seattle, a company called Recompose is offering lot of time, so you can’t piss around.’ of things that I think are problematic.’
to compost bodies for US$5,500. They had to lobby to change
The death industry is probably still in the early phases of what a state law about disposing of the dead, but were successful Silicon Valley types might call a ‘digital disruption’, but many and will begin to compost bodies in early 2020. would argue that this is a good thing. Because it’s also an Another body disposal technology is alkaline hydrolysis, which industry that has long been shrouded in mystery, secrecy and was developed in the US to dispose of dead cows after the greed. Nastassia and Kimba agree that there needs to be much fallout of the foot-and-mouth disease epidemic. It involves more transparency in the death industry across the board. But placing a body into a high-pressure vessel filled with water and dodgy pricing and secrecy aren’t the only problems. Nastassia potassium hydroxide, then heating to 160 degrees celcius at says that like many professions, it’s run by a majority of old high pressure. A body can be broken down into a brown liquid white men and there’s a lack of minorities represented. In that is completely compostable in four to six hours. some areas, that’s changing—in the US, approximately sixty Beyond the gruesome corporeal details of death, there is also per cent of those studying mortuary science are women.
the digital aspect. Everyone has a digital footprint these days
But beyond the problems with diversity in the profession itself, and in many cases there’s a huge amount of highly personal— there’s also a more fundamental problem with how we, as a and in some cases embarrassing and incriminating— society, treat death. There’s a tendency to sugar-coat it, to shy information that is bouncing around in cyberspace. What will away from the reality of what death actually involves.
happen to all that when you die?
‘I’ve found a lot with the death trades, everyone talks to you On Facebook, there is now an option to set a legacy contact, like this,’ says Nastassia, lowering her voice to a soothing which means you give a person full access to your account whisper. ‘And it’s all really fucking patronising.’ This is evident after you die. This could come in handy for contacting your in the terminology surrounding death. At funerals, dying is friends and family, posting memorial messages or planning described as ‘passing away’ and dead people are ‘loved ones’. your funeral. But it would also mean that they would have full Nastassia and Kimba make a conscious effort not to use this access to all your private messages, which could be pretty language, telling me that they prefer the terms ‘died’ and ‘your awkward for those who are around to learn your secrets. dead person’.
The alternative is that you can choose a setting where your
‘It’s that old funeral thing where you keep everything veiled and account automatically gets deleted when you die. This seems you say “passed away”’ says Nastassia. ‘Nah, they didn’t— like a safer option, but it could also be a bummer for your they died.’ Kimba adds, ‘It’s a nicety, but it’s a euphemism.’
friends who want to look at photos of you and reminisce. And
***
if you don’t set anything up, your Facebook profile will exist
When you die, there are three options for disposing of your indefinitely. body: burial, cremation or sea burial. You have the choice of ‘I’ve got a friend who died and she didn’t set a legacy contact being buried, burnt or thrown into the ocean. You could also and so no one’s been able to do anything,’ Kimba explains. donate your body to medical research, which is a good option ‘Every time I go to invite someone to my gig, she pops up and if you can’t afford embalming or cremation, but eventually the it’s upsetting. When her birthday comes up and you’re like, university or medical research facility that you donate it to will “Ah, it’s her birthday,” you get really sad. You get a little spike cremate it. Sea burial is the greenest way to dispose of a body, in your heart, and I find that hard.’ because your flesh will be eaten up by fish.
It’s a morbid thought that you would need to have safeguards
If you want to be buried, it’s worth considering that graveyards in place for your social media accounts after death but as we are a pretty inefficient use of space and that land could be go further in curating our digital selves, it’s an increasingly better used for affordable housing or productive infrastructure. relevant consideration. And Kimba says becoming more Then there’s the carbon footprint of coffins and embalming prepared for our own deaths is probably a good thing. chemicals, which leak toxic liquids into the soil. Cremating a ‘That’s where I think the future of death lies,’ she says, ‘getting
net PLaNeT so
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ILLUSTRATIONS: RYAN TOWNLEY
CHANGE FROM THE GROUND UP. THEY’RE A COMMUNIT Y OF PEOPLE WHO POOL THEIR MONEY (WHICH COMES FROM THE MEMBERSHIP FEE YOU PAY TO JOIN THE CLUB) TO FUND GRANTS FOR PROJECTS AND GROUPS THAT ARE WORKING TO GET OUR PL ANET BACK ON TRACK. ASIDE FROM ALL THAT GOOD STUFF THOUGH, GROUNDSWELL IS ALSO A PL ATFORM CREATED TO ANSWER THE QUESTION ON EVERYONE’S LIPS WHEN IT COMES TO CLIMATE CHANGE: ‘WHAT CAN I DO?’ TO ANSWER THAT, WE GOT THE BRAINS BEHIND GROUNDSWELL GIVING TO GIVE US TEN WAYS YOU CAN DO THE EARTH A SOLID, STARTING RIGHT NOW.
save
GROUNDSWELL GIVING IS AN AUSTRALIAN - BASED ORGANISATION DOING BIG THINGS TO TACKLE CLIMATE
tO
you want the pl
LISTEN TO FIRST NATIONS VOICES
Switching to renewables is crucial in reducing carbon
Aboriginal culture is one of the oldest continuous cultural traditions in the world and is inextrica-
vestment from fossil fuels. Here are two ways you can
bly connected to sustainable practices of caring for country developed over millennia. Our sense of
get involved:
belonging is embedded in the lands, and is in harmony with the animals and plants that we share
CHOOSE GREEN POWER
our world with. Indigenous expertise and knowledge must be at the forefront of this fight for our
If you can’t buy solar panels, choosing green power is
future. - Lille Madden.
a great way to invest in renewable electricity. When you
emissions and driving the acceleration of national di-
buy green power from your provider, they then buy the equivalent amount of electricity from renewable energy We need to dry up the pipeline of funding going to fossil fuel
generators, which they add to the grid on your behalf.
companies ASAP. As a consumer, you can do this by moving
Check out greenelectricityguide.org.au to learn more.
your money out of banks, super and share portfolios that in-
GO SOLAR
vest in fossil fuels. We call this divestment—
If you own your own home, consider getting solar panels
the opposite of investment. If the fossil fuel
installed to cut household emissions and reduce power
projects that drive climate change can’t get
bills. Check out renew.org.au and cleanenergycouncil.org
money, investors or insurance, they can’t proceed. Here are two areas you can make changes: BANKING Taking your money out of banks that lend to fossil fuels diminishes their social license and cuts off financing the fossil fuel industry. Go to marketforces.org.au to check whether your bank lends to fossil fuels, and if they do, divest. SUPERANNUATION Over half of the world’s superannuation is invested in fossil fuels and other high-carbon sectors, while less than two per cent is invested in climate solutions like renewable energy. If super funds switched even a fractransform the energy industry. Go to superswitch.org.au to
SWITCH YOUR WORKPLACE TO 100% RENEWABLE ENERGY
check whether your superannuation fund invests in fossil
If you’re an employee, put forward a case for your workplace to install solar panels, or buy 100 per cent
fuels. If they do, switch and let them know why. You can
renewable energy. You can also encourage your management team to sign up to RE100, a global move-
encourage universities, workplaces, local governments and
ment of businesses committing to transition to 100 per cent renewable energy, often through power
more to divest too at gofossilfree.org
purchase agreements (bonus: this will reduce their energy bill too).
tion of their investments to renewables, it would completely
JOIN A CLIMATE GROUP We need hundreds of groups to build a social movement powerful enough to force governments to deal with the causes of the climate crisis, not just the symptoms. There are climate advocacy groups for young people, psychologists, health professionals, farmers, vets, parents, surfers, athletes, the fashion industry, business, local councils and more. If none appeal, start your own! Groundswell Giving, Climate Council, and Seed Mob are a few great examples for anyone based in Australia, and you can discover more at cana.net.au
FUND CLIMATE ADVOCACY Did you know that globally, only three per cent of all giving goes to tackling climate change? This needs to be turned around, and fast. As the fossil fuel lobby knows, shifting public There’s so much you can do at our home to reduce emissions and start important conversations with family,
opinion and influencing public policy is possible, but it’s not cheap. There are dozens of
friends and colleagues. Some ways to cut down your carbon footprint:
organisations working on viable strategies to build a climate movement powerful enough
• Go solar
to win, but they need our support. Here’s how you can chip in to accelerate climate action
• Choose greenpower
today:
• Travel smarter. Walk, cycle, carpool, take the train or bus, drive less, fly less, and invest in an electric vehicle
• Regular giving. Support one of the amazing climate advocacy organisations through
if possible
regular donations
• Food. Where you can, grow your own, buy local, and eat a more plant-based diet
• Grantmaking. Join Groundswell to co-fund strategic, high-impact climate grantmaking in
• Reduce food waste. Start a compost or ask your local council about a food waste collection service
Australia
• Reduce energy use. Switch off lights and power points when not in use, insulate better, choose energy-efficient
• Workplace giving. Encourage your workplace to join Good2Give or a similar platform and
appliances, install a thermostat
nominate climate organisations as your recipients. If you work for a large company, suggest
• Buy less, waste less. Minimise your impact on the planet by reducing our consumption
they match employee donations
• When you do need to buy things, look for B Corp certification (this is to sustainable business what Fair Trade
• Fundraising events. Host your own band night, dinner, fun run, whatever, and donate all
certification is to coffee, and it’s a growing global community) at bcorporation.com
proceeds to climate advocacy
Having conversations with people who know and trust you is one of the best ways to inspire others to step up and engage with climate action. Here are some tips (based on expert research by Psychologists for a Safe Climate) on how to communicate effectively: • Ask first, and listen deeply. Research shows the messenger is just as important as the message, so begin by establishing common ground • Treat people with the respect you like to receive • Be patient. It’s unlikely a person will change their world view through one conversation. The most important thing is to sustain a respectful, open dialogue. Think of it as planting a seed • Hold your own views and keep away from arguing about data • Focus on what you think and why you think it. Don’t seek to undermine the sources of people’s information • Be solution-focused and positive • Relate climate solutions to happiness and common concerns, e.g. the potential for green jobs creation, better health conditions for workers • Remind them that coal is the biggest cause of climate change • Help people see or find a role for themselves in the solutions. Make them feel good about what they’re already doing, and help them find a way to do more
There’s a reason government cracks down on rallies and protests: they build and show power. Here are a few tips for coming along: • Make a sign. It’s motivating and sends a clear message • Look out for one another and treat everyone with respect • Learn from listening to the speakers, reading signs, and chatting with other people in the crowd • Know your history and learn from First Nations people, who have been protecting and defending this country since colonisation
GET POLITICAL Halting damage to our climate requires new laws at every level of government, which requires politicians to take the issue seriously. Here’s where you come in: • Contact your local, state and federal MPs. Their job is to represent you in parliament. If their electorate cares about transforming their nation to 100 per cent renewables, it’s their job to advocate for this on your behalf. Email, write, or book a face-to-face meeting • Contact your local council. Research what your local council has already done on climate change. In Australia, you can nominate your council for the Climate Council’s ‘City Power Partnership’ so they can join with other councils, share knowledge and expertise, and be a stronger force for change To get involved in the incredible work that Groundswell Giving are doing, head to groundswellgiving.org
in coversation with
Akram Abdelfattah
Portraits by Peter Sutherland
When I first heard you left LA for New York, I was like, ‘Oh fuck!’ And then when I heard you were all sober and healthy, I thought, ‘Oh, maybe he’s not the same asshole anymore.’ I’m the asshole? Yeah. What influenced you to get clean and sober? I don’t know. I think Dylan (Rieder) and my grandma passing at similar times made me look into it more. I just started reading about it, you know John Joseph? John Joseph who wrote Meat Is for Pussies? Yeah. I read his book and I was like, ‘I’m gonna try this; see if I feel a difference,’ and it went from there. Then I did these Wim Hof online courses and from there I started on a Quiksilver trip to Peru and came back feeling lethargic one day out of the week. Then it became two days, then three and four and five. And I was just like, ‘Dude, this sucks.’ I just felt gross and unhealthy. And I went to a doctor, and he goes, ‘Yeah, you have a parasite in your stomach,’ and he gave me a pill I’d seen on TV which was completely not for what my issues were. So, when it didn’t
meditating and just diving into it. Then I heard rumours about me being an anti-vaxxer. Are you? No. But people are saying I’m that crazy. Well, let’s back up a little bit. You’ve figured out a healthy lifestyle and integrated it into your skateboarding, and obviously this will add years to your career. Because you’re at fully fledged vegan, you don’t drink… I don’t know, dude. After twenty-years or more of skating, my fucking body is all fucked up, you know what I mean? Right. So, I thought, ‘What can I do to improve that?’ The [sobriety and veganism] also comes from having stomach issues. I went had stopped, and he was filming a bunch. So, I was like, ‘I got to get on this program.’ But Dylan would get mad at me, like, ‘You don’t need to be sober!’ Dylan was telling you not to be sober? He was just like, ‘You don’t have a problem,’ and I’m like, ‘Relax dude.’ So eating right and not drinking was the first thing you dipped your toes into. What about Wim Hof?
really go away, I decided to try and figure it out myself. And that’s why I stopped drinking. I cut that out first and it helped a lot, but I was still having problems. So, then I stopped eating meat and all that. What was the first thing you picked up: eating right or Wim Hof? I mean, that’s a big gap from when I started getting into breathing techniques and all that stuff. At the time, I was just seeing what would happen if I cut certain things out of my diet. Right. Also, Dylan was a big part of it. Because I was like, ‘This guy is sober and he’s skating really well.’ And Andrew Allen was another one who
I got into Wim Hof stuff, which is just breathing technique, breath work. And that led me to yoga and Pranayama and all that. Is anybody else in skateboarding into this or veganism or whatever? I know a lot of people who are plant-based. I think Kenny Anderson had a big influence on the Converse team. But with meditation and stuff, the idea isn’t as foreign to people anymore, and now people are a little more open to trying it out. The perception of it has shifted. What were the perceptions of meditation? I think it was maybe seen as this thing that people from India or Tibet did and that was that. But now I think—especially with the rise of app culture—it’s become more of a globally accepted thing. I think Instagram plays a role in that, when people are all about being positive influencers and all that. It plays into the bigger picture.
Generally, the interviews we print in Monster Children run 2500–3,000 words, which works out to be roughly twenty-minutes of recorded conversatio n. When we transcribed this interview w ith professional skateboarder, entrepreneur and—let’s be honest— hippie Alex Olson (conducted by his friend Akram Abdelfattah it came in just under 17,000 words. Dudes talked forever. And it was all gold. Well, mostly gold. The meaningless adverb ‘like’ accounted for around 5,000 of those 17,000 words. Which was helpful because after we cut them, we only had to trim another 12,000 to get down to the requisite 2,500–3,000. Long story
into a sensible and very digestible 2664 words. Enjoy.
HOURS-LONG MEANDERING CONVERSATION ABOUT SURFING, SKATING, RUNNING A BUSINESS, STEVE OLSON, WIM HOF
short, we had to come at this bastard with a whipper snipper to get it down to a reasonable length. What you have here then, is an
VEGANISM, SOBRIETY, AND THE SECRET TO LIVING A HAPPY LIFE, ALL DISTILLE d
Tom Curren. By Ted Grambeau
While we’re talking about being healthy and staying fit, it seems these days the kids in surfing and skateboarding are training more, doing core workouts and cross-training and stuff. What do you think of that? Yeah, I mean, I’ve done it. But to be honest, I just think go to fucking yoga—it’ll match all that other stuff and it’ll loosen tension. Tension? I mean, from what I’ve seen, we all hold tension in our muscles in various forms. And if you’re more limber then the tension can move. Anyway, for me, it works. Some people like pilates, some people like CrossFit, some people like swimming. For me, yoga gives you all that. What about the mental benefits of yoga? Oh yeah, you’re getting a full 360 out of it. I think Hatha yoga definitely gets you to that point of being in the now, you know what I mean? Like when you’re surfing, you’re not thinking of anything else because your mind’s focused on so many different things that nothing can distract you. And that’s kind of like enlightenment. Skating for instance: doing a trick, you don’t really think of other things because you’re so focused on the task at hand; everything else stops. And so that’s basically the same thing with meditation. Wim Hof is all about going in the cold. And when you’re in thirty-degree [Fahrenheit] water, your mind’s not really rattling off a grocery list or blah, blah, blah. It’s focused. And so, yoga is the same thing: sit in the pose and focus on what you’re doing at that moment. Recently, you’ve been texting me screenshots of Tom Curren riding these Frankenstein boards and stuff like that. When did you get back into surfing? Because I imagine you did it when you’re younger with your dad? My introduction to surfing was through my dad and my uncle. But I didn’t like it. And we lived in Malibu at the time. Why didn’t you like it? I just hated the mentality, especially in the nineties; it was nasty. It was super local, you know, Pennywise, NOFX, fucking Black Flys, and big dudes with tatts fighting… It was not interesting. That was my introduction. I was like, ‘God, I don’t like this.’ I liked boogie boarding, but my dad was like, ‘No, you’re not allowed to do that.’
I liked boogie boarding, but my dad was like, “No, you’re not allowed to do that”.
Oscar Caldwell. By John Respondek
‘Dylan would get mad at me, like, “You don’t need to be sober!
You don’t have a problem!” And I’m like, ‘Relax dude.’”
Did you ride a Mach 7? Yeah. I think I was on a Mach 7. No, fucking way. Yeah, I had one with fins. And then I think I saw the Modern Collective video, and I was like, ‘Whoa, this is cool.’ I skated for Quiksilver at the time, and I was like, ‘Oh, I want to go on a surf trip. I want to learn how to surf.’ And they would never bring me on one. Everyone scoffed at the idea. The skate guy getting into surf. Yeah. And Dylan surfed, so I was like, ‘I want to, too.’ So, I started. And he left right after. Yeah! We’re on the same team, and he’s like, ‘I’m leaving.’ And I’m like, ‘Wait, what? I just got on!’
Didn’t the same thing happen at Vans? Yeah, exactly. I got on Quicksilver and Vans, and I’m like, ‘We get to go on trips together now!’ And he’s like, ‘I’m quitting.’ I’m like, ‘What?’ He’s like, ‘Gravis,’ and I’m like, ‘Gravis? Are you kidding me? That snowboard company? You’re fucking kidding me.’ Especially with the shoes they had out at the time. Exactly. Anyway, I saw the Modern Collective video and I was like, ‘Oh, this is cool, this is more like skating.’ It had electronic music and Dane Reynolds and Jordy Smith doing big airs and they’re surfing different and there wasn’t the aggressive surfer vibe. So, I’m like, ‘I can skateboard. This shouldn’t be
that hard to learn.’ Good learning curve? I don’t know. I was doing it and then I fell out. I didn’t have any friends to do it with. What got it fired back up again recently? I went on a trip with my dad to Waco, Texas where they have the first wave pool. And I had never gone front-side surfing, I just caught a couple of waves and was like, ‘Oh, what is this—front side?’ I never liked surfing because going backside is so foreign and everything in California is predominantly rights. So, I was like, ‘Oh, I want to get good at this.’ Are you creeping on Curren’s Frankenstein boards and [George] Greenough and stuff? Yeah. Tom Curren is an interesting guy. He’s good. He’s an introvert and he just rides weird boards, you know what I mean? Greenough is the godfather, and all the cool innovation stuff is like... Like Neil Blender and Mark
(Gonzales) and all those guys. It’s ingenuity. Those guys and the Greenoughs and the Currens of the world are the interesting ones—and I mean interesting because they have a different approach. Do you know who the upcoming surf kids are? No, I’m really bad at it. What about the current guys? Well Craig [Anderson] and Dane [Reynolds], they’re both sick. [Dave] Rastovich for sure. Fucking [Steph] Gilmore. She’s cool. I don’t understand why she doesn’t enter guy contests at this point. [Rob] Machado for sure. Lopez. Gerry Lopez? Yeah. Alex Knost? Yeah. I like Alex. What do you think of contemporary skateboarding, like with up and coming kids and stuff? I don’t know, it’s not interesting for me right now. Really? And why is that? It’s hard to stay interested after twenty-something-years.
It’s hard to be excited or to find something new… I just… I feel maybe we don’t see as much creativity anymore. And maybe that’s how it should be? I mean, a lot of the rules have already been written. That’s why surfing is cool, because you can just take a different board out and it completely changes. Let’s talk about music. You’ve been DJing and making music. How’d that come about? It’s something I’ve always done; I’ve had turntables since I was a kid. And then when I moved to New York, I had my friend Andy Brown, and hanging out with Andy it’s all about disco and house music, which opened the whole world up for me because (at the time) I didn’t listen to anything but metal or hip hop. You know what I mean? Yeah. Maybe The Smiths and The Cure and some eighties, and maybe some alternative rock, but that was it. How serious has DJing been? Do you have an agent? Yeah. Where have you been booked? I went and played in Ibiza for an hour. How was that? It was a trip. How big was the crowd? There was no one. Okay. I mean, I was super early. I played at like 6 AM.
Craig, Dane and Alex. By Thomas Campbell
You’ll be happy.’
that, or had that foresight to understand that because… You were too young at the time. Exactly. But ultimately, he’s doing what he wants to do. And I’m happy with the way he raised me. If and when I have a kid, I’ll be raising him or her the exact same way. He was always very supportive and very open. He had his opinions, of course, and he instilled in me a moral compass, you know, ‘don’t steal,’ but he was always very supportive of whatever I was interested in… Except boogie boarding. Right. I have this big fear of him dying because I’m like, ‘Oh, he’s so unhealthy. He smokes, he drinks, he doesn’t take care of himself. All his friends are dying around him. He’s not waking up to the message.’ But he’s in the moment. And for me, through all the yoga and reading and all that stuff, I’ve finally come to understand that if you have a positive attitude and are able to be in the moment—you’ll live well. You’ll be happy.
Noa Deane. By Corey Wilson
Tell me about Bianca [Chandon] and 917. Well, they were both experiments, you know what I mean? I was just like, ‘Oh, let’s just see what happens.’ I had no business plan, no nothing. And really, I had no ambition for it to get as big as it did. I was just like, ‘All right, we’ll do this little fun thing.’ And then it turned into… A big machine. Yeah. It was like gremlins, don’t feed them after midnight or a fucking bunch more will come. Don’t put water on ‘em. Has it grown to a point where it’s intimidating for you? No, it’s not intimidating. I have the tools to take it to whatever next level it needs to be taken, you know what I mean? But, yeah, I was just doing it for fun and then everything fell in place. Where do you want to see the companies go? I don’t know. You still figuring that out right now? Yeah, kinda. I think anybody that starts a brand like… It gets to the point where it’s grown and where there’s success, and then there’s this… Plateau? I wouldn’t say a plateau. It just reaches this point where it’s making money, it’s doing well, and then it’s like, ‘Do I make it grow [or] do I cut off some branches so it stays alive longer, so it stays fired up in people’s minds?’ How do you integrate your interests into the companies? It’s interesting because you want to have a company you can tie your influences to so that it’s an extension of you, but when you start adding a team, they have their ideas as well, and it becomes this broader… It has a broader collective of influence? Right, which is really cool. How’s surfing in New York? I mean, three to four [feet] is good at Rockaway, like, you should probably go out. That’s your spot, right, Rockaway? Right. But Rockaways, I mean, there’s a lot of people in the water. There’s rental vans and people take the A train all the way and just rent a board and a suit and it’s fucking packed. All the jetties are packed. Nightmare scenario. Yeah. So, it’s not the best place to go surfing. But I bought a car, so I can get out there easy. Lately, I’ve been seriously thinking, ‘Fuck, I don’t even care. I’ll just live in a van.’ But now when I went to Rincon and fucking County Line and there’s these people in their fifties and sixties that just live on the beach. And you’re like, ‘Oh shit. If I’m not careful, that’s going to be me.’ What are you doing to avoid that? Nothing. It’s funny, I watched my dad for so many years, and he’s always lived this very bohemian lifestyle, you know what I mean? And I’m like, ‘Oh, he doesn’t have a job. Why doesn’t he have a normal [house]?’ And you get to a point where you’re like, ‘Oh, he’s ultimately happy and he’s doing what he wants to do.’ He’s never really tied down to anything, and that’s what maintains his happiness. But I never understood
‘I’ve finally come to understand that if you have a positive attitude
and are able to be in the moment—you’ll live well.
IN OCTOBER 2019, FILMMAKER SEAN EVANS, IN COLLABORATION WITH PINK FLOYD’S ROGER WATERS, RELEASED ONE OF THE GREATEST ROCK DOCUMENTARIES EVER MADE: ROGER WATERS: US + THEM. IT’S AN INCREDIBLE FILM THAT FOLLOWS WATERS ON HIS 2017–2018 WORLD TOUR, REINVENTING THE CONCERT FILM GENRE IN THE PROCESS. BEING A FILMMAKER, SEAN IS A BIT, YOU KNOW, FILMMAKERY, SO WE THOUGHT WHO BETTER TO INTERVIEW HIM THAN ANOTHER FILMMAKER? OUR FRIEND, THE AUSTRALIAN FILMMAKER BEN BRIAND, IS A FILMMAKER, SO WE GAVE HIM SEAN’S NUMBER AND SAID, ‘YOU’RE A FILMMAKER— GIVE HIM A CALL.’ BEN IS IN LOS ANGELES THESE DAYS, GOING TO MEETINGS WITH HOLLY WOOD TYPES AND WEARING SUNGL ASSES AND TELLING LIES. SEAN, ON THE OTHER HAND, IS IN NEW YORK, FREEZING HIS TITS OFF. ‘RING -RING,’ WENT SEAN’S TELEPHONE. ‘HELLO?’ HE SAID, AND BEN SAID HELLO BACK. AND THEN THEY STARTED TALKING ABOUT FILM AND FILMMAKING.
Hey Sean, so you’re in New York? Yeah. Is that where you terests. I could spend my whole day writing or I could labels and went with different artwork. But it’s funny, eat for breakfast. I don’t really care. They’re just dudes. live? It is when I actually am in one place. But I’ve lived spend my whole day with a camera, or I could spend my there was a version of their logo that I’d done, the same The images of Thom Yorke on tour that you photoin Brooklyn now for twelve years or something like that. whole day animating in 3D and all of those things are classic Slayer logo, but I did a really cut up gnarly one and graphed, they’re super frenetic and candid, and with an So, you’re clearly a music lover. What was your rela- just bottomless pits.
they still use it. It’s on all the merch everywhere, which artist like Yorke and his stature, there’s this mystique
tionship to music when you were growing up? Did you Right. Actually, I was hanging out with my brother over I’m always happy to see.
around him. How do you develop that trust and intimacy
play instruments or anything, or did you just admire the weekend—he’s a full-time musician—and was like, That’s great. That’s the Holy Grail, the Slayer logo. Yeah, to be able to capture that? I mean, I’ve known him for it from afar? Oh yeah. I grew up in record stores and ‘Check out this thing,’ and he’s showing me some crazy so it’s funny to see it still in use. It’s cool. But I mean, it’s a while now, but he’s a very private guy and I respect it. I spent all my money on buying albums from the time granular synth on the iPad and I got sucked in. It’s like, funny when you get to work with guys like that because It’s like, we’ll hang out and chat and if we don’t, we don’t. I could walk. When I was in kindergarten, an aunt of ‘I can’t. I can’t. It’s too much.’
they’re just dudes, especially Slayer. They’re just fucking I’m not going to be all up his butt. He’s a guy and I’m
mine went into a record store and said, ‘Hey, I need to Speaking of Black Sabbath, I noticed on your Instagram guys and it’s just like, ‘Okay, well I’ll hang out with these sure when he’s got five minutes to himself, he wants five get a record for my nephew,’ and they gave her Black you had a couple of pictures of Slayer, and I was won- guys and make some stuff. Why not? It’s fun.’
minutes to himself and just leave it be. I made a video, a
Sabbath’s Greatest Hits. My aunt gave me that when I dering if the Larry Carroll album artworks like Reign in It’s interesting when you grow up mythologising cer- music video, with those guys a while ago… I don’t know if was, I don’t know, how old are you when you were in Blood and Christ Illusion had much of an effect on you tain people and then all of a sudden, you’re collabo- it’s his last record or two records ago, so I wasn’t new to kindergarten? Five or six or something?
growing up? Oh, yeah. And the Garden of Earthly Delights; rating with them. Yeah, it’s definitely trippy. But I’ve the picture. I don’t know that they would just let someone
Pretty young. But yeah, music has always been huge in that thing is fascinating to me. Hieronymus Bosch, which always been a fan of the music and the words and the who was brand new in the sphere like that. But it was a my life, and there was a minute there where I was dick- is akin to all the Slayer stuff. But yeah, Slayer is another vibe, but never the people. I mean, I honestly have a lot blast to do that. It was a lot of fun, and they were very cool ing around in bands and making music. I play a little bit, one that I grew up with. I actually got to do some stuff of respect for them for what they do, but I could give a about it, about letting me run around and be a weirdo. But but I found I needed to just focus on doing visual things with Slayer and Kerry [King, Slayer guitarist]. I’d done a shit. They’re just people. I’m not going to be reading the it wasn’t like I was like, ‘Hey guys, nice to meet you.’ I sort and things that fed back into... I just had too many in- full package for God Hates Us All, and then they switched fan magazines about what they do on the weekends or of already knew everyone. I know the tour manager.
when i was in kindergarten, an aunt of mine went into a record store and said, ‘hey, i need to get a record for my nephew,’ and they gave her black sabbath’s greatest hits
Do you ever feel worried when you’re doing visuals for a for him writing the record in the first place. For him to group that it might disrupt or throw off the sound or the be seventy-something and to never have gone... it was artist’s flow as a visual experience? Yeah, I mean, it’s obviously a really emotional thing, which seemed like an a weird thing to gauge. For example, if you do a music important subject to weave in. It was exactly what the video and it makes you want to listen to the song 500 show was about. times, then you’re doing something right. Whatever it’s What’s interesting is that the movie feels very intimate doing—if it’s complimentary to the rhythm or against it as well as very grand. And those moments where there or a slower pace or whatever—it just needs to bring it was a mix of fabricated real life and documentary in to a new place. It can’t just be doing exactly whatever is there... would you describe it as a documentary? I going on in the music. It has to be complimentary. It has mean, that was a weird thing because it’s like, what are to be adding something to it or else, what’s the point?
we doing? It’s not really a documentary. We’re telling a
Right. And to that point, I had the pleasure of watching story, but we didn’t write the script. They’re ad-libbing the Roger Waters: The Wall film that you guys made, and we’re doing this road trip for real and he’s real and which has 100 per cent on Rotten Tomatoes. Congrat- all the reactions are real. It was a weird film experiment ulations. Does it really?
to be doing.
Yeah! That’s amazing.
Especially for someone like Roger, where there’s the
It must be tricky to pay respect to the legacy that mystique and the aesthetic and the album, the album comes with an artist and carrying the weight of that artwork, and all of these things that fed into the way into a new era. Do you find yourself being precious or people respond to it. I remember when that Metallihaving to try and pry the past away from other hands ca documentary came out many years ago… Oh, that when you’re bringing this stuff into a new decade? No, was fucking great. It is another great example because no. I mean, Roger, especially, he’s all about tearing it I grew up listening to Metallica and it’s like, ‘Look at down and doing something new. And that film, in partic- these fucking idiots. I can’t believe this. This is amazular, has such a rich history to pull from. But it’s nice to ing. I love it.’ approach something and say, ‘Hey, we can’t just com- I watched it again recently and I forgot how much of pletely bank on the past. We’ve got to do something a big deal it was for them to bear their souls in that new.’ I feel whenever I do something with someone like way. Yeah, that’s true, and it’s a great example. Those Roger, it just has to be new. It has to be a new take on it. bits where Kirk Hammett’s talking and... How old was he The last tour that we did with them, we turned the stage when they started Metallica, sixteen or seventeen? He’s into the cover of Animals more or less. And yeah, Ani- forever frozen as a seventeen-year-old kid. That’s the mals has been around since 1977, but to do something thing about these guys: they’ve never had normal, structhat was such a big scale interpretation, and animate it tured jobs. I mean, not that what you or I do is a normal, and have it come to life… That record has been around structured job. It’s pretty bizarre. But from however old for forty years, but here it is in this new, weird version they were when they started—a lot of these guys were in that you couldn’t have done back then. It’s individual to their teens—they’ve had people screaming their names each project, too. Something will speak to you about a for years! I mean, that’s got to do something to your [particular] project that makes it interesting and makes brain. It’s pretty weird. it stand out and be unique for its own reasons. That Yeah. And to never... I don’t mean this a detrimental story in The Wall where Roger goes to visit his dad’s me- way, but it’s this weird, frozen-in-time, arrested develmorial that he’s never seen. I mean, that just screams opment thing. It’s like I’m hanging out with a fifty-someto be part of [the film] because that was the impetus thing twenty-year-old. It’s really weird.
i feel whenever i do something with someone like roger, it just has to be new. it has to be a new take on it
i mean, i honestly have a lot of respect for slayer for what they do, but i could give a shit. they’re just people. i’m not going to be reading the fan magazines about what they do on the weekends or eat for breakfast—they’re just dudes Did you see the Nick Cave 20,000 Days on Earth doc- It feels very magic. And there seems to be a pretty umentary? No, but I’m a big Nick Cave fan. I have a list strong political message in the film. The ‘TRUMP IS of films to see that I’m just way behind on. There’s not A PIG’ graphic from the live show was amazing. But enough time in the day.
how does the anti-Trump message go down in the red
Right? That’s what happens when your job is the thing states? You get some reaction to that kind of thing. That that you love, it falls behind. The interesting thing tour started, I think, in Kansas City, and we were nerabout that Nick Cave film is that even though it’s quite vous about it, but you got some people that are flipping constructed in some ways, it exists in this unusual off the screen and you get some people walking out. But space as well... The private and public Nick Cave are honestly, it’s like, ‘Meh. Good. See you round.’ But there sort of mushed together. Is that similar for Roger? wasn’t really anything too bad. You hear some boos in Well, Pink Floyd have always existed in the shadows. In there, but it wasn’t horrible. And I think—or hope—the recent years... Well, sort of in the new Wall era, [Roger overall message leaped over that. That the be kind to has] been more public and outspoken and appears on humanity and love each other message would be more camera and stuff. But before that, they were always the important than supporting a Republican or a Democrat. band that would play in the dark and in the shadows. It’s not about that. It shouldn’t be about that. The weird There wouldn’t be any spotlights, so it was when you division that’s going on in America right now is pretty thought of Pink Floyd, you thought of the cover of Dark obscene. It’s weird. It’s like rooting for a football team Side of the Moon or Wish You Were Here. You didn’t think now, the way that people root for their political party. of the band members. That wasn’t the imagery that But he’s clearly not fit to be in public office. And now, to came to mind, which I think is part of the draw for me. It be in America in an election year after the impeachment is funny to have that be the draw and to make a concept and acquittal, the country is even more divided now befilm where it’s like, ‘Okay, we’re going to point a camera cause that’s all he does: divide, divide, divide. But no at the band playing the song now,’ because how do you one is going to be quiet about it, that’s for sure, so it do that and keep it feeling magic?
should be interesting.
Written: Monique Penning Portrait: Sam Brumby
DAMON GAMEAU LAUGHS WHEN I ASK HIM IF, FIVE YEARS AGO, HE COULD’VE IMAGINED BEING INVITED TO THE WORLD’S FIRST SEAWEED SYMPOSIUM. ‘IT’S AMAZING HOW WHEN YOU MAKE A FILM OR EXPLORE A SUBJECT, HOW QUICKLY IT CAN TRANSFORM YOUR LIFE AND YOUR INTERESTS,’ HE SAYS. ‘I NEVER THOUGHT I’D BE SO PASSIONATE ABOUT SEAWEED AND UNDERSTANDING HOW PIVOTAL IT’S GOING TO BE IF WE TURN THINGS AROUND.’
The Australian actor and filmmaker is speaking about his most recent film, the inspiring, relatable and refreshingly optimistic 2040, released last year. If you haven’t had the pleasure of watching it, the film takes a hopeful yet honest look at what our world could look like in the year 2040 if we begin to address climate change with technology and processes that already exist, like seaweed farms that pull carbon from the atmosphere. ‘Maybe in the late 80s, if we’d all just bought keep cups and used less bags we might’ve had a chance,’ Damon says. ‘But we’re sort of past that point now, where it’s really important for people to find their own agency in a larger capacity.’ And that’s exactly what Damon is doing through his work: shifting the climate change conversation away from doom and gloom and towards practical action, encouraging people to make their own choices about our earth, rather than floating along with whatever’s dictated by short-sighted politicians. ‘Even though it’s suddenly
in our minds, and that’s great, we haven’t been talking about it enough, and we haven’t been envisioning a future we want to live in. We’ve been letting other people determine what that future’s going to be,’ he says. ‘And it’s easy to blame people and point fingers, whereas what we really need is for people to channel that energy into forward momentum, and bringing to life all of the solutions that we already have, to solve these problems.’ And solutions are exactly what Damon’s all about. In fact, he’s dedicated the last few years of his life to researching, documenting, and advocating for just six of them. While the battle against climate change is a hugely complex issue, and each of the solutions he sets out could fill an entire issue of Monster Children individually, the following pages are a pretty solid start. So here, in Damon’s own words (seriously, he rattled off every single fact and figure you’re about to read off the top of his head) are six solutions to climate change you should be buying into.
EMPOWERING GIRLS AND WOMEN THE PROBLEM
‘Statistics show that about 120 million girls around the world don’t get to finish their education for a whole range of reasons, from being pulled out of school for religious reasons, or to be put to work. And when they’re taken out of school they’ll have five or more children, but if they’re able to complete their education, have access to reproductive health services and good work opportunities, they then choose how many children they have, and that number comes down to two. That difference of five versus two equates to 1.1 billion people by 2050, which has a huge impact on natural resources and climate change.’ THE SOLUTION
‘Empowering girls and women is one of those wonderful solutions that we should just do anyway, but it’s also one of the most important ways we can mitigate climate. One of the best stories that came out of last year, which unfortunately didn’t get reported enough in mainstream media, is that billions of dollars were pledged to girls’ education last year, around the world. There’s funds from the Malala Fund, there’s One Girl who we work with here in Australia as well, where people can give money or also start to mentor a girl online. So, they’ll actually provide that education—you can do it from Australia— and they just log on and have a chat and look after a particular girl. There’s lots of ways to get involved and it gives meaning and happiness in your own life, to contribute in that way.’
THE PROBLEM
‘At the moment our energy is very centralised, it comes from a handful of companies that control all the poles and wires, and tell us the energy we can have.’ THE SOLUTION THE PROBLEM
‘With marine permaculture, about ninety-three per cent of the excess heat we’re creating through global warming is going into our oceans. A result of that, is a lot of the top layers of the oceans are becoming marine deserts; the heat’s just wiped out life there. Unfortunately, the giant kelp have really suffered. In Tasmania, for example, they’ve lost ninety-five per cent of their giant kelp. And the kelp provides a habitat for the fish to lay their eggs, and it alkalizes the water. It’s almost like forests in the ocean, the same way you get them on land.’ THE SOLUTION
‘A really brilliant engineer out of Massachusetts has developed this technology where he’s built this platform for seaweeds to grow on, and he sits it below the surface. He has this pump that is powered by the rise and fall of the ocean. It pumps the cold water up from the depths, which is full of nutrients, and brings it back up onto the surface again to grow the kelp. He’s already done some of that in the Philippines and Bali, and through 2040 we were able to crowdfund about $600,000 just through people’s donations, after they’d seen the film, to build the first platform in Storm Bay [Tasmania] and see if this technology is going to work. ‘So far, it’s been quite extraordinary. We’ve been working with the University of Tasmania down there and we’ve had some really promising results, so hopefully, if that continues, the plan would be to upscale it and try one at a hectare scale. Who knows, in ten or twelve years we could just have these giant seaweed platforms out at sea that are sequestering huge amounts of carbon. That’s the other great strength they have: they can grow up to half a metre per day, and grow up to fifty metres long. They’re just pulling carbon out of the atmosphere very quickly; then you can use the seaweed for biofuels and plastics. People are making clothes out of it now and all sorts of things. But you can also harvest it, and once you store it below 1,000 metres, the weight of the ocean will store it there as carbon for millennia. That’s probably one of the most exciting solutions, I think, just because it’s so new, there’s no vested interests, it hasn’t been politicised yet… it’s just a simple, clean solution.’
‘What’s starting to emerge in developing countries is a peer-to-peer energy network, almost like micro-grids, where anyone with a solar panel and batteries has their own energy. They’re given this special box, and the box allows them to buy and sell energy with their neighbours. So, in the same way that we have the internet and have become our own publishers now, in the next ten or fifteen years energy will become a currency. You’ll be able to donate it, store it yourself… we’ll have a very decentralised network, as opposed to one centralised area. That’ll still exist, but people will be sharing their energy, which is quite exciting.’
REGENERATIVE AGRICULTURE THE PROBLEM
‘The way we get our food now, as most people know, is really damaging the planet. Whether it’s the constant ploughing and tilling of the soil, the chemicals we put in there, ramming animals into feedlots… it’s just a horrible way to go about it. We fight nature all the time, we try and control it, whereas regenerative agriculture actually works with nature.’ THE SOLUTION
‘Regenerative agriculture takes the carbon from the atmosphere that’s doing us damage and pulls it back into the soil through certain plants and livestock practices. Once that carbon is back in the soil, it just kick-starts the benefits of all these micro-organisms. There’s about seven billion micro-organisms in a spoonful of soil. They get passed onto the plant, it allows the plant to absorb all its nutrients, and then we have that food. You can’t have human health without plant health, and you can’t have plant health without soil health. We’ve only got sixty years of topsoil left, so all these farmers—whether they believe in climate change or not—are starting to put more carbon into their soil. Plus, it holds water so the more carbon in the soil, it acts like a sponge. It doesn’t just run off the top like we see now, where it fills the waterways and we have mass flooding; the carbon actually absorbs the water, often sends it down into the ground to fill the aquifers as well. Again, it’s one of those beautiful solutions like, let’s just do it, because we’ll get healthier food, retain water, and take carbon out of the atmosphere.’
THE PROBLEM
‘In my travels, I can categorically say that Australia is lagging behind the world in a lot of these areas, but especially electric cars. You go to places like Denmark, where fifty per cent of their new cars are now electric, all the taxis there are Teslas, the government give free parking, free tollways, doesn’t charge stamp duty. Whereas in Australia, we put a luxury tax on electric cars, so there’s no incentive for people here.’ THE SOLUTION
‘What’s increasing is ride share; statistics say that a lot of younger teenagers aren’t getting a car anymore because of the insurance, rego and petrol costs. It’s a lot cheaper to get a ride share like a Lyft or an Uber, but once the driverless cars come in—and that’s already started happening in Arizona, you can get a driverless minivan to come and pick you up— the cost plummets even further, because there’s no driver to pay. The idea is that in the future, we’ll just have fleets of driverless cars, electric cars, driving ‘round picking people up… you’ll get on and off where you want. It’ll be very cheap, which means people will subscribe to networks in the same way we subscribe to Netflix or Spotify now; you don’t own CDs and DVDs anymore. Less people will actually own their own car, because it’s actually sitting still doing nothing for ninetysix per cent of the day, it’s a stranded asset. So instead of having all those costs, people are going to start subscribing to transport. And the reason I put that in the film is that it means we can have considerably less carparks in the city. If there’s less car ownership, you don’t need places for people to park because these cars are going to be moving around all the time, so it allows us to free up space in our cities for community gardens, and bikeways and food forests—all the things that might allow us to reconnect with nature again in our cities.’
THE PROBLEM
‘We all know that we’re using a lot of resources, but a report came out recently that said we’re using 100 billion metric tonnes of resources every year. That’s everything from minerals and metals, to forests and fish and livestock. But the sustainable level at which the earth can replenish is only five billion, so we’re using double what we can replenish every year. We’re on track to consuming 180 billion by 2050, which will just wipe out most living systems. We’re flying off the cliff in terms of our resource consumption, and this is also causing climate change and other things. So we have to find a way of reusing some of these materials, and of these 100 billion metric tonnes, only 8.6 per cent get reused or recycled.’
To get involved in Damon’s incredible work, check out: whatsyour2040.com
THE SOLUTION
‘The circular economy is the movement that says, how do we start to close the loop so we’re not just using something then throwing it away? We’re actually taking apart that material and using it for other products. And that’s really exciting, it’s happening all around the world now. Japan has just introduced a policy where they were running quite low on their metals, so they charged a small tax on any kind of electrical goods, and it’s illegal to throw it away now. But from that extra tax, they created a remanufacturing industry that’s created jobs and a whole new industry, and they now recycle ninety-eight per cent of their metals. ‘In the film, we explore how in Stockholm, Sweden, instead of just throwing out food waste which just goes into landfill and emits methane and is one of the worst contributors to global warming—in fact, if food waste was a country, it would be the third biggest emitter behind China and the US, it’s eight per cent of our emissions—they collect all that food waste and they put it into something they call an anaerobic bio-digester. That takes out all the methane, and they use that to power their vehicles and council cars and whatnot, and use it for energy. Then the leftover food waste, they turn into natural fertilizer to give to the farmers to put back into the soils. That’s a beautiful example of closing that loop and not wasting any resources. We’re just going to see a lot more of that in the next ten to twenty years because we have to, otherwise we follow the path of every other civilisation who’s gone before us, who hasn’t looked after their resources, and we all know how that’s ended up.’
The first time I kissed a girl, I bought a pack of Extra chewing gum so my breath would be okay. I chewed one piece and then the rest of the pack rode around in my wallet untouched for years. It became a souvenir. This is true. And it’s also the gist of New York artist James Evans’ work. James paints those small, everyday objects that become imbued with great importance simply because they were present at a poignant moment. Beer cans, condom wrappers, pill jars; the peripheral props
An interview
by Bart Clutterbuck
that happened to be there and so become nostalgic totems of his narrative. It’s very romantic, deeply sentimental, and a little heartbreaking in that James is trying to find a way to hold on to the past—or at least retain some proof that it existed.
Photography by Devin Blaskovich
Monster Children gave James a call the day after his solo show, Give Up the Ghost, in Mexico City to discuss impermanence
James Evans
and art’s role in the year 2020.
You’re in Mexico City right now?
You went full-time recently, right?
ly tired of looking at a computer screen because of that, most of what I’ve done nir type significance?
And that’s where the graphic design
Yeah. I just had a show down here actu- Yeah, pretty recently. It’s been a real- all the time. So, I just was like… well, has been entirely outside of... I will have Exactly. That’s it. What fascinates me is comes into play, where I can recognise, ally, just last night. I’ve been down here ly strange process, actually. I’ve never I really want to learn painting. So, I a couple of gallery shows this year, but we can have these moments... I’m really okay, this is the typeface that was used on and off for probably eight months or taken any art classes or anything. I ac- would just paint circles and squares and up till now everything has been entirely just interested in how things linger, how on this condom wrapper or whatever. so. I kind of wanted a break from New tually went to school for writing, and shapes, and I did everything in acrylic outside of the gallery model. It’s like I’m people and relationships and ideas come So, let me just split that and give it a York. I felt like I was in a bit of a cre- then I moved to New York and worked and I would try to make them flat. And obsessed with this. It’s all I can do. And and go in our lives. And you can have message that I want it to signify. And ative rut, and I just kept hearing about in fashion. I was at Opening Ceremony I would try to make the lines around so, I just keep doing it, and eventually it a moment that is very significant, like, then inverting that and giving it a purMexico City. So, I visited on a whim and for a while and Milk Studios, and then shapes smooth, and I would adhere to just kind of starts to click.
you’re out with someone and, whatever, pose, even though it’s an object whose
it just clicked. It kind of made sense. I started doing graphic design which a really small colour palette. I was re- And then you quit your regular job to you’re just getting drinks or something, purpose has kind of ceased to be. And there’s a huge community of New led to digital illustration. Then I start- ally into Geoff McFetridge and Kaws paint full-time.
but you could have an important night, So, these pieces must be incredibly
Yorkers here. So, it’s been a nice back ed working in advertising for a bit, and and all that stuff at the time, and it was Yeah. I was in advertising and I was something very meaningful could come personal to you. Are they difficult to and forth. I’ve honestly had more stress- I started painting in my free time and it super derivative. Everything was vec- making decent money. It was a normal of it, and at the end what’s left after part with it when you sell? ful moves within New York than moving became an obsession. I would paint be- tor-based, like here are some shapes job, and I was like, ‘Fuck it. I am not this person or these ideas are no lon- Oh god, yeah. down here.
fore work and after work and then I’d put and some forms and I would just try to happy doing this anymore, I just gotta ger in your life? The objects. There’s Can you tell the story behind one of
Are you from New York originally?
on little shows around town.
make them smooth. But I would do this paint.’ So, I quit, and I tried just paint- still physical residue in the form of this your paintings, like, what’s the story
I actually grew up in Colorado, but I’ve So, you’re self-taught?
for hours and hours and hours, because ing for a while. But New York’s expen- object. And this object no longer has a behind the Sapporo can painting?
been in New York for eight years and Yeah, yeah.
I was new to the city and I didn’t real- sive, and I was going to fucking die. So, purpose. It’s kind of useless. It’s trash, I was in Tokyo with my ex, and I remem-
it’s always felt like home in a way that You’re a self-taught oil painter.
ly know anyone. And eventually those I took another job. Quit that. And then but it signifies a moment. And there’s ber I was drinking a beer just walking
nowhere else ever really has. I always Yeah.
forms went from being kind of knock I got another one, but I was like, ‘This something in between the signifier and down the street, and we had this really
meet people down here [in Mexico] that How did you get into it?
offs of those artists, to being a little bit is my last job. I’m not doing this again.’ the actual moment that I find really in- intense conversation. And at that point,
are from New York and they’re always Well, when I lived in Colorado, I was more figurative, and then to being more And then around that time, I’d devel- teresting.
I knew the relationship was over. This
like, ‘Ah, fuck New York. I’m over it.’ just partying all the time and I had this realistic and then eventually, acrylic oped a style that was starting to catch on That’s cool. I like that.
was a long relationship, and I held onto
And I’m like, ‘No, I still love New York.’ really kind of destructive streak. And just kind of became incorrect; I tried oil a bit; so from there I was able to kind of The stuff I did last year in New York was that beer can, and I brought it back to That’s still home for sure. But it’s just when I moved to New York I realised and that just changed everything. Like, make a living doing it.
[based on] a lot of objects that were in New York and I painted that. And that
the kind of the nature of that city where I needed something positive to occupy suddenly these colours wanted to go Cool. How do you choose the objects my life at the time—grimy New York was kind of the first one that stuck with you need a break from it periodically in my time. I was just going through a lot together. And then from there, I started that you paint? Are these things that things like drug baggies and condom me. order to get the most out of it.
of personal stuff. And so, when I had learning to sketch and stuff. But now are personal to you?
Right on. Are you a full-time painter? started as a graphic designer, I enjoyed it’s weird, because the whole thing has Yeah. Yeah.
wrappers and beer cans—that was my I’ve seen that one; you’ve altered the environment at the time. But the whole text on the can. What does it say?
the principles of design, but I was real- happened incredibly backwards. And so Like, they have an ephemeral, souve- point then is to add a narrative into that. It’s a line from one of my favourite au-
James Evans
‘…you could have an important night, something very meaningful could come of it, and at the end what’s left after this person or these ideas are no longer in your life? The objects.’
thors, Roberto Bolaño. It’s actually two are things we all feel. So, the point is to should really mean something. Since on the same wavelength as me.’ I think you, moments have an impact on you. thing. Every now and then, I’ll tell mydifferent lines of his: ‘Every hundred capture a feeling. It might mean some- I’ve got into this, I think that I’ve kind about that a lot because I think as hu- And it’s weird. I think it was because I self, ‘Okay, I’m done painting objects.’ feet the world changes’ and ‘Cheer up. thing to me, but I want someone else to of felt more of that, more of a respon- mans we’re all very connected. We all worked in fashion for so long and things But I never am. They always creep back It’s fun in the end.’ And obviously that be able to feel their interpretation of sibility to make something that actu- feel the same things. So, I think the duty in fashion are so temporary. Like if you because they’re kind of the benchmarks can mean a wide range of things. But to that.
ally belongs in this world, something of art is to share, and especially as the have, say, a statement piece from a sea- of our lives in a really weird way.
me, it had a very specific meaning. So, Have you noticed a shift in the idea that has purpose, and it doesn’t really world’s growing increasingly xenopho- son before or something, it’s suddenly there is that push and pull where you of art and what it can and should be? matter what medium that is. I think if bic and just fearful, it’s important to obsolete a few months later. It’s just have that relationship with something Like, what role does art play in 2020? you’re sincere in what you make, it’s go- share what makes us human.
weird. The things we have in our lives,
and it’s strange to part with it. And also, I think we just have such a barrage of ing to come through. And that’s really That’s cool. It’s interesting you talk- what of them are permanent? And the it’s strange to keep them—and keep shit that we see. There’s so much stim- my only litmus test for an artwork: do ed about not needing more stuff and possibility that maybe something can be making them public, because for me a uli all the time, more and more stimuli. you feel sincerity behind it. It could be yet there’s so much stuff coming into permanent and also still be ephemeral. lot of these are very personal narratives. We’re constantly surrounded by really a song; it could be movie. I don’t want the world. In a way what you’re do- Because we have these moments with But no one can really know their creative things and really interesting to feel the hand of the author. I want ing, because you’re painting everyday people that we enjoy, we love, and we meaning without you explaining.
things. And I think—to me, at least— something that doesn’t have pretension. refuse and imbuing them with mean- know they’re fleeting. And that’s okay.
Right. They’re meant to be phrased the role of art has shifted a bit, in that And the beauty of art to me is in sharing ing, it is kind of recycling when you But they’ll have a permanent impact on broad enough that only I kind of get that it has a responsibility to actually come something human. It’s like when you’re think about it.
us. For me, an object is like an inter-
part of it. But I want people to sense the from an important place, actually mean reading a book and you come across a Yeah, I mean, I don’t know. I’ve nev- esting representation of that, because emotional weight of something without something and not simply be visual- line and it just stops you, right? You’re er really been able to wrap my head it’s so loaded. You see something from having it explicitly say what it is. Be- ly pleasing. Because we have enough like, ‘Fuck. This is something I’ve al- around things coming and going, like your childhood, you see something that cause no one wants to be told… But a lot things in our lives, and we don’t need ways felt and never articulated.’ And emotions or people or... I just can’t reminds you of an ex or something, and of these feelings are universal: excite- more things. And so, if you’re going you just immediately feel this thing really... I don’t know. Certain things you just immediately feel something. ment, fear, heartbreak, whatever. These to bring something into this world, it where it’s like, ‘Oh wow. This author’s just linger. People have an impact on And it’s triggered by this inanimate
Louie Lopez and Mike Anderson skating through Downtown LA at night. What could be better? Brian Delatorre and Aaron Herrington skating through Downtown Manhattan at night? We already did that with One Night in New York. This is the follow up. These photos and the accompanying video (check our website) were captured by Andrew Peters, who is to skate photography what Louie Lopez and Mike Anderson are to skateboarding: very good. We hope you enjoy looking at these pictures as much as you enjoy watching the special video presentation, One Night in LA. Thank you for your time.
PHOTOS BY MORGAN RINDENGAN AND BRENDAN BURDZINSKI
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It’s been a big three months at our NYC and LA spaces. The first show for 2020 at 1700 Naud (LA) was a Liv Aanrud exhibition, which was absolutely fucking brilliant. Normally I don’t like to use the language of the seas, but in this case it’s warranted. It was a terrific show. Coming up next we’ve got photographer Kate Bellm’s book launch, and we’re co-hosting a live music session series with Fender that will see twenty-three artists come though the Naud doors to jam in our living room. Insane. Crazy. Demented. My grandmother was demented. She had dementia. I know it’s not funny, but when my dad told me, all I could think was, ‘Nana is demented.’ Let’s see what’s happening at our Manhattan event space, 98 Orchard (imagine the rustling of paper as I go through my notes and fart). We hosted an event to promote Vans’ first full-length snowboard video, Being Green, with a book launch and photo show. Awesome. Then we had a massive launch for PBR Whiskey. That got loose very quickly thanks to whiskey. Then Shawn Powers (Palace Skateboards) and Gogy Esparza (New York art dude) had a show, which ruled… What else? Next up we’ve got a Hopps Skateboards launch with photographer Steve Brandi, a group art show with our old pals Old Pal to benefit legal aid for Mexico/USA border detainees; Japanese artist Toya Horiuchi is coming through, and then we’ve got a Gutter Gallery show by Bobby Puleo, who is a skateboarder, artist and Libra. Good stuff. @1700naud @98orchard
WELCOMERIVERS.COM
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INTERVIEW: JASON JAMES CROMBIE I MET JESSE PEARSON BACK IN THE EARLY 2000’S WHEN I FIRST BEGAN LYING TO EVERYONE THAT I WAS WRITER. HE WAS EDITOR AT VICE AT THE TIME AND THOUGH WE HAD VERY LITTLE CONTACT (I LIED MAINLY TO HIS DEPUTY), I KNEW JESSE WAS GOING PLACES. FLASH FORWARD TEN YEARS AND JESSE IS THE OWNER OF HIS OWN MAGAZINE, APOLOGY, A PRINT PUBLICATION THAT HITS THE NEWSSTANDS TWICE A YEAR AND MAKES JESSE AS RICH AS ANYONE CAN GET IN INDEPENDENT PUBLISHING. RECENTLY, JESSE LAUNCHED THE APOLOGY PODCAST, SO I CAUGHT UP WITH HIM TO FIND OUT WHAT IT’S LIKE TO DO THAT, AS WELL AS MAKE A MAGAZINE.
When did you begin Apology and why? After I quit my job as editor-in-chief of Vice when it was still good in 2010, I slowly realised that I missed doing magazines. So I made my own. How did the podcast component start? I’ve been really into long interviews since I started my career at Index Magazine in the late ‘90s. Since Apology [the mag] only comes out once a century, aka twice a year, I figured the podcast would be a good way to do long interviews again whenever I want. Where do you do it? Mostly at my house in Mount Washington, Los Angeles. What was it like going from print to podcast: easy or weird or…? It was easy once I accepted that I can’t do everything, which I can with magazines. So I farm out audio editing and postproduction. It would slow me down too much to learn that stuff. Who’s been on the podcast so far and what’re the criteria for guests? Musician Will Oldham, musician Matt Sweeney, chef and drummer Brooks Headley, chemist and writer Hamilton Morris, poet and teacher Elaine Kahn. Criteria: I just need to suspect that a person probably has good taste in books and that maybe I’ll walk away with recommendations for things I hadn’t heard of before. What’s one of the crazier things you’ve heard on your podcast? A story about a guy who went permanently insane as a result of psychedelic drugs. I always thought stories like that were urban legends but, nope, it really happens. How big is your cock? You know those old-growth redwood trees in Northern California? It’s not as big as those. Who are your top three dream guests for the Apology podcast? Denis Johnson, Darby Crash, and Cookie Mueller… except they’re all dead, so I’ll have to wait a while. What podcasts do you listen to? I like my friend Lesley Arfin’s podcast Filling the Void. I like only the Joe Rogan episodes that are strictly about MMA. Philosophize This is fun if you want to learn or relearn philosophy in an accessible way. But my favourite is A Woman’s Smile by Patti Harrison and Lorelei Ramirez. What’s next for Jesse Pearson? Making Apology profitable would be cool. Either that or burn all my possessions and disappear into the woods. apologymagazine.com
PHOTO: LINNEA STEPHAN
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RICK MOE HAS MORE T- SHIRTS THAN ANYONE YOU’VE E VER MET. RICK DOESN’T E VEN KNOW HOW MANY T- SHIRTS HE HAS. ‘I CURRENTLY HAVE A FE W THOUSAND,’ HE SAYS. RICK HAS THOUSANDS OF T- SHIRTS BECAUSE HE IS A PICKER. A T- SHIRT PICKER. HE GOES OUT SE ARCHING FOR RARE T- SHIRTS AND BRINGS THEM BACK TO HIS T- SHIRT CAVERN AND HURL S THEM ON THE PILE . THEN HE TAKES OFF HIS CLOTHES AND ROLL S AROUND ON THEM AND MOANS. THEN HE SELL S THEM ON THE INTERNET. MENTAL . LET’S MEET HIM.
Where are you and what are you doing? I’m based in Brooklyn, NY and buy and sell old clothes. Wholesale, personal shopping, e-commerce, rentals and appointments. We’ve been online since 2012 and have had various pop-ups and retail locations here and in Seattle, where we started Tyranny + Mutation eight years ago. How long have you been collecting rare vintage tees? I’ve been collecting and reselling since a roommate gave me a Blue Oyster Cult/Black Sabbath ‘Black & Blue Tour’ jersey in lieu of rent. That was in the mid-90s and I still have that tee. Do you prefer T’s or Tees? Tees, but whatever is cool. When and how did you get started with Tyranny? I found a 1980s Powell Peralta Ripper jacket for fifteen dollars at Buffalo Exchange in 1994. From there, I figured out the thrifting thing simply to trade for heat I found at the same Buffalo Exchange. After touring in bands as a drummer, I got tired of coming home and having to find a new job, so I took a gig at Buffalo where I started buying ‘professionally’. How many t-shirts do you have? I currently have a few thousand tees. It fluctuates, but I’m always buying, selling, trading and have been doing so for over twenty years, so there’s always a varied and effective palette on hand. Are they all for sale or are there some you won’t part with? Some are for sale, some are ‘in reserve’ meaning not currently available but perhaps someday will be, and some are ‘never for sale,’ as they say. How much is too much to pay for a vintage t-shirt? I get this question a lot. The answer I typically give is that a shirt is worth whatever someone will pay for it. That said, I’m against overcharging simply to get as much as one can get for a piece—a.k.a. ‘make me an offer’. Also, if you simply have to have a specific shirt and you find one that is the right fit and look, just throw down and make sure to wear the shirt as much as fucking possible, including sleeping in it. My friend, Chris Mosier, was literally given a sweat-soaked Nirvana t-shirt off of Kurt Cobain’s back the week before the band became huge. Chris wore that t-shirt until it died. Does that story make you furious? Quite the opposite of furious. I’ve worn tees until they fell apart too. That kind of relationship between a t-shirt—or a pair of jeans, etcetera—and the owner is something I’ve always been fascinated by and is in part why I do this. I toured in the late 90s in a band with Mike Davis of the MC5, and he did the same thing one night with the only MC5 tee he owned. I was jealous as hell for a few days that he didn’t bequeath it to me, but then realised the awesomeness of the gesture. It’s an energy exchange, really. What’s the Holy Grail of vintage t-shirts for you? That changes on an almost daily basis. The short answer might be the one I haven’t found yet. Also, anything un-hyped has a special place in my heart. One tee I was after for over two decades was the Hammerhead Skates ‘Hosoi’ tee, which I found a couple of years ago, finally. Some of the tees I’ve had for long periods of time (a 1975 Neil Young ‘Tonight’s The Night’ promo tee, a 1977 Iggy Pop ‘Lust For Life’ promo tee, and a 1988 Herbie Hancock tour tee with artwork done by Keith Haring are some serious never-sells) are worth more to me than anything else I’ve ever come across. So far, anyway. Do you wish to be buried with your t-shirts after you die? You can’t take it with you, so the answer to that one is no. However, I’m sure that I will be wearing some of these tees until I die. In regards to sustainability, Virgil Abloh recently said, ‘fashion is gonna go away from buying a box-fresh something’ and it’ll be more about wearing stuff from your vintage archive. What are your thoughts on this? As it pertains to sustainability, yeah, that would be great. I hope fashion does move in that direction so I can do this indefinitely as well as promote sustainability and perhaps reduce fast-fashion’s oversized carbon footprint. Since the mid-90s, a good part of my personal style has come from my archive, so it’s rad seeing it become some of a trend over the last five years or so, and it’s awesome to have it affect the environment positively. tyrannyandmutation.com
WELCOME TO THE TEAM M A S O N S I LV A
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Subscribe to Monster Children Reasons to subscribe to Monster Children: *Cheaper than newsstand price *Arrives in mailbox four times per year—no need to leave house *Fun to read! *Educational! *Can be cut up and glued to furniture *Emergency toilet paper *Great as lining for birdcage *Reminder of what can happen if you don’t stay in school *Smells good *Better than dropping a bowling ball on your foot Subscribe now! Don’t wait! Don’t think about it! Just let your mind go soft and pull out your credit card. What have you got to lose? Money? Fuck money! You don’t need money! Give us your money. shop.monsterchildren.com/collections/subscriptions
THERE’S SOMETHING WEIRD GOING ON OVER AT YOUNG HENRYS BRE WERY IN SYDNE Y. SOMETHING WEIRD AND GREEN AND BIG. BUT WHAT IS IT? WHAT’S THAT GREEN THING IN THE PHOTO AND WHAT DOES IT HAVE TO DO WITH DELICIOUS BEER? IS IT FOR ST PATRICK’S DAY? ARE THE Y MAKING THEIR OWN MIDORI? WHAT’S THE CORRECT WAY TO PRONOUNCE MIDORI? AND WHAT DOES ANY OF THIS HAVE TO DO WITH SUSTAINABILIT Y AND THE CLIMATE AND ALL THE OTHER STUFF THIS IS SUE HAS BEEN ABOUT? THOSE QUESTIONS AND MORE WERE ANSWERED WHEN WE CALLED UP YOUNG HENRYS CO FOUNDER AND SANTA - IN - HIS - 30S, OSCAR MCMAHON. RE AD ON, RE ADER.
UTS (University of Technology Sydney) and Young Henrys, and it’s called the Climate Change Cluster of UTS. One of the outputs of the fermentation process is Co2, and it turns out certain types of algae ingest Co2, photosynthesize it and turn it into more algae, but also oxygen. So, yeast is basically a micro cell organism, it’s a fungi that lives in a liquid environment, and algae is
DEPT: YOUNG HENRYS PAGE: 115
What are these big green tanks all about? So, this is a collaborative research project between
sort of the same; they’re similar organisms doing opposite things. Brewer’s yeast eats the sugar oxygen and creates more algae. Amazing. This all very yin-yang, isn’t it? Yeah, it’s a really nice yin and yang. We’ve got two 400-litre bioreactors of algae, and each one of those bioreactors creates the same amount of oxygen as a hectare (10,000 square metres) of Australian bush. Holy shit. But we can grow up to a tank of algae within a few days, because when you add the brewer’s Co2, algae grows at twice its normal rate. So, compare that to how long it takes to grow a hectare of Australian bushland, and algae becomes a really interesting urban solution to oxygen production. This is amazing. And you’re the only brewery in the world doing this, right? Yeah, we haven’t heard of another brewery doing this. We’ve been working on it for a bit over a year, and we’ve probably got another year or so to go on this project. And the science has been proven; by feeding the Co2 off the fermentation of our beers into these algae tanks, we’re creating oxygen. Amazing. It’s incredible, man. We’re really proud of it. Are you planning on building more tanks and reducing your footprint further? Yeah! We’re currently looking into making this scalable and seeing how far we can go. At the moment we’re in the testing phase, so we’re taking Co2 and feeding it through the algae tank at a monitored dose percentage. We want to eventually be capturing all our Co2 and feeding it through algae so that we basically close the loop on our Co2 and only release oxygen into the atmosphere. Could this process be used in other industries? Any industry that uses Co2 could potentially use this for sure. How soon before we see other breweries using the algae tanks? It seems to me they should be mandatory. Well, that’s going to be the tricky part. Once we’ve got this figured out so that we’re able to replicate it in different scenarios, we want to get other brewers on board, but it does seem a little bit odd… With the weird green tanks and everything? Yeah, so right now we’re trying to build this thing up so we can show it to other breweries and say, ‘Hey, this is how you do it, this is the equipment you need,’ you know? How did this all come about, did UTS approach you? We actually met some of the people from UTS at an event we were involved in and got talking that way. One of the things I love about Young Henrys is we’re not afraid to give things a go and we’re not afraid to hear people out when they’ve got strange ideas. By being open and ready to hear people’s ideas, it’s meant that over the years people have approached us with their weird and wonderful ideas. It’s really cool. Go grab an eco-conscious beer at the Young Henrys brewery today: 76 Wilford St, Newtown NSW. younghenrys.com
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of maltose, turns that into alcohol and farts out Co2, whereas the algae eats the Co2, turns it into
T H E JA MES B RA N D Ã&#x2014; E LYSE GRA HA M
T H E D U VA L EG + STAI NLE SS
TH E JA M E S B R A N D. C OM
PHOTO BY PETER SUTHERLAND
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NO T WO WAYS ABOUT IT, ALE X OLSON HAS BECOME A DIRT Y HIPPIE. WHEN WE KNE W HIM, HE HAD SHORT HAIR AND A MENACING, JUDGMENTAL AIR, BUT THESE DAYS HE’S A GODDAMN HIPPIE, STINKING UP THE WORLD WITH NAG CHAMPA AND POSITIVE GODDAMN VIBR ATIONS. IN ALL SERIOUSNESS, ALE X’S TR ANSFORMATION RE ALLY AMOUNTS TO JUST GROWING UP. WHILE YOU’RE BLOW TORCHING YOUR BR AIN AND BODY WITH DRUGS, ALCOHOL AND TIK F UCKING TOK, ALE X IS HAPPILY COASTING ALONG ON A BIG BE AUTIF UL NOW WAVE AND LIVING HIS BEST LIF E, ONE WIM HOF HUF F AT A TIME. WE ASKED ALE X TO COBBLE TOGE THER A BIT OF A PL AYLIST FOR US AND HE SAID, ‘SURE,’ AND WROTE IT ON A LE AF WHICH HE TIED TO A DOVE’S LEG WITH A STR AND OF HIS OWN LUSTROUS HAIR. ‘TAKE THIS TO THE MONSTER CHILDREN OF F ICES, LIT TLE F RIEND,’ HE WHISPERED, AND THE DOVE F LE W AWAY AND NE VER CAME BACK . SO THEN ALE X JUST EMAILED US THE SONGS. THAT’S THEM BELOW. IF YOU’D LIKE TO LISTEN TO THEM, YOU CAN VISIT OUR APPLE MUSIC PAGE. IF YOU’D LIKE TO RE AD THE SONG TITLES AND IMAGINE WHAT THE Y MIGHT SOUND LIKE, YOU MAY DO SO BY CONTINUING DOWN THE PAGE. OM SHANTI.
ZURE - Ryuichi Sakamoto
Fantastic Piano - Axel Boman
Tobiume - Susumu Yokota
Melancholia II - William Basinski
Captain of None - Colleen
Midnight on Rainbow Road - Leon Vynehall
Blackhole - Beck
Overture (For Other Halfs) - Brian McBride
Kate Yake - Strolch
Splippin’ Into Darkness - War
Mt. Airy Groove - Pieces Of A Dream
Otis - The Durutti Column
Transition - Atelje
Do It Again - Steely Dan
Riverbed - Desert Sound Colony
Om - The Moody Blues
A Sparrow Alighted Upon Our Shoulder -
Spindrift - Colin Stetson
Jóhann Jóhannsson, Air Lyndhurst String
2000 Blacks Got to Be Free - Fela Kuti, Roy Ayers
Orchestra, Anthony Weeden
Trees - Föllakzoid
itunes.apple.com/au/curator/monster-children
MONSTER CHILDREN 066
Alex Olson
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Stevo: The biggest fuckwit I ever knew, and why I’d be nothing without him.
Everyone had a high school nemesis. Mine was Stevo. I heard his name on the school bus in print alongside the names of all my favourite surfers on the following pages. I took one day, and from that moment I fucking hated him. My girlfriend—who I’d spent the entire the mag to school, feeling as proud as I’d ever been in my life. Midway through showing summer holidays pashing down by the river—had been in high school less than a week a mate, a hand appeared from nowhere and snatched the magazine. Stevo looked at when she sat me down on the back seat to tell me she’d met a guy named Stevo and that the page, read the letter. ‘Ah, you’re a big fuckin’ hero now, aren’t ya?’ he said. Then they were going out. Being stuck in year six, there wasn’t much I could do about it other he threw the magazine in a bin where it got soaked in gross high school bin juice. It was than go home and cry myself to sleep in my Power Rangers pyjamas. I spent the entire totally ruined. I don’t remember a lot of what happened next, except that I went absolutely year wishing Stevo was dead.
fucking psychotic.
Twelve months later, I walked through the front gate of my high school for the first time and I do remember being in the air and my hands reaching for Stevo’s neck, and I remember Stevo was there waiting. He and my girl had long since broken up, but all that jealousy I’d being able to feel his oesophagus and spine flattening in my grip. And I recall there was sent out into the universe was about to come back at me in a big way. I don’t know how no fighting back. Stevo just laid in the dirt with me perched on his chest, squeezing his he knew what I looked like, but he zoomed in on me with the murderous intent of a wedge- throat and hissing, ‘If you ever touch me again, I’ll fucking kill you.’ That was pretty much tailed eagle on a trembling guinea pig. I was easy prey.
the end of it. Stevo always threatened to flog me in the years that followed, but for the
Every day for the next two years, Stevo and his two lackeys made it their mission to most part I became invisible to him. In my later years in high school, I didn’t even know if torment the hell out of me. He’d steal my Quiksilver cap and begin passing it around while he was still there. I chased and squealed for him to give it back. I tried to give Stevo a wide berth but he was A few years later, I got a job at the same surf mag I’d sent the letter to. It was a dream. relentless. If I walked past him on the way to class, he’d trip me, or dead arm me, or grab Going on surf trips, hanging with all my heroes and getting paid to do it. One day, after my bag and throw it off the balcony. One time, a mate invited me over to his place for a returning to my hometown from a season in Hawaii, I paddled out at my local break, only to skate on his new half-pipe, but my excitement quickly turned to dread when I walked into bump into good old Stevo. I hadn’t seen him for a while, and he looked awful. Smack had his backyard to see Stevo already shredding on it. ‘You gonna drop in or you gonna stand come to town in the years I’d been gone, and a lot of our mutual friends had got caught up there like a fuckin’ pussy?’ he spat at me in front of all my mates. I’d never dropped in on in it. Some had died. Stevo looked like he was battling. It took him a while to recognise me a ramp before, but the call out was too heavy. I had to try. I skipped out, slammed and got but eventually he gave a nod. Then he quickly caught a wave in. A sadness came over me. winded. As I lay at the bottom of the ramp crying and gasping for air, Stevo found a bucket Could that withered and broken human really be the same guy who’d so terrorized those of rancid water in the garden and poured it all over me. All the kids laughed. I didn’t know formative years of my life? Before I’d even met him, I’d hated him, and things had only if I was choking or drowning.
gotten worse once we were in each other’s space. When I heard Stevo passed away just a
One day, I got news from a friend that a letter I’d written to a surf mag had been few weeks after that surf, I was genuinely bummed. And then I was overcome with a feeling published. I ran to the shop and bought a copy and, sure enough, there was my name I’d never once experienced in all the years of knowing him. Gratitude. - Vaughan Dead
for makers & creators Stockholm Artist - Daniel Jouseff
@neuwdenim | neuwdenim.com
Issue 67 Our editor-in-chief, Jason Crombie, went on the record to say that this issue of Monster Children Magazine is THE BEST ISSUE EVER. He said it just like that, with capital letters and everything. But it won’t stay that way for long, because for Issue 67, the usual faction of Monster Children is clearing out and we’re taking over. Who’s we? An all-female crew of writers, editors, designers, photographers and more, handpicked from the Monster Children universe. While they head off to the pub to bask in the glow of this issue’s success, we’ll be hard at work bringing you interviews with Dolly Parton (TBC), Rihanna (TBC), Marie Curie (RIP), and heaps more talented women who will definitely, probably chat to us.
Issue 67 of Monster Children is going to be THE BEST ISSUE EVER! And you can quote us on that. Monique Penning. Deputy Editor.
CHEAP PERFUME
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