The Red Bulletin UK 05/22

UK EDITION MAY 2022, £3.50 SUBSCRIBE: getredbulletin.com

BEYOND THE ORDINARY

ALEX HONNOLD’S NEXT CHAPTER The world’s most famous climber on fatherhood and a life beyond fearlessness Read the magazine on your phone

Martha Cooper Legendary B-boy photographer Voice of Baceprot Indonesia’s all-girl metal band thrashing stereotypes New nostalgia The future positive of looking backwards

Editor’s letter

When New York photographer Martha Cooper captured the first known image of B-boys, in 1980, her newspaper editor rejected the story. Cooper, however, knew she’d witnessed something profound. As our 12-page portfolio of Cooper’s insightful work (page 62) shows, she was right. Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

That’s a theme of this issue: the ability to recognise paradigmshifting moments, but also the talent to create them. Filmmakers The Right to Roam (page 24) make documentaries that give a voice to vital yet underrepresented causes; Kieran Reilly (page 26) has redefined what’s possible on a BMX at the age of just 20; and Erik Ahlström (page 28) invented a global sport based around litter-picking. Then there’s Voice of Baceprot (page 52), the metal band who, because they’re loud, proud women from religiously conservative West Java, face prejudice at home and abroad.

As for hindsight, our look at the positive power of nostalgia (page 40) scientifically demonstrates it really is a wonderful thing.

And there’s Alex Honnold (page 30), a climber who can free-solo seemingly impossible rock faces, but admits to being all fingers and thumbs when it comes to parenthood. Enjoy the issue.

ALICE AUSTIN

The Tel Aviv-based writer drew on a wealth of experience covering music, politics and subculture for her feature on all-female Javanese rock band Voice of Baceport’s European tour. “One minute they’re praying, the next they’re headbanging on stage,” she says.

“And they were constantly surrounded by press asking difficult questions about Islam.” Page 52

HEATHER BALOGH ROCHFORT

The Colorado-based outdoor journalist and author of Moms Who Hike had a preconception of climber Alex Honnold.

“I’d thought his superpower was fearlessness,” she says.

“But he cares about selfpreservation as much as we all do, and he evaluates every move thousands of times.

He wouldn’t do any of this if he believed it endangered his life. His superpower is analysis and logic.” Page 30

Adventure filmmaker Jonathan Griffith, as photographed by Renan Ozturk, sets up his VR rig on Mont Blanc’s Kuffner Arête to shoot Alex Honnold’s The Soloist VR. Page 30

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THE RED BULLETIN

RAINER HOSCH (COVER), RENAN OZTURK/RED BULL CONTENT POOL

FORWARD THINKERS

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CONTENTS May 2022

8 Gallery: highlights from Red

Bull Illume, including a surfing (mis)adventure in Hawaii; discreet diving in Ibiza; heels on fire in the French Alps; and blazing saddles in Arizona

15 Superstar DJ, here we go: disc-

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spinning doyen David Morales on four tunes with decks appeal

16 Colossal: a biotech firm with

a big name and plans to match.

First job: revive the mammoth

18 Fringe benefits: the London hair

stylist helping change the image of the marginalised in society 21 Hookie Tardigrade: no, not a New

Order side project, but a motorbike built for use on the Moon

22 Portal Unity Network: the

‘technological art sculptures’ that bring nations together

24 T he Right to Roam

The documentary makers helping change the world, one film at a time

26 K ieran Reilly

Flipping the script to nail the Holy Grail of BMX: the triple flair

28 Erik Ahlström

Why plogging is good for the mind, the body… and the planet

30 A lex Honnold

Home truths from the climbing icon as he faces the steepest learning curve of his life: parenthood

40 Future nostalgia

Some people say you should never look back. But for these innovators it’s the only way forward

52 Voice of Baceprot

Rebel rockers: get ready to meet your new favourite all-female Javanese metal band

62 M artha Cooper

A snapshot of the ’80s New York breakdancing scene, courtesy of the legendary photographer

THE RED BULLETIN

75 Labour of lava: a 72-hour run

across the volcanic terrain of Madeira may not be a piece of cake, but it’s food for the soul 80 Take charge: how to make your

MTB ride an electric experience

80

Want to boss the trails without busting your tailbone? Check out our edit of the best e-MTB kit you can buy

91 Aces wild: adventurer Hazen

Audel on learning nature’s laws 92 Worth their weight: these rucksacks have got your back 94 Play hard, win big: tips from teen gaming millionaire Jaden Ashman 95 Essential dates for your calendar 98 Outdoors wisdom from Semi-Rad 07

HALEIWA, OAHU, HAWAII

Wave of relief Every picture tells a story, but while this image of Koa Rothman surfing a glorious wave in his native Hawaii has undeniable impact, the greater drama happened off-camera. Shortly after the shoot, Californian photographer Ryan Moss broke his back in a jet-ski accident that also destroyed most of his equipment. Which is when the surfing gods stepped in. “With the help of a friend, I was able to recover some images from my memory card,” says Moss, whose efforts earned him a 2021 semi-final place in the ‘Masterpiece by SanDisk Professional’ category of global photography competition Red Bull Illume.

“That helped the pain from the injury and surgery hurt a lot less.” And thankfully Moss also made a full recovery. ryancmoss.com

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RYAN MOSS/RED BULL ILLUME

DAVYDD CHONG

IBIZA, SPAIN

Drop off the radar

DEAN TREML/RED BULL ILLUME, TRISTAN SHU/RED BULL ILLUME

DAVYDD CHONG

Ibiza’s Ullal de na Coloms – aka the ‘Cave of Light’ – is fiendishly hard to access, via a hazardous road with no signposting. But what we might call a deterrent, a cliff diver sees as a challenge, as proved by Spain’s Celia Fernandez in this shot by Kiwi photographer Dean Treml – a finalist in the ‘RAW by Leica’ category of Red Bull Illume. Instagram: @deantreml

HAUTE-ALPES, FRANCE

Sparks will fly As befits his name, Jean-Baptiste Chandelier is used to hanging in mid-air. But does the French paraglider always resemble a stricken Boeing 737 when landing? Seems not.

“He had the idea of pimping his shoes with BBQ igniter stones to create a trail of sparks when they hit the ground at speed,” explains Tristan Lebeschu, whose shot won him a place in the Red Bull Illume semi-finals.

Phew, call off the engines... tristanshu.com

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PAGE, ARIZONA, USA

DAVYDD CHONG

Hitting pay dirt

NOAH WETZEL/REDBULL ILLUME

“Shouldering his unforgiving downhill bike, Blake quickly scaled 800 vertical feet [240m] of loose hot shale and dropped in for one last sunset line.

Carving and slashing down the face, Blake screamed through the frame, accompanied by distant hoots and hollers from Jack…” After four long, sunbaked days shooting near the ArizonaUtah border with his freeriding pals Blake Sommer and Jack Graham in late 2020, this moment of magic was just reward for US action photographer Noah Wetzel. Not to mention the semi-final place in Red Bull Illume. noahdavidwetzel.com

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DAVID MORALES

Spin doctor

Four tunes that shaped the career – and saved the life – of a superstar DJ House music icon David Morales is a trailblazer in the world of DJing.

The 59-year-old Brooklyn native first made his name on the ’80s New York club scene, and his fame grew yet further in the ’90s with acclaimed production and remixes for the likes of Mariah Carey and Jamiroquai, as well as his own solo albums. Now, the Grammy winner is back with his first album in more than a decade, Life is a Song. “Music is really important [to me],” he explains, “to the point that it saved my life.” Here, he reveals four of those lifesavers.

David Morales’ album Life is a Song is out now; djdavidmorales.com

WILL LAVIN

Scan this QR code to hear our Playlist podcast with David Morales on Spotify

The Jackson 5

The O’Jays

Double Exposure

The Jimmy Castor Bunch

ABC (1970)

Put Your Hands Together (1973)

Ten Per Cent (1976)

It’s Just Begun (1972)

“There was no escaping this song as a kid, because it was played all across pop radio.

When I was in elementary school, maybe first or second grade, the class had to do a presentation where we chose a famous group and performed one of their songs. Some kids chose The Partridge Family; I chose The Jackson 5 and performed ABC. It was one of the first songs to have a major influence on my life.”

“Even though I had no money to buy music when I was growing up, I’d still go to the record store to look at what they had. When I did finally get some money, this was the first 45 I ever bought.

I remember bringing it home; we had this rubbish sound system in the house, and I took the speaker and faced it out the window, then I played this record for what must have been a hundred times. I think my mother wanted to break it.”

“Growing up in the hood, there used to be these block parties where DJs would play in the park. I remember being about 13 years old and seeing this guy set up his equipment, it was the first time I ever saw two decks and a mixer, and he was playing [Ten Per Cent].

Hearing the break blew my mind. It was the first 12-inch single released on Salsoul Records, and once I got a copy I played it to death.”

“This record was like a graduation for me. It reminds me of my teenage years, when I was into graffiti and breakdancing. I was the best dancer in my crew, and I went by the name Flaco Larock, which I had got written in fluorescent letters on the front of a T-shirt. When I used to battle, It’s Just Begun was one of the records that would go off in the club, because it had such a sick break and intro.”

THE RED BULLETIN

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When author Michael Crichton wrote Jurassic Park in 1990, it was pure science fiction. But as a wise man once said, “Life, uh, finds a way”

This summer, moviegoers will be able to watch Jurassic World Dominion, the sixth film in the Jurassic Park franchise. You’d have thought by now we’d all be wise to the existential folly of resurrecting prehistoric creatures, but one group of scientists seems not to have got the memo.

US-based biotechnology company Colossal intends to bring back the woolly mammoth, a prehistoric animal that’s been extinct since the end of the last ice age, around 11,000 years ago. And it plans to do this within five years.

“I have always been fascinated with science fiction,” says Colossal co-founder Ben Lamm, a 40-year-old Texan 16

Tusk force: (above) scientists at Colossal in the US work on the revival of the long-extinct woolly mammoth, and also safeguarding modern-day species that are under threat; (top) founders Ben Lamm (left) and George Church with one they made earlier (possibly)

entrepreneur whose previous endeavours include launching and selling businesses that developed software for e-learning, VR gaming and artificial intelligence. Not the kind of CV you’d expect of someone planning to resurrect long-dead megafauna, but then Lamm met George Church, a professor of genetics at Harvard who, in 2015, successfully spliced the genes of a woolly mammoth into the genome of a modern-day Asian elephant.

In September last year, they founded Colossal with the aim of taking that breakthrough one step further – turning the hybrid elephant/mammoth tissue into embryos and gestating calves in purposebuilt artificial wombs. “Colossal checked a lot of boxes for me,” says Lamm. “With the discovery of CRISPR [a unique technology used to edit genes] and the fact that we have a close enough relative to the woolly mammoth in the Asian elephant, we have the toolkit to actually do this.”

But to paraphrase Jeff Goldblum’s chaos-theorising

THE RED BULLETIN

LOU BOYD

De-extinction rebellion

JOHN DAVIDSON

COLOSSAL BIOSCIENCES

doomsayer Dr Ian Malcolm in the 1993 film Jurassic Park, are these scientists so preoccupied with whether they could that they haven’t stopped to think if they should? It would seem not.

Because rather than making a quick buck with a woolly mammoth safari park, Lamm and Church believe this work could deliver a profound contribution in the fight against climate change.

“A lot of scientific models show reintroducing megafauna into the Arctic could help transform it back into a grass landscape,” explains Lamm.

“And grassland is known to be more efficient at sequestering carbon [a key contributor to global warming].”

We may not have to wait too long to see Colossal’s plan come to fruition. “Our hope is to have our first calves in the next four to six years,” says Lamm. “The good news is that there are no real technological or scientific gates in what we’re doing, and I’m lucky enough to work with brilliant scientists.”

Even more than resurrecting lost species, though, Lamm is excited by the other mammoth benefits of Colossal’s gene-editing technology, such as saving today’s animals from extinction. “Look at the northern white rhino – just two left, both female, and one is now too old for us to do egg harvesting,” he says. By employing ‘mutagenesis’ – taking a non-invasive tissue sample and generating a genetic mutation – Colossal could now create that egg cell from scratch.

“Combine it with artificial womb technology and we’ll be able to leverage our genetic and gestational technologies for conservation,” says Lamm.

“To me, that’s just as exciting and inspiring as mammoths.” colossal.com

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Meet the London hairdresser whose simple act of kindness sparked a movement built on compassion and contribution

Joshua Coombes was en route to work at a London hair salon in 2015 when he first noticed Darak. For Coombes, like many other Londoners, the streets were part of his daily commute, but for Darak, like the capital’s thousands of other rough sleepers, they were his home.

The two men eventually struck up a conversation, then formed a friendship. The 34-year-old hairdresser would stop to chat, occasionally buy Darak food, and the better they got to know 18

each other, the more Coombes felt like he could be – should be – doing more to help.

Then, one day, Coombes realised there was a simple, inexpensive gift he could offer Darak: a haircut. Finding a quiet spot, Coombes got to work cutting away the tangled grime of the street. Slowly, a new man emerged, and as Darak studied himself in a mirror, Coombes realised the profound effect of his gesture. “Haircuts are great for giving someone dignity and boosting their selfesteem,” he explains. “I saw that by going out and cutting hair I could make an impact.”

According to research published by housing charity Shelter in December last year, there are more than 274,000 homeless people in England – that’s one in 206. Coombes appreciates that a streak of

THE RED BULLETIN

TOM WARD

First cut is the deepest

JOSHUA COOMBES, IRENE CONESA GONZALEZ

JOSHUA COOMBES

bad luck can be all that it takes to end up on the street. “I grew up in Devon, a place of nice rural hills,” he says. “But my school was in an area that was rough and underfunded. I’m from a single-parent family, and if it wasn’t for my mum living and working for us, I can see that [homelessness] might not have been that far away.”

Encouraged by Darak’s reaction, Coombes began offering free haircuts to more homeless people, sharing their stories online as a way of destigmatising their situation.

He posted them on Instagram – @DoSomethingForNothing – and encouraged others to offer their help to the less fortunate.

“Do Something For Nothing became a way to humanise [homeless] stories and move beyond negative stereotypes,” Coombes says. “We have to recognise this is a person and they’re far more similar to you or me than we might believe.”

Now with around 59,000 followers, the account has inspired everything from free yoga lessons for recovering addicts to young people visiting retirement homes for lunch dates with those who have no family. “We all know pain and how it feels to need the support of people around us,” says Coombes as an explanation for its success.

In 2017, the initiative featured in the Nat Geo documentary series The Story of Us with Morgan Freeman, and last year saw the release of Coombes’ first book, Do Something For Nothing, for which he donated all proceeds to art projects for the homeless.

Today, seven years after cutting Darak’s hair, Coombes still packs his scissors. “It’s about promoting tolerance and compassion,” he says.

“Giving your time, having a conversation, showing up for somebody – that stuff really means a lot.” dosomethingfornothing.org; Instagram: @joshuacoombes

RVX WITH SWIFTLO C K 2 .0

MIKKEL BANG

EDO LUMALENS GOLD ION ©2021 Marchon Eyewear Inc.

NINA ZIETMAN DAVID OHL

Nico Müller has always been fascinated by the idea of life beyond Earth. The graphic designer and founder of Dresden-based custommotorcycle workshop Hookie Co builds bikes that push the limits of earthbound roads, but he has also looked to the stars, imagining what designing for life beyond our planetary boundaries could be like.

“Space and engineering are two addictions of mine,” says the 35-year-old German.

But it wasn’t until 2020, while scrolling through Instagram, that he came across the perfect intersection of both interests: an illustration of a lunar motorcycle, drawn by Russian industrial designer Andrew Fabishevskiy. “I was hooked,” says Müller. “I told my wife Sylvia I wanted to build it.”

Müller contacted Fabishevskiy and, over the course of nine months, the pair drew up concepts, tested materials and built prototypes for the first Moon motorbike.

The result (pictured) is an ultra-light, laser-cut aluminium exoskeleton with a spacegrade Kevlar cover for extra protection, and airless tyres – after all, fixing a puncture in the near-vacuum lunar atmosphere isn’t really an option. Together, they christened the bike the ‘Tardigrade’, after the most resilient animal on Earth – a microscopic creature that can survive extreme conditions, including those in outer space.

The Tardigrade can reach a top speed of 15kph (close to the speed limit of the Moon buggies used on the Apollo missions) and has a battery range of almost 110km. “It’s built for a mission – there’s no casing or fancy lines. This is the reason I love this bike – it’s a piece of functional design, the biggest kind of art,” says Müller, who sees no boundaries between science, engineering and design. “They are all a kind of art, and it’s this synergy that brings solutions.

THE RED BULLETIN

HOOKIE TARDIGRADE

This project ignores borders – those of countries, role stereotypes and the status quo.” It’s this freedom from earthbound constraints, combined with a multinational build team, that has brought the Tardigrade to life.

NASA has considered taking motorcycles to the Moon before – in the late 1960s it went so far as to build an electric variant of a Honda minibike complete with a beeswax cooling system, before deciding to stick with the four-wheeled lunar rover – but the space agency has yet to make the call to Müller and Fabishevskiy.

“I really think this could be an option for future missions,” Müller says. “You could transport four Tardigrades in the same [storage] space as one Moon rover. They’re also a lot lighter.”

Lunar cycle What to do next when you’ve built some of the wildest bikes on the planet? Create one for use beyond this world. Introducing the concept Moon motorcycle…

In the meantime, the bike will be on display at the ADV: Overland exhibition at Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles, where, its creators hope, it will inspire others to look to the stars.

“We built a motorcycle no one had created before,” says Müller. “I hope the Tardigrade awakens enthusiasm within people to try new things, to be open to new adventures and to explore new horizons.” hookie-tardigrade.co 21

Building a social circle John Lennon once asked us to imagine a unified planet where we all live as one. This Lithuanian technologist has taken things a step closer

On his website, 30-year-old Benediktas Gylys (pictured right) describes himself as “an active angel investor, passive crypto enthusiast, plant-based best-selling book author, foundation president, radio talk-show host” and, most intriguingly of all, a “builder of portals”. It’s a term that might evoke thoughts of interdimensional gateways or 22

space-time wormholes, but the Lithuanian entrepreneur’s work is very much grounded here on Earth. Gylys’ 3.4m-tall, 11-tonne concrete-and-steel Portals are 24-hour, two-way video interfaces that allow people in the street to meet freely across international boundaries, and which could, he speculates, even unite the world.

Gylys, who describes his Portals as “technological art sculptures” built to withstand decades of outdoor use, made them circular to represent the shape of both our planet and our eyes – or, as he calls them, the “gateway to our souls”. The first two structures in Gylys’ Portal Unity Network, located around 500km apart in the Lithuanian capital of

THE RED BULLETIN

LOU BOYD

PORTAL UNITY NETWORK

CICI CROSSROADS, DAINIUS ŠCIUKA

Portal Unity Network: not another Stargate prequel, thankfully

Vilnius and the Polish city of Lublin, are now live, providing an unfiltered, around-theclock, live video connection or ‘visual bridge’ between citizens in those locations.

One of the aims of the Portal Unity Network is to allow everyday people to experience ‘the overview effect’, a cognitive shift in awareness often reported by astronauts when they gaze down from space at the fragile planet we all call home. “Experiencing a Portal up-close erases the sense of distance and helps people to meet beyond borders,” explains Gylys. “It also helps to expand one’s definition of ‘home’ from a tiny area – the geographical location of one’s country – to the whole planet.”

By providing these visual bridges between disparate parts of the world, Gylys hopes to bring different cultures together and encourage people to rethink the meaning of unity. “Humanity is facing a lot of potentially deadly challenges: social polarisation, climate change, economic issues,” he says. “If we look closely, it’s not a lack of brilliant scientists, leaders, activists, knowledge or technology that’s causing these challenges; it’s tribalism, a lack of empathy, and a secluded perception of the world, often limited to our national borders.”

The next step, says Gylys, is to create more Portals, with plans to link Vilnius to London and the Icelandic capital of Reykjavík in the coming year. “We will build a global network on all continents, so that by standing close to any of the Portals one will be able to connect with fellow humans from around the world,” he says. “We’re all flying together on a tiny fragile spaceship called Earth, and the only way for us to continue the trip is to unite as a global community.” portalcities.org

CUBE BIKES UK / cubebikes.co.uk

The Right to Roam

Lights, camera, activism Meet the British impact-filmmaking duo who are documenting – and championing – the world’s unheard heroes Words LYDIA WINTER

Photography TOR HARRISON

“We’ve never said to ourselves, ‘Let’s go to the other side of the world and make a film about a marginalised voice,’” says Joya Berrow, one half of British impact-filmmaking duo The Right to Roam, alongside creative partner and longtime friend Lucy Jane. Nevertheless, the team’s award-winning productions – more akin to cinematic documentaries – focus on individuals working to improve the world around them.

Surf Girls Jamaica (2019) introduces us to Imani Wilmot, a Jamaican surfer striving to enhance the lives of women in the city of Kingston. In Dive Tierra Bomba Dive (2020) we meet Yassandra Barrios, a 19-year-old Colombian marine biologist rallying her local community to protect the marine ecosystem; and Eve (2021) follows a budding, nineyear-old climate activist living in an off-grid community in Somerset.

Jane and Berrow believe it’s the world’s first documentary made with a carbon-neutral footprint.

The stories are told sensitively and authentically, but the pair also leverage each film to support the cause at its heart. “You have a responsibility because you’re telling the story about this person’s life, and that takes away their ownership of that story,” says Jane. “When [the

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film is] finished, you move on, but that person is still living their life.

If you can’t give space and time to your protagonist, you could do more damage than good.” the red bulletin: How do you choose the stories you tell? joya berrow: They’ve always been very personal and specific; something that’s emotionally shifted us and prompted us to bring it to a screen. It’s important to be authentic and not capitalistic – you can’t just grab stories and tell them. It’s about asking yourself, ‘Why am I telling this story? Who is it important to?

How can it create change?’

What techniques do you use to connect with your audience? jb: In Dive Tierra Bomba Dive, we created a strong visual identity. It had an art-directed atmosphere, and that’s an important factor because it can take documentaries into another realm. lucy jane: We’d be doing the protagonists an injustice if we approached every film in the same way. We’re trying to capture their life and what’s so magical about the energy of the place where they live.

commissioners, Doc Society, and sustainability manager Théo Grainzevelles to navigate [our path] through the production, because there were few examples of how to make documentaries in this way. Environmentally conscious filmmaking isn’t just about offsetting the impact; it’s about considering how you can reduce your impact at every point of production, even down to what you’re eating.

Your films carry strong messages on environmental and social conservation – was that always your intention? lj: At the [start] we didn’t really know what we were doing, but when making Surf Girls Jamaica and hearing about those women’s experiences of racism and inequality in the surf industry – being around people affected by those issues – we were motivated to influence change. That was the first time we realised we were creating new outlets for conversation and change, and it became a campaign.

What has been the most challenging aspect of your work? jb: Beyond the film you see on the screen, there’s a whole relationship that is built, and you must ask yourself how many times you want to get so invested in other people’s lives. We’ve never been trained as cultural mitigators, and we always worry about how the film impacts our protagonist, how their life changes. lj: But [the relationships] are also the most rewarding part, because you can see why the challenge is worth it. therighttoroam.com

Why did you choose to make Eve a carbon-neutral production? lj: Being documentary filmmakers, our industry’s impact on the environment became a prominent conversation for us. Filming in [Eve protagonist Eve Tizard’s] home at Tinker’s Bubble – an off-grid community that hasn’t burnt fossil fuels for 25 years – it felt necessary to make this film carbon-neutral.

We worked closely with our THE RED BULLETIN

“It’s important not to be capitalistic you can’t just grab stories and tell them”

THE RED BULLETIN

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Kieran Reilly

Turning it around To level up his mastery of the double flair and nail a world-first triple flair, this British BMXer first had to send his thinking on a full 360 Words CHARLIE ALLENBY

Photography EISA BAKOS

It’s 8pm on a freezing evening in January this year, and Kieran Reilly is getting cold feet in both senses of the term. The 20-year-old freestyle BMXer from Gateshead is at Asylum Skatepark in Nottinghamshire, staring down a custom-built roll-in towards an imposing 3.18m quarterpipe and the challenge of landing the world’s first triple flair.

There’s a reason why this trick has never been achieved before.

Three full backflips followed by a 180° rotation, the triple flair requires not only a specialist set-up to provide enough time for all that spinning, but also a specific mindset capable of taking the risks – and bruising hits – that come with the inevitable repeated failures. Reilly himself had attempted it in May last year, without success.

“I crashed so many times that I started assuming I was going to crash – I couldn’t get past the mental block,” he recalls of that occasion.

This time, he says, “I have a feeling of déjà vu.” Then the miracle happens. After hours of almosttheres, Reilly flips, spins and plants both wheels perfectly on the landing, literally sprinting over his handlebars as he roars in triumph.

If there were any doubt that he could achieve this trick, it wasn’t from those who have watched the ascendency of this phenomenal rider: from the YouTube video of an 11-year-old Reilly pulling off a 720 over a spine at his local skatepark in

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2012, to signing up with BMX legend Bas Keep’s Tall Order team and entering his first international tournament, the Festival International des Sports Extrêmes (FISE) in Montpelier, France, six years later. In December 2020, Keep himself handed Reilly his own official Red Bull helmet.

“That was definitely one of the best moments,” Reilly said at the time. Rest assured, there are more to come. the red bulletin: When did you realise you might have a knack for BMX? kieran reilly: When I started entering amateur competitions at 10 or 11 and saw where other people my age were at. I enjoyed the competitive side, but I also liked knowing I’d put in more work than other kids. It was a good feeling to see it paying off.

While growing up, was there ever pressure to ‘get a proper job’?

My parents are so supportive, but they wanted me to have something else to fall back on. They were just looking out for me, like all parents do. So I did joinery for three years, but I didn’t like it at all. It unlocked a new mindset, though; I realised that if didn’t push hard when I was riding, I would be stuck in that job.

I became disciplined and put a lot of pressure on myself. I would go to the skatepark on my own.

I wasn’t going there to socialise; I was there because I wanted to become a professional rider. And in order to do that, I had to work as hard as, if not harder than, all these other guys.

What has driven you to continue improving in your sport?

When I ride, I enjoy it more when I’m pushing harder. I’m quite an aggressive rider and I like being scared and the feeling of getting over it. Sometimes the mental side is really hard, so when you do get past it there’s a real adrenalin rush.

A lot of your tricks require you to manoeuvre while also spinning at incredible speeds. How are you able to slow things down in your mind?

It’s not ‘Spidey sense’, more muscle memory. You’ve done similar things for such a long time that you have more aerial awareness and know where things are going to be.

How does the triple flair compare with previous tricks you’ve learned?

I went into it thinking it was going to be the same as transitioning from a single flair into a double, which wasn’t as tough. But I couldn’t have been more wrong. My first thought when landing it was, “I don’t have to go through any more pain to do it.” I was exhausted, I’d taken a beating, and I was stoked that I’d finally done it.

What did you have to do to get over that line?

I started doing CrossFit. I changed my diet up and worked a lot on the mental side, trying to understand fear rather than let it take over – turning it into excitement. And I did a hell of a lot more double flairs to get used to the rotation.

What has the experience taught you about yourself?

It humbled me. If it was easy, it wouldn’t have changed my outlook on fear or kickstarted me to get where I am now. I’ve been at that edge and red-lined. From now, I’m going to compare every future challenge with this one.

To watch Kieran Reilly’s successful world-first triple flair, scan the QR code

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“I crashed so many times…

I couldn’t get past the mental block”

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Erik Ahlström

Running the green mile How a veteran runner’s litter-picking campaign birthed a global sport – and gave us a new word in the English dictionary Words NINA ZEITMAN

Photography LUCA MARA

Head to the picturesque region of Val Pellice, northern Italy, in early October and you’ll spot them: dozens of the world’s top trail runners clambering up mountainsides with huge bin bags in their hands.

They’re taking part in the World Plogging Championships, an eighthour race that combines speed, altitude and, unusually, litter picking.

The word ‘plogging’ – a portmanteau of the Swedish term plocka upp (‘to pick up’) and jogging – was coined in 2016 by the sport’s creator, trail runner Erik Ahlström.

This isn’t the first time the 62-year-old Swede has led the way.

Ahlström has been trail running – and coaching others – for 30 years, since the days when it was still considered a niche sport, and he was the brains behind the Salomon Trail Tour. At the heart of Ahlström’s passion is the experience of being outdoors. “When running in nature, you’re using all five senses,” he says.

“Endorphins are pumping and a wide smile spreads across your face.

You feel like, ‘Wow, this is how life should be.’”

Motivated by his reverence for the natural world, Ahlström became a passionate environmental advocate, organising litter-picking events in his local town for more than 20 years. Now, his community-minded attitude has sparked a global environmental movement named Plogga, with supporters including trail-running champions Kilian Jornet and Emelie Forsberg. “It’s about changing your mindset,”

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says Ahlström. “If there is trash in front of you, pick it up, because if you do, the person behind you will do the same.” the red bulletin: Where did you get the idea for plogging? erik ahlström: I was living in this tiny Swedish ski resort called Åre, and while walking my son to school in the morning, I would pick up litter. It made me sad to see the amount of trash on the streets, so I began organising group clean-ups.

Over two decades, I noticed that I’d made a real impact. When I moved back to Stockholm in 2016, the litter problem was worse. It was like no one seemed to care.

I started running with friends and we decided to collect litter while we ran. It became like a treasure hunt. We were running, laughing and having fun. Others saw us and said they wanted to join in. Then the whole thing just went bananas.

A German TV company came to Stockholm to do a feature. By then, hundreds of people were taking part in local plogging groups across Sweden and it spread globally through social media. It was crazy.

What impact have you seen across the world?

There are now hundreds of plogging groups. In 2018, the world record was recorded just outside Mexico City, where more than 4,000 ploggers took part. It was also chosen as the fitness trend of that year in India, and it’s estimated that around 10,000 people now regularly go plogging there. It has even been made an official word in the English dictionary.

Are there fitness benefits over normal running?

Running is more or less the same movement from the waist down.

Plogging involves bending, so you’re using your core, side muscles and legs much more, plus the upper body because the litter bags unfortunately become very heavy. You also burn more calories. Half an hour of plogging will burn 288 calories on average, compared with 235 calories from regular jogging.

Has this sport taught you anything unexpected?

Kids love it. It’s such an inclusive activity because it’s not just about who is the fastest, it’s also about which items are the most valuable for recycling. A child who [isn’t the best runner] might know that a PET bottle never disappears – it just breaks down into microplastics – so he could be the hero of the class plogging team. Plogging is also very addictive: when you see trash, you can’t help but stop and pick it up. You care more about the environment, and caring becomes change.

How can people get involved?

Start by finding a group to go plogging with. There might already be ploggers in your area. You can also join our Plogging World Facebook group to see what ploggers in different countries are doing.

Or create your own event and just start picking litter with friends.

You just need a bag, a pair of gloves, and you’re ready to go.

Erik Ahlström is taking part in this year’s Wings for Life World Run, where 100 per cent of the entry fee goes towards finding a cure for spinal cord injury. The Wings for Life World Run takes place on May 8 at 12pm UTC. To find out more and to take part, go to wingsforlifeworldrun.com Scan the QR code to hear Ahlström on Red Bull’s new podcast, Why I Run, where he talks more about plogging and joining the Wings for Life World Run

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“Plogging is addictive: when you see trash, you can’t help but pick it up”

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ONWARDS AND UPWARDS Famed for climbing the world’s toughest vertical routes solo, unaided and seemingly without fear, ALEX HONNOLD is now navigating unfamiliar territory: parenthood.

Will domesticity and responsibility finally rattle this legendary loner?

Words HEATHER BALOGH ROCHFORT Photography JIMMY CHIN

Honnold, now 36, has become the most recognized rock climber in the world, largely thanks to the success of Free Solo.

RAINER HOSCH

Gripping stuff: Honnold reenacts his 2012 rope-less climb of the 760m north-west face of Half Dome – possibly his hardest free-solo to date – in Yosemite National Park

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Alex Honnold

“I’m a lot better prepared for hard climbs than I am for parenting”

RAINER HOSCH

I Rock icon: Honnold, now 36, has become the most recognised rock climber in the world, largely thanks to the success of the film Free Solo THE RED BULLETIN

t’s just another weekend in the Honnold household. “Is this your backpack or Jimmy’s?”

Alex Honnold asks as he blows past the chair in which I’m sitting. For a brief second I stumble for an answer, before Jonathan Griffith – Honnold’s friend and the director of the upcoming Alex Honnold: The Soloist VR experience – saves me with an explanation. “Jimmy Chin is somewhere in the compound,” he offers, referring to the legendary US climber, photographer and Academy Awardwinning filmmaker. I guess it’s that kind of party.

I’m cosied up at Honnold’s dining table, tucked near a bank of windows in his home near Las Vegas on this warm winter Saturday. The view outside is captivating – brilliant red sandstone cliffs fill the horizon – but I’m more interested in what’s happening inside. As I watch, Honnold bustles around his living room, tidying the space with the same methodical precision he employs when scaling 1,000m rock faces without the aid of a rope.

It feels surreal, watching the 36-year-old rockclimbing superstar practise something as mundane as domesticity, but that’s the thing about Honnold: he just gets it done.

Honnold dumps Chin’s backpack in the kitchen before scooping up another living-room obstacle: a play mat designed for babies needing to practise tummy time. I see him pause for a brief moment, almost as if he wonders how this earth-toned baby gear found its way into his path. He offers a small shrug before tossing the “baby thing” in a closet, stopping to organise a two-inch-thick pile of fan mail as he zips back towards the kitchen.

The entire scene is a model of efficiency. But it’s probably not the sort most would envision when they picture the man who famously made the first free solo ascent – a climb without any ropes, harnesses or safety equipment – of Yosemite National Park’s El Capitan in 2017, or became a worldwide sensation after the release of Free Solo, Chin’s Oscar-winning 2018 documentary about the project. Honnold has spent almost 25 years climbing rocks – both big and small, with and without ropes – and his reputation precedes him on a global level. But now he’s staring down the crux of his own life as it enters the next chapter.

Marriage. Children. Parenting. Climbing. Soloing.

Is there room for it all?

Family

“I think I’m a lot better prepared for hard climbs than I am for parenting,” Honnold laughs. “With climbing, I read tons about it. I study and I train.

But with the parenting books, I haven’t looked at any of them yet, because I think we can just figure it out as we go along.”

At this point, it’s November 2021 – still three months to go before the birth of Honnold’s first child in February. Just two months earlier, on their one-year wedding anniversary, he and his wife, professional life coach Sanni McCandless Honnold, announced that they were expecting a daughter. Stoked climbing fans around the world enthusiastically congratulated the duo on their Instagram post while also low-key buzzing with curiosity. For many, Honnold is the most 33

Alex Honnold

Downtime: cooking dinner with his wife Sanni

recognisable climber on the planet, and certainly the one most associated with mind-boggling freesolo ascents. Being the face of a sport so deeply entrenched in risk and danger, Honnold’s life trajectory surprised quite a few of his supporters.

But not the climber himself. For Honnold, a family was always on the cards – regardless of what that meant for his career.

“I’m sort of prepared for anything,” he says after settling into one of two round sofa chairs in his living room. “I’m open to the idea that being a dad could change my climbing, but I currently climb in the safest way that I can. It’s hard to say how parenting is going to change that.”

Almost on cue, Honnold’s caramel-coloured doe eyes flick to the window behind me as a tentative knock on the glass door interrupts the conversation.

A friendly-faced woman pokes her head inside; in her arms she’s holding an even happier baby, gurgling spit bubbles and kicking out its chunky thighs. With one glance at the cameras in the room, the woman ducks out and Honnold apologises.

“Sorry, that’s my sister-in-law,” he says. ‘They’re living with the parents in the other house [on the property] with their three-month-old. That’s my practice baby.”

It’s clear that Honnold is at ease with the concept of family, and even easier with children.

But really, it’s no surprise considering his own everyday childhood. He was born in Sacramento in 1985, the youngest child – after elder sister Stasia – of Charles Honnold and Dierdre Wolownick. Honnold and his family were decidedly middle-class: both parents were language teachers at the local community college – Charles taught 34

English as a Second Language (ESL) and Dierdre was a longtime French instructor. The family wasn’t perfect, but it functioned nonetheless. His parents divorced during Honnold’s first year of college – before he dropped out – and his father passed away shortly afterwards from a heart attack.

But Honnold remembers a good familial bond and certainly always hoped to create a family of his own.

For his part, Honnold showed his true colours early. He leaned into problems, building with Lego as a young boy and beginning climbing in kindergarten. By the time he was 10, he was fully invested in the sport, although he’s the first to admit that he wasn’t the best.

“I just loved it,” Honnold muses from his living room. “I still love being out – it’s a key part of my life.” As he says this, he vaguely gestures towards the window and the dusky red rock looming in the distance. “Have you climbed there before?” he asks with a tilt of his head. I tell him that it’s the one outdoor adventure sport that never stuck for me.

“You’re really missing out,” he says with a wide smile. “Definitely.”

It’s during these uncharacteristic moments in our conversation that Honnold’s passion supersedes his pragmatism. He has been described in the past as both hermitic and sceptical. But as the early morning bleeds into the lunch hour and he seems to become more comfortable, I see it differently.

In many ways, he reminds me of my husband: practical and logical, often to a fault. Honnold didn’t live a nomadic existence in a van for 10 years because he wanted to be alone; he did it because it made sense and was the most logical solution to maximise time with his priority relationship: climbing. Now that he has both Sanni and a soonto-be-born daughter, it’s almost as if Honnold has reshuffled his heart strings a bit, because that’s the logical conclusion.

“I think my whole evolution as a climber has been totally natural and what I always imagined,” he says. “I never envisioned living in a van until I got old, because there are several prominent examples of well-known climbers who did that and I never really looked up to them. I always looked up to the climbers who pushed [the sport] in their time but also had a family and some stability and went on to impact the world in a real way. I mean, you can’t live in a van for ever. And we’re really excited to be having kids soon.”

“I definitely feel fear, and I fear death. I’m just more desensitised to it”

The only way is up: Honnold goes for an exploratory deepwater solo climb on Oman’s Musandam Peninsula in 2013

Cable guy: hours of camera rigging and planning went into the filming of Alex Honnold: The Soloist VR

Follow the leader: Honnold keeps Hojac in his sights in a scene from the film

Steady focus: a selfie with Nicolas Hojac (left) on Kleine Zinne in the Italian Dolomites

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Alex Honnold

RENAN OZTURK/JONATHAN GRIFFITH PRODUCTIONS

KEEPING IT REAL Making The Soloist VR with Alex Honnold Alex Honnold is no stranger to climbing documentaries, but last summer he tackled filming from a new angle. The brainchild of esteemed alpinist and filmmaker Jonathan Griffith, upcoming doc Alex Honnold: The Soloist VR takes us deep into the climber’s freesoloing world – all of it filmed with virtual-reality cameras.

A small crew of six climbers, including Griffith and Red Bull athlete and Swiss mountaineer Nicolas Hojac, journeyed to Europe to follow Honnold as he solo-climbed various routes across the continent. Filming in VR was a new experience for Honnold, but he thoroughly enjoyed it. “I’d never shot anything in VR, but I like working on new things that are challenging and different,” he says. “This VR project hit the sweet spot for me, because it’s interesting and new but also a great way to share climbing in a totally new medium.”

The team split their time between three locations: the Italian Dolomites, the French Alps, and then back in California, where they wrapped up shooting. Honnold knew how technically demanding filming in VR would be: even shooting a traditional documentary involves a lot of camera rigging and planning. For The Soloist VR, Griffith and his team also had to account for the scope of the cameras. They had to shoot the scenes from both the top and the bottom, as well as nab a number of close-ups.

Not only did this require constant rigging and stealthy movements by camera operators trying to duck out of sight of the 360° lenses, but also an insane amount of talent and precision to record all of the scenery.

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Viewers watching the film through a headset can focus on Honnold climbing upward, or turn to the right and watch a bird soaring by, or look down the rock face to watch a small pebble fall toward the ground hundreds of metres below. To capture all of these nuances on film, small details such as the sunlight and cloud movements all need to match to create a cohesive and immersive viewing experience.

“To get all of this to come together in a timely manner and do it for each shot as you rappel down a rock face is quite involved,” Honnold says.

I had the chance to view an early cut of The Soloist VR at Honnold’s house, and ‘involved’ doesn’t even begin to describe the adrenalin rush I felt as I experienced Honnold’s perspective of the world. When I removed the VR goggles, I realised I’d physically moved my body about a metre and a half from where I’d started and was facing an entirely different direction. I looked up to see both Griffith and Honnold smiling at me. “Pretty cool, right?” Griffith laughed.

For folks wondering what it’s like to climb like Alex Honnold, The Soloist VR answers all those questions.

And yes, it is pretty cool.

Heather Balogh Rochfort Experience Alex Honnold: The Soloist VR on Oculus TV (Meta Quest VR headset required), and watch the three-part behind-the-scenes documentary on Red Bull TV; thesoloist-vr.com. Scan the QR code to see a special short film by The Red Bulletin in which Honnold talks about creating the project

Fear

It’s a heady thing to be given your own verb, but that’s exactly what happened to Honnold after his 2008 record-setting free-solo climb of the 23-pitch Regular Northwest Face route up Yosemite’s Half Dome. A now-infamous photograph which spread across the internet shows Honnold decked out in a red hoodie and black climbing pants, standing upon a tiny indentation of rock with his back and his heels pressed flat against the wall and his toes almost dangling over the edge. Almost 550m of air floats below him, and, as is expected with free soloing, he has no climbing protection to attach him to the wall. One fall and he’s done.

Thus was born the word ‘honnolding’: to stand in a precarious place with your back against a wall and your face towards the drop, and your fear.

Over the years, Honnold’s fear – or lack thereof – has become a cocktail party conversation topic.

Most of us can’t fathom accomplishing his same feats without experiencing immobilising terror.

Mere mortals that we are, we then leap to a singular assumption: Honnold is fearless. This narrative became so prevalent that Honnold finally allowed a cognitive neuroscientist named Jane Joseph to look at his brain in 2016. In particular, she focused on the amygdala, the part of the brain that detects and responds to threat. The results were telling, but not necessarily surprising. In a nutshell, it was almost impossible to stimulate Honnold’s amygdala.

No matter what type of disturbing imagery Joseph flashed in front of him, it simply didn’t fire.

That’s the scientific data. Beyond that, it’s all speculation. The fact that Honnold wants to free solo 900m routes tells us that his amygdala could be ‘cooler’ in general. After all, thanks to Free Solo, the entire world has seen him complete the first solo ascent of the Freerider route on El Capitan. Most regular folks would never consider a similar feat even if they had his same climbing abilities. But Honnold has always insisted he’s not fearless; he knows what it means to be scared. Instead, he believes that he largely trained the fear out of himself. Does that mean he trained his amygdala, too? It’s hard to say – there’s no comparative data from before he began free soloing. “I definitely feel fear like others do and I still fear death,” he says.

“I’m just more desensitised to it and better equipped to manage it.”

We all have different coping mechanisms for fear, but most of us handle it with one of two methods: we either avoid the scary situation in the first place or overcome the fear by temporarily ignoring it.

Obviously, Honnold is well beyond the first, and he believes the second wouldn’t be sustainable. “Sure, you can just play loud rock music, eat a cookie, get jacked, and hope that you can finish the climb before you get too afraid, but that’s not a long-term solution,” he says. “What do you do the next time: eat three cookies?”

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High achiever: in preparation for his eventual free solo of Yosemite’s El Capitan, Honnold headed to China in 2016 to practise roof climbing on the Getu Arch

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THE RED BULLETIN

Alex Honnold

“I think I’ve gained an appreciation of all the various flavours of fear”

Instead, he approaches fear from a place of quiet confidence and – once again – pure logic. We all read about the seemingly death-defying free soloing, but what we don’t see are the hundreds of hours of roped training he does on those routes to prepare. By the time he decides to cut the protection and climb ropeless, Honnold has full confidence in his ability to succeed. “I think I’ve just gained a deeper appreciation of all of the various flavours of fear,” he tells me.

In fact, while filming Alex Honnold: The Soloist VR (see inset, previous page) last summer, high up in the frigid French Alps, he got a dose of how it feels on the other side of the fear divide. Honnold is the first to say it: he’s a rock climber, not a mountaineer. “It’s like scenic tourism for me,” he says. “Some people go on cruises to see beautiful parts of the world, and I do alpinism every once in a while to see beautiful mountains.” But there he was, with crampons and mountaineering boots, holding an ice axe. Honnold picked his way across an alpine ridge while trying to keep up with Swiss climber Nicolas Hojac. Plagued by faulty gear, his confidence was low and his nerves were high. Finally, Hojac came back to save him.

“Nico dropped his backpack, ran down the ridge to give me his ice tool and then comfortably pitterpattered his way back across the slab,” Honnold laughs. “Meanwhile, I’m clutching two ice tools and kicking my feet in, just trying to survive.”

Turns out that, for Honnold, the high alpine may be a different flavour of fear.

Future

If there’s a recurring theme in Honnold’s life, it’s constant analysis. Decoding Lego. Evaluating climbing routes. Calculating the safest of the risky choices. It’s logical, then, to believe that his looming future will be based on yet another equation. When you combine his hazardous occupation as the world’s greatest free soloist with his love for his family, what kind of future does that equal?

After hours of conversation, it has become increasingly clear that even Honnold doesn’t know where he will be in a year. But it’s also obvious that he’s fully prepared for things to change. “I don’t need to travel and climb full-time any more,” he says. “At a certain point, I’ve done a lot of the things I want to do. Now I have a wife, and a child soon.

Some other things deserve a little more time.”

As I gather my belongings into my backpack to head out and catch my flight, Honnold calls me and Griffith over to assist him in the living room. We’ve rearranged some furniture throughout the morning and he wants to ensure it’s back in its proper place.

“Can you help me move this couch?” Honnold asks. “It needs to look exactly the way it did this morning so Sanni doesn’t kill me.”

Flavours of fear indeed.

At 10.30pm on February 17, 2022, Sanni McCandless Honnold gave birth to her and Alex’s daughter, who they’ve named June. Follow them on Instagram: @sannimccandless; @alexhonnold THE RED BULLETIN

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Future nostalgia In search of a better tomorrow?

You may be looking in the wrong direction. A new wave of backward-looking, forwardthinking innovators is proving that opening our minds to the past isn’t just healthy for the future, it’s good for the soul.

These are the new nostalgics Words MARK BAILEY Photography PHILIPP MUELLER Prop styling KELLY-ANNE WILLS

Instant success: the iconic Polaroid camera faced extinction in 2008 when production of its unique film almost ended for good. But then analogue obsessive Florian Kaps (see page 48) stepped in to keep the dream alive…

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Future nostalgia

Professor Tim Wildschut is fixated on the past.

Or, more specifically, on the human condition of being fixated on the past: nostalgia. The term, derived from the Greek words nóstos and álgos, meaning ‘homecoming’ and ‘pain’, was coined in the 17th century to describe the melancholy felt by soldiers returning from war, and has become associated with an unhealthy emotional attachment to a rosetinted past. But Wildschut views nostalgia differently – as a powerful, positive and creative phenomenon that imbues us with hope, confidence and optimism.

For almost two decades Wildschut, a professor of social and personality psychology at the University of Southampton, has been researching this long-misunderstood emotion.

“I’m an itinerant – from the Netherlands, then living in the US and the UK – so it clicked with me,” he says. “I also thought it was a beautiful emotion to study.” Setting aside previous schools of thought, Wildschut focused on empirical research involving everyday people. “Nostalgia,” he found, “is easy to trigger, as it’s right under the surface.”

Through questions detailing how much they missed old toys, pets or home – or conditioning such as listening to favourite tunes, inhaling scents such as candy floss or seeing pictures of old confectionery wrappers – a nostalgic mindset was induced in participants. They then underwent a series of tests to analyse how it affected them.

The results revealed that, far from being depressed, those experiencing nostalgia had higher levels of happiness, better social connections and a stronger sense of purpose.

“Most people find it pleasant, positive and meaningful,” says Wildschut (pictured).

He also found that it wasn’t just a characteristic of older generations. “All people are nostalgic, but especially those who are younger. Our interpretation is that it helps deal with life transitions, like leaving home or going from adolescence to employment.”

Rather than being backward-looking, it turns out nostalgia inspires us to plan for what’s ahead. “The future is vague and unpredictable, but the past is showing me a template for what I want to achieve. Nostalgia brings continuity, which is linked to wellbeing.”

It also contains a fail-safe – that ‘bittersweet’ quality of reflecting on happier times, but knowing they’re gone – that jolts us back into the present to forge a happier future. “Nostalgia,” says Wildschut, “really is future-orientated.”

More than that, nostalgia sparks intense interpersonal connections. “It’s part what we call ‘nomothetic’,” explains Wildschut, “which means it’s shared by members of a same cohort, or generation. It helps you to belong.” It’s perhaps no surprise to find that pop star Billie Eilish binge-watches the memefriendly US version of The Office (a comedy show that debuted in 2005 when she was just three years old), sampling it in her songs and opening her live sets with the theme tune – behaviour that pop-culture website Vulture calls an “extremely Gen-Z addiction” and which Eilish refers to as “therapy”. Indeed, some experts suggest that we actively indulge in nostalgic thoughts to soothe our mood.

Take US actress Olivia Munn, who admits to having played 1992 Nintendo game Super Mario Kart in her youth, but today, at 41, says video-gaming brings her a “meditative escape”. In short, feel free to geek out – nostalgia is good for you.

It’s also explains why pop culture is buzzing with retro reinventions. “Nostalgia fosters creativity,” says Wildschut. In one research paper, subjects were asked to write creative stories; topics included princesses, race cars, or a mysterious noise on a winter’s night. When rated by independent judges, the stories written by people induced into nostalgic reflection were marked higher for creativity and originality. As nostalgia invites us to contemplate the past, present and future in tandem, it allows us to think differently and make surprising new connections. “It makes you more open,” says Wildschut. “It’s a springboard from which to explore the world.”

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FASHION

Stranger threads The 1980s fashion blasting from your TV to your wardrobe. But is everything as it seems?

Sci-fi drama and pop-culture phenomenon Stranger Things is about to return to Netflix with its homage to all things 1980s – most notably the fashion. And yet much of the show’s fanbase is too young to even remember these trends. It’s a quandary that Hollywood costume designer Kimberly Adams-Galligan, who worked on season one, tackled from the outset.

“Back in 2015 [when we began filming], high-waisted jeans were not the thing they are now,” she says. “So when we were fitting them, a lot of [the younger actors] would say, ‘This is so weird.’ They were used to the ‘low-rider’ era of the 2000s. Then the whole #momjeans [trend] appeared and now kids go nuts for high-waisted pants.”

Stranger Things’ young stars, including Millie Bobby Brown (18) and Finn Wolfhard (19), have become Gen-Z style icons, but it’s more than celebrity worship. Introduced to the world through their retro-styled roles in the show, they transcended the THE RED BULLETIN

“The ’80s were all about excess and being over the top. We can revisit them to feel that freedom” Fashion writer Fawnia Soo Hoo on the retro appeal of ’80s-set sci-fi drama series Stranger Things

Future nostalgia

contemporary image of their peers. “There was so much going on in fashion in the ’80s,” says Adams-Galligan. “You can become a certain character from the references of that period.”

As Fawnia Soo Hoo, a contributing editor at fashion website Fashionista, explains, “The ’80s aesthetic is fun and super-bright with abstract graphics and bold colours, but this is also about the concept of the ’80s – all excess and being over the top. Gen Z is used to paring down and being more conscious, but we can revisit the ’80s to feel that freedom.

Thrifting and vintage are already popular with this (ecoconscious) generation, too.”

In styling the show, AdamsGalligan shunned box-fresh designer threads over the authenticity of well-worn looks.

“I searched old yearbooks in the [Indiana] area and pulled out real kids to find each character.

That helps them resonate, because they’re not perfect, they’re not fashion plates. Kids really identify with them.”

But these retro clothes still had to meet the tastes of today’s youth culture. “In the ’80s everything was oversized, so it makes sense to tweak those silhouettes to ensure they’re not too jarring,” notes Soo Hoo. “Eleven’s pink dress [from season one] with the Peter Pan collar and ruching looks so current. It has a girly retro aesthetic, but she wears it with high-top Chucks and a utilitarian jacket. Kimberly came up with it, but we would wear that now and in that way.”

The show has also inspired retro-modern collabs, from Nike’s ‘Hawkins High School’ Air Tailwind 79 sneakers to Louis Vuitton designer Nicolas Ghesquière dressing a catwalk model in a Stranger Things tee at Paris Fashion Week in 2017.

“It was the ultimate crossover moment – from Stranger Things to the runway,” says Soo Hoo. Stranger Things Season 4 comes to Netflix on May 27; netflix.com 44

SNEAKERS

Heart and sole Old trainers used to go to the charity store.

Now they have their own stock exchange When Nohman Ahmed and his brothers Imran and Rizwan launched London sneaker store Presentedby in 2017, he was driven by nostalgia. “We were passionate about trainers from

a tender age – I loved Reebok Workouts and Reebok Classics,” he recalls. “We used to put them on the windowsill, not in the porch, so nobody would step on them. We wanted to THE RED BULLETIN

“There’s a story behind every shoe.

They’re a piece of history” Ridwane Ettoubi, director of London shoe store Presentedby, a place of pilgrimage for committed sneaker nostalgics

transfer that passion into a premium experience.”

The store, located just a few steps from the heavy footfall of nearby Tottenham Court Road, sells collectables, reissues and modern classics, It specialises in what Ahmed calls the “refined regeneration” of sneakers – vintage trainers sit on artistic pedestals, juxtaposing retro designs with futuristic décor beneath THE RED BULLETIN

a stock ticker listing the ‘live’ prices of rare trainers. This has attracted a celebrity clientele, including Brazilian footballing superstar Neymar, US DJ/producer Steve Aoki, and UK singer Liam Payne.

“A lot of the appeal is down to knowing something is rare,” explains Ahmed. “You think, ‘No one else has got this style, but I have.’ It’s like collecting a fine-art piece.”

Some of the prices bear out the analogy. A pair of 2005 Air Jordan 4 Undefeateds sells for upwards of £40,000, Eminem x Carhartt Jordan 4s go for up to £35,000, but you can bag limited-edition Air Max 90s for just £200. Much as activewear has gone high fashion, vintage trainers are cultural artefacts.

“There’s a story behind every shoe,” explains Presentedby director Ridwane Ettoubi. “For

example, the Nike Yeezy Red Octobers, which go for up to £10,000, came out at the end of the Nike/Kanye relationship.

They’re a piece of history.”

Sneaker nostalgia may be the new luxury, but that’s never been the motivation for Ahmed.

“People think that to be a sneakerhead you need 1,000 pairs, or the most expensive,” he says, “but you just need passion.” presentedby.com 45

“As a culture, we’re now more aware of nostalgia as escape. It’s fuel for inspiration” Tim McEwan of synthwave duo The Midnight on the band’s ’80s film and video-game influences

Future nostalgia

MUSIC

Synthesising memories If nostalgia had a soundtrack, it would sound like The Midnight

SHERVIN LAINEZ

The Midnight is a band that exists between two worlds: that of Atlanta-based singer/ songwriter Tyler Lyle – a fan of Bruce Springsteen and Paul Simon – and of Danishborn, LA-based producer Tim McEwan, who prefers the synth-laden pop of Toto and Phil Collins. As The Midnight, they’re leading exponents of synthwave – a music genre that evokes the electro-pop sounds of 1980s movies and video games, reinterpreted in a fresh, futuristic way. Even their name describes that transient moment between yesterday and tomorrow.

“It all began in 2011 when I went to see the movie Drive and I dug the soundtrack,” says McEwan, recalling Cliff Martinez’s retro-synth score.

“It connected emotionally.

The following year I met Tyler and we dived into this world together. I gravitated towards chords with a sense of nostalgia, and he wrote these beautiful verses.” Since then, the synthwave sound has gone mainstream through tunes like The Weeknd’s Blinding Lights (2019) and Dua Lipa’s Physical (2020), but, says McEwan, “at that time it was a niche underworld”.

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The Midnight’s motto is mono no aware – a Japanese term meaning ‘the sadness of time passing’. Their albums, released on neon vinyl and cassette tape with fluoro artwork, have nostalgic titles – Endless Summer, Kids, The Rearview Mirror – and tracks feature the clicks of tape decks and dial-up modems to enhance the time-travel experience. “Lyrical and conceptual nostalgia is our theme,” says Lyle. “It’s a window into our creative self.” McEwan agrees: “As a culture, we’re now more aware of nostalgia as escape.

It’s fuel for inspiration.”

Last year, The Midnight drew more than 70 million Spotify streams across 92 countries, and their 2022 European tour is selling out fast. Lyle believes younger fans are yearning for that escape, too, and nostalgia addresses the big existential questions Gen Z is wrestling with: on identity, connection and the future. “We’re looking back at our origins, trying to work out where to go next.”

Which is why they don’t just recreate ’80s sounds but reinterpret them. “The digital reverb of ’80s synth was funky and imperfect,” says Lyle, “so we tip our hat to it, but round out the bass and [alter] the vocals and snare drum to sound the way we like.” They also weave in contemporary beats. “Nostalgia is the prism in which we present our music, but we can change it up,” insists McEwan.

Sources of inspiration are everywhere, including ’80s movies like The Terminator and Risky Business. “Usually after watching these movies, I go straight to the studio,” says McEwan. “Hearing the soundtrack, or seeing the images and the aesthetic, gets me going creatively.”

The Midnight’s 2022 European Tour hits the UK for three dates in May; themidnightofficial.com

SPORT

Kicking back Reimagining vintage football shirts as retro-modern streetwear In the town of Herzogenaurach, Germany, sits a 250sq-m vault, its internal climate a constant 18°C and 55-per-cent humidity. A Fort Knox of sporting history, it contains more than 40,000 products dating back over a century to when a young Bavarian cobbler named Adi Dassler began making shoes. This is the Adidas Archive. “You have to wear special gloves,” says Inigo Turner, the design director for Adidas Football, of the white mittens required to handle anything. Few outsiders get the privilege, but in 2020 Turner welcomed one particular visitor: US hip-hop star Pharrell Williams. “We took him to where the football kits are stored,” he recalls, “To select shirts to redesign.”

Turner had an idea of revamping retro football shirts for a new generation, and by collaborating with Williams he hoped to do just that. “Pharrell is into fashion, people and culture, but he doesn’t have a football background,” Turner explains. “That’s what made his ideas exciting.”

Having chosen iconic shirts like Arsenal’s 1991-93 yellow ‘bruised banana’ jersey and Manchester United’s 1990-92 blue ‘snowflake’ design, Williams gave them a graffiti-style makeover, with the name of his fashion label, Human Race, replacing the logos. “Pharrell is a creative guy, so we took him to our maker lab and he got his hands dirty spray-painting and doing paintbrush work,” says Turner. “When that original snowflake shirt came out, it was really zeitgeisty with the acid house clubbing scene.

We wanted to create iconic shirts for a new generation so they can one day say, ‘I remember that.’”

Williams’ limited-edition shirts became instant classics, fetching big bucks on eBay. “History shapes the future,” he says. “Sometimes, in order to look forwards, first we need to look back.” adidas.co.uk/pharrell-jerseys 47

Future nostalgia

Let’s get physical

The analogue optimist putting us back in touch with our pre-digital world Florian Kaps (pictured) has had a thing for analogue tech ever since he took a photo with an old Polaroid camera he found at a flea market in 2003. “When I pulled the trigger, the sound and the picture took me,” says the owner of Supersense, an ‘all-analogue concept store and manufactory’ in Vienna, which sells everything from instant-print cameras to vintage turntables. Its name references our senses: “Digital is restricted to two dimensions: you can see and hear it, but it’s always behind a screen.

Analogue is tangible: you can smell or touch it.”

The 53-year-old’s passion harks back to recollections of a world before digital, but when Kaps opened the store in 2014 he was surprised by how young his customers were. “Younger generations have fallen in love much harder and deeper with analogue. They’re longing for things they can hold and fall in love with. Digital disappears so

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quickly: your songs end when your iPod is gone. But your record collection, mixtapes, photographs – they stay with you for ever.”

In 2008, Kaps was – ironically – conducting digital research when he learned of the imminent closure of the last remaining Polaroid film factory, so he cofounded a company called The Impossible Project to purchase the unique machinery, lease the factory, and keep the iconic photo medium alive. In 2013, he retired from the project to open Supersense, but Polaroid lives on, more vibrantly than ever.

Today, Kaps focuses on products that cleverly fuse analogue and digital tech. “My favourite things are ‘converters’ – not analogue to digital, but vice versa,” he says.

“With our Instant Lab you can melt a digital iPhone image into a rich chemistry on Polaroid film. And we ‘mastercut’ people’s music files onto vinyl for a sensory touch.”

Now, Kaps is convinced young people will carry the analogue torch into the future. “Postpandemic, we’re discovering the beauty of reality,” he says. “My favourite thing is to connect with visionaries, artists and crazy ones from the next generation to discuss how we can combine analogue and digital in exciting new ways.” the.supersense.com

FOOD

Savour the past How Far Eastern comfort food is warming the heart of London As a child in Taiwan, Erchen Chang (pictured above) would savour the smell of her grandma’s cooking, and the cosy pleasure of eating bao – steamed Chinese buns filled with pork, chicken or veg – beneath the twinkling lanterns of the night markets. After moving to London at 14, these memories remained. So when Chang opened her first bao stall, in east London’s Netil Market in 2012, nostalgia was her inspiration.

“All ideas come from memories,” she says.

“There’s nothing new. We’re all searching from the past, but it’s how we interpret it, and how others do, too. It’s never just about the food, but also the smells, the sounds and the environment.

After graduating [from London’s Slade School of Fine Art], I went back to Taiwan and seeing the night markets inspired me to bring bao to London.”

That first stall proved so popular that Chang now has five Bao restaurants across London, each channelling a nostalgia that transcends cultures, borders, even palates. “Bao is such a nostalgic comfort food, but there is already a nostalgic food culture in the UK,” she says of a British love for everything from curry to Sunday roasts. “We come from two different places, but we meet in the middle.”

The settings, too, evoke familiarity, whether from a personal experience of Asian dining or recollections from films and other popular imagery.

“The seats are close together and we have oldstyle text menus,” says Chang, but each eatery also taps into a particular vibe. Bao Soho is based on Taiwan’s xiaochi (small eats) streetfood scene; Bao Borough draws on late-night commuter grill bars; while Café Bao in King’s Cross is inspired by Japan’s faux-European Kissaten coffee shops. “We based it on these cafés where you feel like you’re in a cartoon version of an Asian-imagined Western world,” says Chang of Café Bao’s menu, which includes fusion dishes such as ‘burger bao’. “You can travel east and come back to the West. And it’s super-fun.” baolondon.com THE RED BULLETIN

ÁKOS BURG

PHOTOGRAPHY

“All ideas come from memories. There’s nothing new. We’re all searching from the past” Erchen Chang, owner of Bao, the restaurant chain bringing nostalgic Asian comfort food to the West

“These games were simpler, not hyperrealistic… it feels fun and less like now” Gaming expert Dr Pippin Barr on the pleasures of vintage games like those being revived by Analogue

Future nostalgia

GAMING

Reverse engineering

DAN WINTERS

STYLING ASSISTANT: LOTTIE HORNER

The retro revolutionaries future-proofing the vintage game experience In July of last year, an unopened copy of 1986 Nintendo action-adventure game The Legend of Zelda sold at auction for $870,000 (£660k) – the highest-ever price paid for a video game.

That in itself would be remarkable, but just two days later that record was smashed when a mintcondition copy of 1996’s Super Mario 64 went for $1.56 million (£1.1m). In a year when Sony and Microsoft had just released cutting-edge new consoles, the world’s most desirable games were cartridges a quarter of a century old.

“People feel nostalgia for simpler times,” explains Dr Pippin Barr, associate director of the Technoculture, Art and Games Research Centre in Montreal, Canada.

“These [older] games literally were simpler and that gives them a beauty and ease. They’re not hyperrealistic, not showing brains splashing on the wall. It’s just Mario jumping on somebody’s head, so it’s fun and feels less like now.

And people aren’t superexcited about now.”

The desire to play old games has spawned a subculture all of its own.

Retro gamers collect ROMs (digital copies of old cartridge games) and play them on software emulators (digital simulations of vintage consoles), but their passion lies in a grey area of copyright law. Meanwhile, an industry of ‘mini’ retro consoles – officially licensed, scaled-down replicas of Sega, Sony and THE RED BULLETIN

Nintendo’s old machines preloaded with classic games – has sprung up.

But for true video-game preservationists they fall short. Instead of reproducing the original hardware, these mini systems also employ software emulation resulting in flaws to the gameplay.

To a true connoisseur, the experience is inaccurate.

That’s where US company Analogue comes in.

Launched in 2011 by former games hobbyist Christopher Taber, Analogue has one mission: to precisely replicate, and therefore preserve, the true gameplay experience of old cartridges.

To do this, they’ve built new consoles with custom chips that emulate the original circuits in hardware. It’s no small feat – in 2019, Taber admitted it took three months to get Sonic the Hedgehog running on the Mega Sg (Analogue’s Sega Mega Drive clone). The core of the Super Nt (the Super Nintendo replica, pictured left) took five thousand hours to design.

But while Analogue is obsessive about preserving gameplay, it also appreciates how modern aesthetics can enhance a remembered experience. Its sleekly reimagined consoles take the original cartridges, but output high-definition video with enhanced sound and the ability to connect wireless controllers.

“It’s a ‘smart product’ approach to this retro thing,” says Barr. “Don’t touch the spirit of the games, but demonstrate it in a more sophisticated way. It’s simultaneously cool and nerdy and makes for a more comfortable gaming experience.” Crucial when booting up your $1.5 million game cartridge. analogue.co

POP CULTURE

Back to the futurist The sci-fi writer plundering the past to envision what’s to come If nostalgics romanticise the past, sci-fi writers are usually considered ‘postalgics’: those who idealise the future. US author Ernest Cline (pictured), however, could be regarded as both thanks to his 2011 novel Ready Player One, which captured readers (including Steven Spielberg, who adapted it into a hit movie in 2018) by looking backwards for its escapist futuristic fix.

Ready Player One is set in a dystopian 2045, when Earth is ravaged by climate change, overpopulation, energy shortages and economic stagnation, and humans plug into an online world to escape (a fairly prescient projection from where we are now). The spin, however, is that this VR realm, called the OASIS, has been created by an eccentric 1980s geek who’s offering a fortune to the winner of a grail-like quest built around tasks referencing that decade’s pop culture, such as Star Wars, Dungeons & Dragons, Pac-Man and Blade Runner. Cline cleverly uses nostalgia to deliver the thrills sci-fi fans crave.

“It’s a hypocrisy of fantasy that it is a genre of ‘escape’ where you can flee into another reality, but we always flee to the familiar,” explains Dr Allen Stroud, chair of the British Science Fiction Association. “We flee to things we love and treasure, that connect and touch us. We flee into our memories.” But Cline also weaves in modern phenomena like online gaming, social media and reality TV. “There has to be that connection of the two,” insists Stroud. “You need things that mean something to people now, like massively multiplayer online games, but he’s also pushing us back into nostalgia.”

In a present where our future looks more uncertain than ever, Cline’s conceit – that the citizens of tomorrow would prefer to live in a recreation of yesterday – may be the starkest science-fiction warning for today. According to William Gibson, author of seminal 1984 cyberpunk novel Neuromancer, we’re suffering from ‘future fatigue’.

“All through the 20th century, we constantly saw the 21st century invoked,” he has warned. “How often do you hear anyone invoke the 22nd century? The Future, capital-F, be it crystalline city on the hill or radioactive post-nuclear wasteland, is gone.” ernestcline.com 51

LIVING ON A PRAYER All-female metal band VOICE OF BACEPROT are accustomed to prejudice – whether in their conservative hometown in West Java for embracing ‘the devil’s music’ or in the Western world for wearing their hijabs. But on stage, only one thing matters to the trio: the power of rock Words ALICE AUSTIN

Photography KEFFER

Voice of Baceprot (left to right: bassist Widi Rahmawati, drummer Euis Siti Aisyah and singer/guitarist Firdda Marsya Kurnia), photographed in Rennes, north-west France, last December

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Voice of Baceprot

S

itti, Widi and Marsya, the young women who make up metal band Voice of Baceprot, come as a pack of three. They link arms when they walk, and they’re so similar in height they could be mistaken for triplets. They also never stop laughing. It’s a contagious laugh, the sound of youth and discovery, and everyone is in on the joke, even though the trio are speaking in their native Sundanese. Voice of Baceprot eat food off each other’s plates, prop each other up when they’re tired, and when they nap – which happens a lot on this tour – each sleeps with an arm, leg or head resting on one of the others’.

It’s as though they’re worried that if they let go of each other, they might float away.

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This makes sense, for no one in the world is quite like them. Voice of Baceprot – Baceprot means ‘noisy’ in Sundanese – are from Singajaya, a small village in West Java, Indonesia. Singajaya has no Wi-Fi, no recording studios, but a family of five living there can exist on £30 a month. Voice of Baceprot (often abbreviated to VOB) formed in 2014 after the three friends stumbled across US metal band System of a Down’s 2001 album Toxicity while poking around on their school guidance counsellor’s PC. Sitti, then 14, spent the best part of a month learning the drum score on their school’s meagre kit. Marsya did the same on guitar, Widi on bass, and after a month they had nailed their first cover. The teacher whose computer they’d hacked, Ahba Erza, was astonished by their passion and talent and dedicated himself to nurturing whatever seed he’d inadvertently planted.

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t’s 12.30pm on a cold, clear December Saturday in Rennes, north-west France, and the band are sitting in a ramen restaurant, spooning chilli sauce into their soup. “They find the food here a bit bland,” says their manager, Nadia Yustina. Tonight’s set at Les Rencontres Trans Musicales is the trio’s first-ever European festival performance, but if they’re nervous it doesn’t show. They’re talking over THE RED BULLETIN

Flying solo: this is what happens when you ask Marsya about her hijab; (opposite) VOB brave the chill for a photo opp outside the venue

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Voice of Baceprot

each other in a mixture of Sundanese and English, trying to explain how they have zero friends. “In my village, if someone sees me, they turn their back like this,” says Marsya (full name Firdda Marsya Kurnia), the 20-year-old lead singer and guitarist. She turns so only the black folds of her hijab are visible, before spinning back with a bright grin. “It’s true!”

“Yes,” adds drummer Sitti (Euis Siti Aisyah), also 20, “but some people who were mean at school message us when they want something.” Bassist Widi (Rahmawati), the band elder at 21, shakes her head disapprovingly. Although they don’t have any friends, VOB have plenty of followers – 163,000 and rising on their collective Instagram, and more than 30k each individually.

Indonesia is the world’s largest Muslim majority nation, and West Java is particularly conservative.

Many in VOB’s community believe music is haram (forbidden by Islamic law), so they didn’t react well when the trio ventured into metal. Marsya was hit on the head by a rock wrapped in a note that read: ‘Stop making the devil’s music’. She was also purposely hit by a motorcyclist, and her mother’s shop window was smashed in. Once, a religious leader pulled the main power supply just before VOB went on stage, and their manager has received threatening phone calls pressuring her to break up the band. Needless to say, VOB aren’t messing around: these young women have sacrificed everything to make their dreams a reality.

The three wolf down their noodles; they worked up an appetite this morning after a slew of interviews.

They’d struggled with questions from one French journalist who’d been hyper-focused on their hijabs.

“Here in France,” she’d said, “we think women who wear veils are oppressed. Are you oppressed?”

“They’re not veils,” Nadia said. “They’re hijabs.”

“OK, hijabs. Are you oppressed?”

Marsya explained how religion brings her joy and strength; that she wears her hijab out of choice and she sees it as a symbol of peace and beauty.

The band aren’t surprised by these questions, but they are fatigued. Nadia explained Europe’s perception of Islam to them before the tour began.

“I had to tell them what the stereotypes are, so they can be prepared for it,” she says.

After lunch, just before the next round of interviews, Sitti asks Nadia what would happen if she ran into the middle of the square saying she had a bomb, but filled her bag with wet, smelly socks for the police to find when they arrested her.

“Don’t do that,” Nadia replies.

Many in their community believe music is forbidden

by Islamic law, so they didn’t react well when the women began playing metal

M

etal is massive in Indonesia. Even the country’s 60-year-old president, Joko Widodo, describes himself as a metalhead. The scene is densely populated and thriving, with festivals such as Hellprint, Hammersonic and Rock In Solo attracting hundreds of thousands of revellers every year. Nadia has managed bands in the maledominated scene for decades and was intrigued

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Positive feedback: (opposite) a job well done for singer/ guitarist Marsya; (top) seen the band, got the T-shirt – a souvenir from VOB’s Fight Dream Believe tour, their firstever European adventure; (above) Marsya wrote her stirring speech on her phone just before going on stage

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Back in black: (top) the three friends can most often be found huddled close in a tight group, laughing together; (above) VOB’s tour outfits were made from a material traditionally worn in their province of West Java – with rock-band embellishments

Voice of Baceprot

Hard rock life: (top) “Hello Rennes!” – Sitti’s view from the drum stool; (above) in the hour leading up to their European festival debut the band members barely spoke at all, solemnly practising their instruments in the dressing room instead

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God gave rock’n’roll to you: Voice of Baceprot pose in front of a packed sell-out crowd at Les Rencontres Trans Musicales.

The band may flash the ‘horns’ hand gesture and play ‘the devil’s music’, but they say their religious faith keeps them grounded

when she got the call from Ahba Erza in 2017, asking for help managing VOB. She drove for 11 hours from Jakarta to meet the band in their village, and spent two hours explaining the pitfalls, hierarchy and politics of the music industry, and what to expect from fame. Then she asked if they had any questions.

Marsya raised her hand. “How do you eat on an aeroplane when the food is flying all around?”

“Yes,” Widi added, gravely, “and how do you pee?”

That’s when Nadia knew she had to be part of their journey.

In 2017, VOB performed across Indonesia, appeared on national television, and were featured in The Guardian. The following year, they released their debut single, School Revolution, an intricate thrash-metal track that showcased their technical 60

prowess and deft songwriting skills. The single sent the band international, with articles appearing in the New York Times and on media outlets including the BBC, US public radio network NPR, and German state-owned broadcaster DW. Then COVID came along and brought everything to a halt.

But Nadia saw this interruption as an ideal time to polish the band’s self-taught skills, so she made the long drive to their village to explain to their families why the three young women should move to the capital, Jakarta. That’s where VOB now share an apartment, although they spend a lot of time at Nadia’s place, splashing about in her pool in between band practice. The trio have spent the past year under the guidance of members of Indonesian rock bands Musikimia and Deadsquad and jazz-bass player Barry Likumahuwa. But getting to this stage THE RED BULLETIN

Voice of Baceprot

The expression on the crowd’s faces is a mix of shock and delight.

How can a trio this small make noise so big? hasn’t been plain sailing. As with their struggles within their village community, VOB had to fight to be accepted into the Indonesian metal scene.

Some local bands didn’t appreciate three young women coming along and stealing the show. They talked smack behind their backs and claimed VOB were paying to perform at festivals. Nadia wasn’t having any of it and gave every one of these grown men a piece of her mind. Now, after five years of graft, VOB have their full support. Their 2021 single God Allow Me (Please) to Make Music received airplay on every major station in Indonesia, and reposts from every metalhead on the scene.

VOB’s tracks address issues such as religious tolerance, climate change, misogyny and war, and Nadia admits she sometimes feels guilty about the responsibility on their shoulders. “It’s up to them to show the world what Islam means in Indonesia,” she says, “and to show the youth of Indonesia they can do whatever they set their minds to.”

It can become overwhelming, and Nadia worries for the mental health of the three young band members: Marsya has suffered panic attacks, and since Sitti lost her mother to a stroke earlier this year her hands sometimes shake uncontrollably.

But their religion keeps them grounded.

“I have someone who listens to me and my story and my sadness,” Sitti says. “If I tell it to a human being, I might get an unexpected response, but when I tell God, it is OK.” “Religion is a friend for me,” Marysa concurs.

“Wherever I feel worried or scared about something, I talk to God. He’ll never blame me like other people and He’ll always listens to whatever I say.”

“When I pray to my God,” Widi adds, “it gives me the strength to believe that I can achieve my dreams.”

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very winter, Les Rencontres Trans Musicales lights up the city of Rennes. The festival acts as a trend forecaster, showcasing what will be the next big thing – Daft Punk, Cyprus Hill, Björk, MIA, Portishead and Nirvana have all played here.

Tonight, VOB are performing in Concert Hall 3, a vast and cavernous venue about the length and width of two football pitches.

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The band and their manager stand backstage in a huddle. Nadia whispers earnestly, then they hug tightly, stamp their feet, and release. As the concert hall fills, their light laughter subsides into nervous silence. The band wear black outfits made of traditional material from their West Javan province.

Sitti sits on an amp, air-drumming with her eyes shut.

Marsya silently recites lyrics, and Widi plucks at an imaginary bass, her face a shade paler than usual.

“You know, we feel like we’re alone when we’re up there,” Sitti says. “So we promise each other that when we’re not on stage, we’ll always stay close.”

The lights go down. It’s time. The band position themselves onstage. When the lights go up, the three women look tiny, facing that vast crowd in this huge space. But then Sitti lifts her sticks above her head and smashes the hi-hat four times, and it’s like they’ve increased in size. The crowd is hit with a tsunami of sound. Marsya head-bangs as she pounds her guitar, Widi slaps her bass with a face-splitting grin, and Sitti beats the drums with such gusto it’s as if she’s grown an extra pair of arms. Most notable, though, is the expression on the crowd’s faces: a mix of shock and delight. How can a trio this small make noise so big?

“Bon soir, France!” Marsya says as their opening track comes to a crashing end. “We’re Voice of Baceprot. Thank you for having us!” The response is deafening. The band launch into School Revolution.

The photographers in the pit head-bang between snaps. Behind them, middle-aged metalheads throw rock hand-signs high above their heads.

Marsya steps up to the mic as the final notes ring out. Her nerves have disappeared, replaced with the charisma of a seasoned frontwoman. “Before this show, we had some interviews and everyone asked about our hijabs,” she says, standing with her legs apart, staring defiantly at the audience. “And you know what? It makes me feel like we came here for a fashion show. So now I’ll tell you: we came here to make our dreams come true and to show you that our hijab is a sign of peace, love and beauty!”

The crowd bellow their approval.

“And you know what we do if someone asks about our hijabs?” she continues. “This is what we do…”

Sitti pummels her drum kit, rolling, crashing and hammering to high heaven. The metalheads roar with admiration.

“And you know what we do if someone uses hateful words towards us? This is what we do…”

Widi stabs at the bass with deft, experienced fingers, hitting frequencies so deep the monitors visibly shake.

“And you know what we do when someone asks if the hijab is our choice? This is what we do!”

The band fly into Rage Against The Machine’s Killing in the Name. And as Marsya screams into the mic, Sitti batters the drums and Widi wallops the bass, it’s undeniable that something special is happening here. It feels like Voice of Baceprot have the power to change the world. voiceofbaceprot.com 61

School of body rock Upper West Side, 1982

Watched by fellow members of the Little Rockers Crew, Christopher Sawyer breaks on a piece of cardboard in Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Sawyer went on to study dance at New York’s Ailey School and founded Children’s Dance Project NYC, a programme that helps kids explore their passion for the performing arts.

BREAKING GROUND

For more than four decades, photographer MARTHA COOPER has documented the breaking scene, from its birth on the backstreets of the Bronx to its cultural influence across the globe Words PETER FLAX

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Martha Cooper

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misunderstanding altered the arc of Martha Cooper’s life and the future of hip-hop culture. It was a Monday in January 1980, and Cooper – a staff photographer for the New York Post – was sent to upper Manhattan to cover a riot. But it wasn’t a riot. OK, the young men had weapons, but police officers told Cooper they’d seen them dancing. “The cops said that the kids had been spinning on their heads,” Cooper recalls. “So, after the boys were released, I asked them to show me what they were doing.”

The Post never ran her story; the discovery of a new art form was deemed less newsworthy than a riot.

But these shots, believed to be the first photographic documentation of breaking, inspired Cooper – who was already chronicling New York’s emerging graffiti scene – to quit her union job and take a deep dive into this new dance movement. The resulting story in The Village Voice introduced breaking to a huge audience.

Thus began a long, fruitful career in which Cooper captured the rise and evolution of breaking, as well as graffiti and related hip-hop culture. She shot stills for the 1983 film Wild Style and other early, influential hip-hop movies, and published numerous books on the music, dance and art of the scene.

Cooper’s impactful finds continued long after her discovery of breaking. Two decades later, she and fellow photographer Nika Kramer travelled Europe and the US to document the quiet rise of B-girls.

This multi-year adventure led to the publication of the 2005 book We B*Girlz, which fostered more equity in breaking and helped bring women out of the shadows and into major battles.

The portfolio of breaking on these pages, curated by Cooper herself, is her testimony to the history of this ever-evolving culture, and illustrates her role in bringing its exuberant and unwavering authenticity to the world.

Wild at heart

Riverside Park, 1983 The cast of hip hop’s first feature film, Wild Style – including Doze Green, Wayne ‘Frosty Freeze’ Frost, Ken Swift, Fred ‘Fab 5 Freddy’ Brathwaite and Patti Astor – take part in a photoshoot for publicity stills. Today, the mural in Manhattan’s Riverside Park is gone, although traces are still visible at the top of the wall.

Sure shot: a portrait of Martha Cooper, photographed by Nika Kramer, who also documents dance and graffiti

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THE RED BULLETIN

Martha Cooper

Up for the down stroke

Lincoln Center, 1981

Following the Village Voice story, Lincoln Center Out of Doors – a culture programme in Manhattan’s Lincoln Square neighbourhood – asked photographer Henry Chalfant to organise a breaking exhibition. What emerged was a legit battle between the Rock Steady Crew and the Dynamic Rockers. Here, Frosty Freeze from Rock Steady demonstrates his signature ‘deadman drop’ move. Cooper recalls that “no one was judging and both sides claimed victory”.

Out for a spin

Upper West Side, 1981 Doze Green spins on cardboard before the other members of Rock Steady. The crew often practised at the Happy Warrior Playground on New York’s Upper West Side, just a few blocks from Cooper’s apartment.

The spot would later become unofficially known as ‘Rock Steady Park’.

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Face of fury

Riverside Park, 1982 Influential Rock Steady member Ken Swift performs at a jam at Riverside Park. He’s demonstrating the ‘Mad Mugsy’, a signature facial gesture inspired by martial arts icon Bruce Lee’s intimidating grin and intended to unnerve rival breakers during a battle.

Martha Cooper

Treading the ’board

Upper West Side, 1982

A Manhattan breaking crew practise their moves on cardboard in a vacant lot. Cardboard provided breakers with a cheap, easily obtainable and effective form of protection from rough pavements – crucial when performing spins and drops.

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69

Bridge wars Queens, 1982

With a large crowd in attendance, two breakers dance on a street in the NYC borough of Queens. By 1982, Cooper was documenting the growth of hip-hop culture – which includes breaking, graffiti, DJing and MCing – all over Manhattan, the Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens.

Martha Cooper

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Martha Cooper

Taking the floor East Village, 1982

B-boy Ken Swift and Rock Steady battle with rival crew the Floor Masters at East Village club Negril.

Breaking out of the underground

Washington Heights, 1980

This image – shot on January 21, 1980, in a subway station in Manhattan’s Washington Heights neighbourhood – is the first known documentation of breaking. Cooper, who worked for the New York Post at the time, had been sent to the scene to cover a riot – it transpired that the boys pictured had been fighting after a dance battle.

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VENTURE

JAMES CARNEGIE

JAMES CARNEGIE

Enhance, equip, and experience your best life

GOING WITH THE FLOW A 72hr wild run on the volcanic island of Madeira

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VENTURE Travel

“This jagged black isle is actually the tip of a gigantic volcano, rising 6km from the ocean bed”

G

iven that it’s barely 6am, the sun hasn’t yet risen, and we’re the only two souls on this volcanic black beach on the northern coast of Madeira, it’s impressive that my travel companion, British ultrarunner James Poole, has brought freshly ground coffee, a gas stove and his entire V60 coffee dripper.

Sitting on a smoothed lump of lava, sipping (very nice) coffee and looking out across the Atlantic towards the next nearest landfall – Newfoundland, almost 4,000km away – I’m left pondering, “Why on Earth did people end up living here?”

Having travelled the world as an adventure photo-journalist for 20 years now, I’ve often marvelled at how humans find ways to adapt to their surroundings.

Take Madeira – this jagged black isle off 76

the north-west coast of Africa is actually the tip of a huge volcano rising 6km from the ocean bed. A rugged, mountainous interior descends to thick, semi-tropical hillsides and plunging coastal cliffs, with what seems like zero flat land. But it’s perfect for an adventure.

Though Portuguese territory, Madeira has a unique air of inaccessibility. Its inhabitants display a particular pace of life somewhere between southern European and Caribbean; an “I could rush around, but no one can tell me what to do because I’m on a rather remote island” attitude. James and I would adopt it if it weren’t for our 72-hour window and the sheer breadth of options on offer.

For those who don’t want to bask in the sun like the Madeiran wall lizards, there’s

surfing, whale watching, deep-sea fishing, diving, kayaking, mountain biking, jeep safaris, horse safaris, canyoning, and more. James and I share a passion for exploration on foot, more specifically ‘fast packing’ – a combination of trail running and ultralight backpacking; hiking the ups, jogging the flats and running the downs.

While James is a highly accomplished endurance athlete and I’m fond of a long-distance run or two, we’re not here to set a record for running across the Island (done that elsewhere and it’s painful).

Our goal is to explore, get lost, hopefully find ourselves again, and have a good time doing so.

THE RED BULLETIN

JAMES CARNEGIE

James Carnegie, adventure photo-journalist

VENTURE Travel

Far left: Madeira has many rocky cliffs but few beaches. Like this one at Seixal, all have black sand, which is warmer underfoot than the lighter kind due to its heatretaining properties.

Left: James Poole contemplates a cloud inversion from the summit of Pico Ruivo.

Below left: Poole negotiates weathered stone steps at Porto do Seixal harbour on the island’s glorious north coast

Beginning at the island’s north-western point, Porto Moniz, complete with its natural pools carved from super-spiky rock (flip-flop territory this ain’t), we work our way eastwards along the coast, with frequent detours to take in local delicacies such as bolo do caco (Portuguese bread, suitable at any and all times of day), picado (small cubes of meat fried and seasoned with garlic and pepper, served with French fries) and the local beer, Coral.

Reaching Ponta Delgada, nestled beneath another stunning mountainside, we find a reef break with consistent surf.

It’s October, one of the best times of year on the island for waves, but instead we head inland in search of the vertical. With mountain roads that ignore construction standards, the journey takes time – frequent miradors (scenic viewpoints) THE RED BULLETIN

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VENTURE Travel Travelling light Fast-packing essentials

Most crucial is your backpack.

The Ultimate Direction Fastpack 40 is large enough to hold 72 hours’ worth of kit, and comfy enough to keep pace; ultimatedirection.com

Madeira’s easternmost point, Ponta de São Lourenço, offers up wild landscapes

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to the poignant closing scene of Jurassic Park. I don’t want to leave this incredible place, this pinnacle of a huge underwater mountain that offers so much to those who delve beyond the exterior. I’m drawn back to my initial question of why people ended up living here. I get it now.

Dorset-based photo-journalist James Carnegie has been chasing athletes and adventurers around the world since 2000.

Instagram: @jamescarnegiephotography.

James Poole has completed some of the world’s most gruelling races, including the 171km Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc, 246km Spartathlon, and the 400km Ultra Gobi; @jamesdpoole

Getting there You can fly to Madeira’s capital, Funchal, from several UK cities. Approximate journey time: four hours

The Jetboil Flash Cooking System camping stove boils water in just 100 seconds. Pick up gas canisters from an outdoors store after landing; jetboil.johnsonoutdoors.com

Accommodation Funchal offers everything from fully-catered options to bijou homestays. For a wilder option, consider Madeira Surf Camp in Porto da Cruz on the rugged north coast; madeirasurfcamp.com Exploring Madeira Trail Tours (madeiratrailtours.com) has options for every difficulty level. For a less strenuous but equally adventurous alternative, Safari Madeira offers guided 4WD safaris; safarimadeira.com

On your feet, you’ll need something fast and light with a solid grip to handle multitude terrains, like the Inov-8 Roclite G 315 GTX; inov-8.com THE RED BULLETIN

JAMES CARNEGIE

force you to stop and gape at the aweinspiring peaks and valleys, and swirling cloud formations. We run alongside the tranquil levadas (unique man-made irrigation channels) and come across the Parque Florestal das Queimadas – jungle-like gardens with hobbit houses, manicured trails and trees to die for.

Nothing says you’re incredibly brave or remarkably stupid quite like ascending a mountain in thick mist as everyone else is descending. Our hope lies in the promise of the cloud clearing enough for us to share a bottle of local red at the island’s highest point, Pico Ruivo. Reaching 1,861m, it’s supposed to offer stunning views across both sides of the island, but huddled under a summit cairn, wearing everything we brought with us, I can taste the cold mist on my tongue as it swirls around. “We deserve better,” I tell myself as James optimistically gathers firewood from the bare scrubland around us.

As sunset approaches, however, the mist evaporates to reveal a mellow sky of indigos and magentas. Not only that, but one of the finest cloud inversions I’ve ever seen develops below us. With a small fire crackling and the smell of James’ sausage BBQ drifting in the cool summit air, I feel we’ve been rewarded.

Gazing out the window as our plane climbs away from the island, it feels akin

To stay safe en route to that magical sunrise or sunset spot, invest in a reliable head torch like the 200-lumen, rechargeable Petzl Bindi; petzl.com

VENTURE Equipment

Power pack No one likes a masochist, so why behave like one when you’re in the saddle?

Invest in an electric mountain bike and take the punishment out your trail ride…

Photography MADS PERCH

ORBEA Rise Hydro E-bike, orbea.com

SCOTT Stego Plus Helmet, scott-sports. com; RED BULL SPECT DAFT-005 Sunglasses, specteyewear.com; 7MESH Callaghan Merino Hoody, 7mesh. com; POC Reform Enduro Jersey and Column VPD backpack, pocsports.com; ENDURA SingleTrack Shorts II, MT500 D30 Gloves and MT500 Burner Clipless Shoes, endurasport.com; GARMIN Instinct Solar Watch, garmin.com; BLUEGRASS Solid Knee Pads, met-helmets. com; STANCE Duration Crew Socks, stance.eu. com; ORBEA Rise Hydro E-bike, orbea.com

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Opposite: SCOTT SPORTS Stego Plus Helmet, scott-sports.com; POC Devour Sunglasses, pocsports.com; 7MESH Copilot Jacket, 7mesh.com; MONS ROYALE Momentum Shorts, eu.monsroyale.com; THE RED BULLETIN

GIRO La DND Gloves, giro.co.uk; STANCE Duration Crew Socks, stance.eu.com; RIDE CONCEPTS Hellion Shoes, rideconcepts.com; CANNONDALE Moterra Neo 4 E-bike, cannondale.com

This page: TSG Corp Anorak, ridetsg.com; SIX SIX ONE Raji Gloves, sixsixone.com; POC Kortal Helmet, pocsports.com; FASTHOUSE Crossline 2.0 Shorts, fasthouse.com;

BLUEGRASS Solid Knee Pads, met-helmets.com; STANCE Boyd Mid Crew Socks, stance.eu.com; CANYON Spectral:ON CFR E-bike, canyon.com

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Opposite: OAKLEY Sutro Lite Sweep Sunglasses, oakley. com; ENDURA GV500 S/S Jersey, endurasport.com This page: MONS ROYALE Icon Relaxed Tie Dyed Tee and Atlas Crew Digital Denim Tie Dyed socks, eu. monsroyale.com; MILO Action Communicator, okmilo.com; FIVE TEN BOTB Shorts, adidas. co.uk; SIX SIX ONE Raji Gloves, sixsixone. com; POC Devour Sunglasses, pocsports. com; MET Terranova MIPS Helmet, methelmets.com; FIVE TEN Freerider Pro Primeblue Shoes, adidas.co.uk

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This page: MONDRAKER Crafty Carbon RR E-bike, mondraker.com Opposite: CANYON Spectral:ON CFR E-bike, canyon.com

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Clockwise from top left: FASTHOUSE Bell Sixer MIPS Helmet, fasthouse.com; OAKLEY Sutro Lite Sweep Sunglasses, oakley.com; POC Rouse Shirt, pocsports.com

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SCOTT SPORTS Stego Plus Helmet, scott-sports.com; POC Devour Sunglasses, pocsports.com; 7MESH Copilot Jacket, 7mesh.com; OSPREY Raven 14 Hydration Backpack, ospreyeurope.com

OAKLEY Sutro Lite Sweep Sunglasses, oakley.com; 7MESH Copilot Jacket, 7mesh.com; SIX SIX ONE Raji MTB Gloves, sixsixone.com

MET Roam MIPS Helmet, met-helmets.com; SMITH Leadout Sunglasses, smithoptics.com; POC Mantle Thermal Hoodie, pocsports.com; 7MESH Gryphon L/S Jersey, 7mesh.com THE RED BULLETIN

RED BULL SPECT Dakota-004 Sunglasses, specteyewear.com; OSPREY Raptor 10 Hydration Backpack, ospreyeurope.com; MONS ROYALE Tarn Merino Shift Tee, eu.monsroyale.com; BLUEGRASS Skinny Elbow Pads and Solid Knee Pads, methelmets.com; TSG Slim Gloves and Chatter Solid Color Helmet, ridetsg.com; RAPHA Trail Shorts, rapha.cc; STANCE Duration Crew Socks, stance.eu. com; RIDE CONCEPTS Tallac Shoes, rideconcepts.com; YETI CYCLES 160E T1 E-bike, yeticycles.com

Models: LOTTIE HAYES @ Select; JEFERSON ALVARENGA @ PRM Make-up: VICTORIA POLAND

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VENTURE How To

W

hen he was 19 years old, Hazen Audel took all his money, bought a ticket to Ecuador, and travelled from his home in the US city of Spokane, Washington, to the Amazon jungle. Setting up camp by a river, he was soon taken under the wing of the local indigenous Quechua people and spent eight months absorbing their innate knowledge of nature, which allows them to thrive, rather than just survive, in the wild.

From that experience, Audel was inspired to explore the world’s most extreme environments, initially as a field biologist, then as an expedition leader and survival instructor. He demonstrates these wilderness skills in his National Geographic show Primal Survivor, which launched in 2016 and is now in its sixth season. “We’re out there for months,” says the 48-year-old adventurer. “We become intimate with the environment and, by the end, know it pretty darn well.”

In the latest season of Primal Survivor, Audel makes an 800km journey through the Amazon, facing floods, impenetrable bamboo forests, faeces-squirting spiders and snake-filled mangroves that tax even his 29 years of experience. Here’s what he learned along the way…

TESS BENJAMIN/NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

MATT RAY

Lose the shoes

“Indigenous Amazonians experience a lot of mud in the rainy season,” says Audel.

“Trying to hack it with shoes or outdoor sandals doesn’t work – you’re not agile, they’re wet all day, and you get trench foot, which is horrible.” His solution? Drop the footwear altogether. “Barefoot, you go through a period of sore feet, but after a while you get more fat on [your soles].”

Synergy is survival

Being at one with the wild requires an understanding of the delicate symbiosis of THE RED BULLETIN

SURVIVE

Nature programming

Survival in the wild isn’t about taming nature, it’s about playing by its rules, as adventurer Hazen Audel has learned from living with indigenous tribes

the natural world; something Audel learned by observing Amazonian tribespeople gathering resources like the poison for their arrow tips.

“They have to get this one plant with an insect on it, because the plant makes a toxin when the insect is eating it,” he explains. “But it only works at a certain time of year, in conjunction with this other aquatic plant. That intricacy of knowledge blows me away.”

“We evolved to hunt. A human can run down any animal, even a horse”

Run wild

“Humans are meant to be active, not just exercising every now and again while living largely sedentary lives.

We sit in chairs, but in [some of] the places I visit there’s no such thing. Humans evolved to hunt – we can run down any animal, even a horse. It’s because we have two legs, no fur, and can sweat to dissipate heat. In Mexico, I was with the Tarahumara [indigenous people], who are known to run 200 miles [320km] in one go.”

Don’t be dim

“The more you know, the less you need – you can even make knives out of rocks,” says Audel. But there’s one modern

item he considers essential.

“A flashlight. You can navigate, source animals at night; it’s what you need to be rescued. In a total survival situation, it’s a flashlight.”

Show respect

“Wild places are in peril,” says Audel. “The people there live in challenging environments, but they coexist with nature and are an example to the rest of the world. We need to have a better relationship with nature – we need to choose to protect it.”

Primal Survivor: Escape the Amazon airs every Thursday at 9pm, from April 14, on National Geographic; nationalgeographic.co.uk 91

VENTURE Equipment EXPLORE

Pack on track Whether you’re heading out on a gentle walk or a multi-day hike, these backpacks offer comfort and durability to help lighten the load

RED’s Waterproof Backpack is made from 100-per-cent recycled plastic bottles and packed with features including a laptop organiser and a hidden zipped pocket

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TIM KENT

Clockwise from top: RED Waterproof Backpack, redequipment.co.uk; STUBBLE & CO The Roll Top, stubbleandco.com; FINISTERRE Drift Waterproof Roll Top Backpack, finisterre.com

THE RED BULLETIN

VENTURE Equipment

From top, left to right: FJÄLLRÄVEN High Coast Foldsack 24, fjallraven.com; OSPREY Arcane Roll Top, ospreyeurope. com; JACK WOLFSKIN Allspark Messenger Bag with LED lighting, jack-wolfskin.co.uk; ALTURA

THE RED BULLETIN

Heritage 12L, altura.co.uk; ORTLIEB Metrosphere Daypack, ortlieb.com; BEAR MADE Gouthwaite Backpack, bearmade. co.uk; CHROME INDUSTRIES Barrage Session, chromeindustries.com

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VENTURE Gaming Choose your weapon

First things first: all control pads are not equal. “It must be comfortable, with paddles on the back – I use those to edit [construct buildings] in Fortnite,” says Ashman.

“Joystick tension is also important – not too stiff or loose. I’ve tried pretty much every controller under the sun – the PS4’s, the Astro C40 – but the Xbox Elite 1 is one my favourites. There’s an Elite 2 now, but I still use the older version – it feels better.”

Get a grip

Control pads may be tailored for human hands, but to use one at an elite level requires finger gymnastics. “To press the jump button you need to take your thumb off the right stick, causing you to lose control of it,” says Ashman.

To compensate, he employs a technique called ‘the claw’: “Press the buttons with your index finger and never take your thumb off the stick. It’s awkward, but my hands have moulded to that shape.”

“I almost stopped playing Fortnite – it was too easy” Jaden ‘Wolfiez’ Ashman

PLAY

Be a control freak

Instant gratification

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boring,” he recalls. “Then I realised that might actually be a good thing.” It caused such a disruption to his homework that his mum admits having thrown away his Xbox at one point. But on returning home from his World Cup success

Pack mentality: Fortnite made Wolfiez a gaming millionaire

at New York’s Arthur Ashe Stadium, watched live by more than 2.3 million viewers, Ashman was able to buy her the house they live in today.

However, what truly sets Ashman apart from his rivals isn’t his earnings – the highestever of any UK esports player – but his mastery with a regular control pad, which is a common gameplay device for regular Fortnite players, but a rarity among the PC playing elite. “I wouldn’t say I get beef from mouse-and-keyboard players,” says Ashman, “but there’s definitely a rivalry.

There always has been.”

Ashman plays like any other 18-year-old, except he wins big. Here’s how…

Stretch goals

Practice makes perfect, but so does taking a break and staying healthy. “I’ve had hand issues from overuse, which slumped my performance for a while,” Ashman admits. “I was like, ‘What’s happening?

Is it over?’” He sought out a physio, who gave him finger warm-ups to do. “Now I have a five-minute routine to stretch out my hands before playing.”

Follow Jaden Ashman on Twitch and Instagram under his gamertag: @wolfiez THE RED BULLETIN

TOM WIGGINS

Jaden Ashman is like a lot of 18-year-olds. The Londoner regularly plays online battleroyale game Fortnite, and, under his gamertag Wolfiez, live-streams on Twitch… to 795,000 followers. You see, Ashman also isn’t like other 18-year-olds. In 2019, aged 15, he played in the inaugural Fortnite World Cup and came second in the Duos event with teammate Dave ‘Rojo’ Jong, winning $2.25 million (£1.8m at the time) between them. It made Ashman the youngest esports millionaire in history.

Ashman began playing Fortnite soon after the game’s release in July 2017. “I almost stopped, because it was too easy and I found it kind of

MARK ROE/RED BULL CONTENT POOL

Record-breaking Fortnite pro Jaden Ashman on beating the keyboardand-mouse warriors with your trusty games controller

All the reflexes in the world won’t matter if the game can’t keep up with you. “Wireless controllers have an input delay [of milliseconds], so I use wired. I also turn off the rumble feature. When you’re getting shot at, you don’t want the controller shaking in your hand – you’ve already got enough to worry about.”

VENTURE Calendar

12

April onwards THE CUBE LIVE Looking forward to a decent outdoor summer without restrictions?

Why not celebrate by entering the claustrophobic Perspex box made famous by Phillip Schofield’s nerveshredding TV game show? This live experience recreates the show’s format – and unbearable tension – by putting contestants (either solo or in pairs) through seven challenges of intense skill and concentration, with video appearances from Schofield himself. Thankfully, you can shake off the anxiety afterwards at the venue’s bars and burger restaurant, or by teeing off a few rounds at the futuristic Putters crazy golf. Urban Playground, Manchester; urbanplayground.co.uk

24 April PLANE SWAP

MICHAEL CLARK/RED BULL CONTENT POOL, JIM KRANTZ

Two planes, their engines cut off at 4,000m, plunge towards the ground at 225kph. In mid-air, each pilot emerges from their cockpit and skydives to the other plane, pulling it out of its nosedive. All in under a minute. This isn’t a Mission: Impossible movie, it’s a real-life, never-before-attempted aerobatic feat the world will be able to watch unfolding live. The two pilots – Luke Aikins and Andy Farrington – are accomplished skydivers, as well as cousins, but this takes family drama to the next level. Catch the action at 8pm by downloading the Red Bull TV app to your TV, phone or streaming device. redbull.com

12

April onwards THE DISASTER ARTISTS The Aircraft Rescue and Fire Fighting (ARFF) unit at LAX is one of world’s most elite emergency response teams, at one of the busiest international airports. It’s a story we shared in our April issue (check it out at redbulletin. com) and now you can discover more through our accompanying documentary, The Disaster Artists: Inside LAX’s Fire Brigade.

THE RED BULLETIN

To watch the film, download the Red Bull TV app, or scan the QR code with your phone 95

VENTURE Calendar

6

to 8 May UCI MOUNTAIN BIKE WORLD CUP, ALBSTADT

8 May WINGS FOR LIFE WORLD RUN There are many things that make this global running competition unique. For a start, it kicks off at the same time across the world (12pm GMT) with runners gaining a half-hour head start on a ‘catcher car’ that eliminates participants from the race as it passes them. The winner is the last person who the car catches – but, really, everyone who takes part is a champion. All entry fees and money raised go towards the not-for-profit Wings for Life foundation, which is working to find a cure for spinal cord injury. Whether you’re a marathon runner, a weekend walker or a wheelchair roller, everyone can do their part. To find a race location near you, or to take part in an App Run with a virtual catcher car, head to wingsforlifeworldrun.com 96

20

to 23 May THE CAUSE SEASIDE BEANO When north London nightclub The Cause opened in 2018, it became one of the capital’s most inclusive party spaces, so its closure last NYE was met with dismay. While the organisers look for a new venue, they’re hosting this three-day festival, recreating the 1980s holiday-camp vibe with regular partners including Adonis and Keep Hush. Pontins, Camber Sands, East Sussex; supportthecause.co.uk THE RED BULLETIN

BARTOSZ WOLINSKI/RED BULL CONTENT POOL, MARCIN KIN/RED BULL CONTENT POOL, ROB JONES

In south-west Germany’s Swabian Alps lies the town of Albstadt.

Most of the year it’s described as ‘sleepy’, but not when the UCI MTB World Cup rolls into town. It was here on this steep forest track last year that British rider Evie Richards stumbled to a shocking 25th place at the beginning of a season that eventually saw her become 2021 cross-country world champ; and Tom Pidcock, in his first elite-level XCO race, climbed from 76th position to finish fifth.

Watch it live this season for more guaranteed twists. redbull.com

GLOBAL TEAM

THE RED BULLETIN WORLDWIDE

The Red Bulletin is published in six countries. This is the cover of our Swiss edition for May, which features Olympic 100m sprinter Ajla Del Ponte.

For more stories beyond the ordinary, go to: redbulletin.com

The Red Bulletin UK. ABC certified distribution 141,561 (Jan-Dec 2021)

THE RED BULLETIN

Head of The Red Bulletin Alexander Müller-Macheck, Sara Car-Varming (deputy) Editors-in-Chief Andreas Rottenschlager, Andreas Wollinger (deputy) Creative Directors Erik Turek, Kasimir Reimann (deputy) Art Directors Marion Bernert-Thomann, Miles English, Tara Thompson Designers Martina de ­Carvalho-Hutter, Kevin Faustmann-Goll, Cornelia Gleichweit Photo Editors Eva Kerschbaum (manager), Marion Batty (deputy), Susie Forman, Tahira Mirza, Rudi Übelhör Digital Editors Christian Eberle-Abasolo (manager), Marie-Maxime Dricot, Melissa Gordon, Lisa Hechenberger, Elena Rodriguez Angelina Head of Audio Florian Obkircher Managing Editors Ulrich Corazza, Marion Lukas-Wildmann Publishing Management Ivona Glibusic, Bernhard Schmied, Melissa Stutz Managing Director Stefan Ebner Head of Media Sales & Partnerships Lukas Scharmbacher Head of Co-Publishing Susanne Degn-Pfleger Project Management Co-Publishing, B2B Marketing & Communication Katrin Sigl (manager), Katrin Dollenz, Thomas Hammerschmied, Sophia Wahl, Teresa Kronreif (B2B), Eva Pech, Valentina Pierer, Stefan Portenkirchner (communication), Jennifer Silberschneider Creative Services Verena Schörkhuber-Zöhrer (manager), Sara Wonka, Julia Bianca Zmek, Edith Zöchling-Marchart, Tanja Zimmermann Commercial Management Co-Publishing Alexandra Ita Editorial Co-Publishing Raffael Fritz (manager), Gundi Bittermann, Michael Hufnagl, Irene Olorode, Mariella Reithoffer, Wolfgang Wieser Executive Creative Director Markus Kietreiber Senior Manager Creative Elisabeth Kopanz Art Direction Commercial & Co-Publishing Peter Knehtl (manager), Erwin Edtmayer, Simone Fischer, Martina Maier, Andreea Parvu, Carina Schaittenberger, Alexandra Schendl, Julia Schinzel, Florian Solly, Dominik Uhl, Sophie Weidinger, Stephan Zenz Head of Direct to Consumer Business Peter Schiffer Direct to Consumer Business Marija Althajm, Victoria Schwärzler, Yoldaş Yarar Retail & Special Projects Manager Klaus Pleninger Advertising Manuela Brandstätter, Monika Spitaler Production Veronika Felder (manager), Martin Brandhofer, Walter O. Sádaba, Sabine Wessig Repro Clemens Ragotzky (manager), Claudia Heis, Nenad Isailović, Sandra Maiko Krutz, Josef Mühlbacher Finance Mariia Gerutska (manager), Simone Kratochwill MIT Christoph Kocsisek, Michael Thaler IT Service Desk Maximilian Auerbach Operations Alice Gafitanu, Melanie Grasserbauer, Alexander Peham, Thomas Platzer Assistant to General Management Sandra Artacker Project Management Dominik Debriacher, Gabriela-Teresa Humer Editor and CEO Andreas Kornhofer Editorial office Am Grünen Prater 3, A-1020 Vienna Phone +43 1 90221-0 Web redbulletin.com Published by Red Bull Media House GmbH, Oberst-Lepperdinger-Straße 11–15, A-5071 Wals bei Salzburg, FN 297115i, Landesgericht Salzburg, ATU63611700 Executive Directors Dkfm. Dietrich Mateschitz, Dietmar Otti, Christopher Reindl, Marcus Weber

THE RED BULLETIN United Kingdom, ISSN 2308-5894 Acting Editor Tom Guise Associate Editor Lou Boyd Chief Sub-Editor Davydd Chong Publishing Manager Ollie Stretton Editor (on leave) Ruth McLeod Advertising Sales Mark Bishop, mark.bishop@redbull.com Printed by Quad/Graphics Europe Sp. z o.o., Pułtuska 120, 07-200 Wyszków, Poland UK Office Seven Dials Warehouse, 42-56 Earlham Street, London WC2H 9LA Tel: +44 (0) 20 3117 2000 Subscribe getredbulletin.com Enquiries or orders to: subs@uk. redbulletin.com. Back issues available to purchase at: getredbulletin.com.

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THE RED BULLETIN Austria, ISSN 1995-8838 Editor Nina Kaltenböck Proofreaders Hans Fleißner (manager), Petra Hannert, Monika Hasleder, Billy Kirnbauer-Walek Publishing Management Bernhard Schmied Media Sales & Partnerships Thomas Hutterer (manager), Michael Baidinger, Franz Fellner, Ines Gruber, ­Wolfgang Kröll, Gabriele Matijevic-Beisteiner, Alfred Vrej Minassian, Nicole Okasek-Lang, Britta Pucher, Jennifer Sabejew, Johannes Wahrmann-Schär, Ellen WittmannSochor, Ute Wolker, Christian Wörndle, Sabine Zölß

THE RED BULLETIN Germany, ISSN 2079-4258 Editor Maximilian Reich Proofreaders Hans Fleißner (manager), Petra Hannert, Monika Hasleder, Billy Kirnbauer-Walek Country Project Management Nina Hahn Media Sales & Partnerships Thomas Hutterer (manager), Michael Baidinger, Franz Fellner, Ines Gruber, ­Wolfgang Kröll, Gabriele Matijevic-Beisteiner, Alfred Vrej Minassian, Nicole Okasek-Lang, Britta Pucher, Jennifer Sabejew, Johannes Wahrmann-Schär, Ellen WittmannSochor, Ute Wolker, Christian Wörndle, Sabine Zölß

THE RED BULLETIN Switzerland, ISSN 2308-5886 Editor Stefania Telesca Proofreaders Hans Fleißner (manager), Petra Hannert, Monika Hasleder, Billy Kirnbauer-Walek Country Project Management Meike Koch Media Sales & Brand Partnerships Christian Bürgi (team lead), christian.buergi@redbull.com Marcel Bannwart, marcel.bannwart@redbull.com Jessica Pünchera, jessica.puenchera@redbull.com Goldbach Publishing Marco Nicoli, marco.nicoli@goldbach.com

THE RED BULLETIN USA, ISSN 2308-586X Editor-in-Chief Peter Flax Deputy Editor Nora O’Donnell Copy Chief David Caplan Publishing Management Branden Peters Advertising Sales Todd Peters, todd.peters@redbull.com Dave Szych, dave.szych@redbull.com Tanya Foster, tanya.foster@redbull.com

THE RED BULLETIN France, ISSN 2225-4722 Editor Pierre-Henri Camy Country Coordinator Christine Vitel Country Project M ­ anagement Alexis Bulteau Contributors, Translators and Proofreaders Étienne Bonamy, Frédéric & Susanne Fortas, Suzanne ­Kříženecký, Claire ­Schieffer, Jean-Pascal Vachon, Gwendolyn de Vries

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Semi-Rad Adventure philosophy from BRENDAN LEONARD

“I pride myself on (almost) never having had an epic climbing fail, because of careful/ maybe-obsessive planning beforehand. I may lose sleep while repeatedly going over everything in my head, but I don’t forget things (except those few times when I do forget something). I have climbed 10 times more routes with almost no chalk in my chalk bag than I have with ample chalk. Once, a friend and I dropped our packs at the base of a crag before realising that I’d forgotten to pack the climbing rope.

Another time, a friend invited me to make the first ascent of a route he’d just finished bolting, and I ended up doing it in two different climbing shoes. But I have never, ever, during any outdoor activity, run out of snacks.” semi-rad.com

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