The Red Bulletin July 2018 - UK

UK EDITION SUMMER 2018, £3.50

BEYOND THE ORDINARY

JANELLE MONAE ON HER MUSICAL MENTORS “I DITCHED THE GYM” ACTION MAN ASH DYKES FIRE, FEASTS & FJORDS 24 HOURS IN ICELAND PLUS: THE ULTIMATE BIKE GEAR FOR SUMMER

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Climbing world champion SHAUNA COXSEY has her sights set on a new summit

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HANGING TOUGH

EDITOR’S LETTER

The stars of this month’s issue of The Red Bulletin don’t wait to be shown the way, they forge their own path – and work out the logistics as they go.

Take Shauna Coxsey (page 28), the world champion boulderer who appears on our cover. In order to compete at Tokyo 2020, where climbing will feature in the Olympics for the very first time, she also has to learn two completely different climbing disciplines – lead and speed – without any blueprint for success.

“Watching Shauna climb was mesmerising,” says UK journalist Matt Blake. “She’s as tactical as a chess player, plotting three or four moves ahead. I’ll never watch a Spider-Man movie the same way again.” Page 28

Then there’s self-taught adventurer Ash Dykes (page 42), who, without so much as a gym membership, has achieved two stunningly tough world firsts and is planning a third.

And Swedish singer-songwriter Fever Ray (page 68) has changed attitudes with her decision to surround herself with an almost-exclusively female team on tour – an experiment that’s paid off for everyone involved.

CONTRIBUTORS THIS ISSUE

DAVID GOLDMAN

The UK snapper has travelled the world capturing compelling images for all sorts of publications and brands. When not looking through a lens, Goldman can be found out on the water off the south coast of England, or chasing trails on a bike – making him the perfect person to shoot adventurer Ash Dykes, who he met in his hometown in Wales. “It was great hearing his stories,” Goldman says. “His enthusiasm is infectious.” Page 42

LAURA SNAPES

As deputy music editor of The Guardian, Snapes has seen her share of music tours. “Backstage is often unexciting,” says the Londonbased writer. “But on Fever Ray’s tour, it felt alive: it was clear that these women love spending time together. Their excited engagement with Karin Dreijer’s message was revitalising, but it also made me sad – this kind of fulfilling experience for female performers shouldn’t be so rare.” Page 68

Enjoy the issue.

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THE RED BULLETIN

RICK GUEST (COVER), KATIE BEVERIDGE

BREAKING THE MOULD

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CONTENTS Summer

FEATURES

28

Shauna Coxsey

36

Julie Adenuga

The UK’s top competition climber on her dream of winning gold at Tokyo 2020 – and why she must relearn her craft to realise it The Beats 1 DJ who stayed true to herself and reaped the rewards

40 Jeremy Burge

Inside the sunshine-yellow, smiley-faced world of ‘Mr Emoji’

42 Ash Dykes

Concrete to jungle: the Welsh action man prepares for adventure

52

Brian Eno

58

Robert Yau

60

Maddie Hinch

68

Fever Ray

The ambient music legend who’s still pushing the aural envelope How to solve a Rubik’s Cube – without throwing it at the wall Tough talk from the England hockey goalie they call ‘Mad Dog’ Superheroes and sexual freedom: on tour with the pop icon

42

WELL FITTED

DAVID GOLDMAN, RICHIE HOPSON, RICK GUEST

60

There’s no place like home for hardcore Welsh adventurer Ash Dykes – especially when training for his next trek

GIVING ’EM STICK

Being voted the world’s number-one hockey goalkeeper? It’s all in the game for England star Maddie Hinch

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BULLEVARD Life and Style Beyond the Ordinary

9 Taking flight: one man, 86

balloons and a garden chair

12 The future-food lab putting

the worm into mealtimes

14 Crowd pleaser: front row at

the Red Bull Music Festival

16 Speed skater Kjeld Nuis: as fast 18 20 22 24 26

as a cheetah (on ice anyway) Mikme: top-notch audio recording on the fly Pop outlier Janelle Monaé’s purple-tinged playlist Volkswagen goes steep Survival tips for rock climbers A mountain lair fit for 007

GUIDE

Get it. Do it. See it 77 Do Iceland the right way 80 The hottest bikes and cycling 90 92 94 96 98

gear, off-road and on Partying in Peckham: our essential guide Highlights on Red Bull TV Dates for your calendar The Red Bulletin worldwide Statue skating in Santiago

28

BOULDER THAN THE REST

Climbing ace Shauna Coxsey fought off injury to keep her Olympic hopes alive – but now comes her toughest challenge

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07

NAME: JAMIE SPARKS. AGE:26.

OCCUPATION: MAGAZINE EDITOR. LOCATION: BRECON BEACONS, WALES. 51.884258, -3.436449

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BULLEVARD LIFE

&

STYLE

BEYOND

THE

ORDINARY

THE ADVENTURISTS/ RICHARD BRANDON-COX

TOM GUISE

British adventurer Tom Morgan takes flight – a bit like in that Pixar film, but without the talking dog

UP, UP AND AWAY How many balloons does it take to lift a human into the stratosphere? One man put this to the test above the African savanna

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T

here’s this thing called the Gordon Bennett Cup,” says British adventurer Tom Morgan. “It’s a gasballoon race – originally hydrogen-filled – that began in 1906 and still takes place today, even though initially it was an absolute disaster: people got lost, and at least five balloonists died. I thought to myself, ‘It’s a great concept, but too expensive.’ I concluded that the world needs a poor man’s balloon race.”

Calling the 38-year-old an adventurer is, in truth, a bit of a disservice: he’s a purveyor of adventure. His Bristol-based collective, The Adventurists, concoct wild escapades that revive the spirit of the unknown – something we have lost in our satellite-mapped age. From racing antique motorbikes on a frozen lake in Siberia to sailing mango-tree rafts across the Indian Ocean, they are – as their website proclaims – “Fighting to make the world less boring”. This can lead to extreme forms of stimulation.

“I found an article from [science magazine] Popular Mechanics in the 1920s about one-man, hydrogen-filled balloon hopping, which is how they repaired airships preHindenburg,” says Morgan of the final puzzle piece needed 10

for his madcap balloon race.

“They’d jump up, do repairs, then come down.”

Morgan may be a lunatic, but he’s not completely irresponsible: his excursions are always tested first, usually by himself and a buddy – Buddy Munro, to give him his name. For ‘Adventure 11’ (it followed 10 others), the pair took a supply of weather balloons, helium canisters and two garden chairs to one of the world’s largest salt flats, the Makgadikgadi Pans in Botswana. “It’s a big open space with fewer things to hit – or animals to eat us,” says Morgan. “And it’s a long way from the sea, so you can drift in any direction and you’re not going to drown.”

But while he had correctly predicted the wind, Morgan had overlooked its pre-lift-off meddling. “It took six to eight hours to inflate the balloons, and then a gust would destroy the cluster by slamming them into the ground,” he recalls.

“By the end of the week, in 40°C-plus heat, we ran out of food and water, and began to get low on balloons and gas. With a tiny morning weather window, we stuck gaffer tape over holes and used every balloon for the one flight left.” With the race no longer possible, Morgan took off alone, strapped to a chair attached to 86 balloons.

“It was amazing: completely silent, unlike anything else, including a hot-air balloon,” he says. “You feel you could

keep going and going, because you can. I had a massive smile on my face.” Right up until he passed a thermal barrier known as the inversion layer.

“The air warmed and I started accelerating upwards quite fast, so I popped a couple of balloons. Then you can’t change your mind. I used jerry cans as ballast: if you want lift, you let water out. If you want fine control, take a piss.

That changed my rate of descent by 0.1m per second.”

Morgan stayed airborne for three hours, reaching an altitude of almost 2,500m and travelling more than 25km.

Armed with a radio – “so I could communicate with any incoming aircraft” – and a tracking device for the ground crew to find him, he touched down safely. “It was like I knew what I was doing,” he surmises.

Once Morgan has ironed out a few logistics, he plans to roll out the race to anyone brave enough to sign up, perhaps as soon as next year.

With no way to control the aircraft, the rules would be simple: “The person who gets furthest from the starting point is the winner.” theadventurists.com

THE ADVENTURISTS/ RICHARD BRANDON-COX

“I STARTED ACCELERATING UPWARDS QUITE FAST, SO I POPPED A COUPLE OF BALLOONS. THEN YOU CAN’T CHANGE YOUR MIND”

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BULLEVARD

Morgan’s balloons kept him aloft for three hours. Thankfully, Cleopatra’s Needle wasn’t on his flight path THE RED BULLETIN

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BULLEVARD

Space10 lab

BUG BURGER

THIS BURGER IS FULL OF BUGS

More than 1,000 insect species are already eaten by 80 per cent of the world’s nations, so adding plentiful bug protein to our diet is a logical solution

No, it’s not rotten. It’s a fast-food recipe for humankind’s survival as the population of our planet explodes

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DOGLESS HOTDOG Spirulina – the healthy algae in the bun – has been called “the most ideal food for mankind” by the UN. It also tastes great when topped with a herb and cucumber salad, grown using hydroponics

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KASPER KRISTOFFERSEN/SPACE10

protein and less fat than other meats, and have 20 times the food-conversion efficiency.

There’s more to the burger than bugs, though: 80 per cent of the patty is parsnip, potato and beetroot, and the garnish is blackcurrant ketchup and hydroponic greens.

If creepy crawlies are out, there’s the Dogless Hotdog – free from not just dog, but all meat. It contains baby carrots and beet, has more protein than a real hotdog, and has in a bun made with spirulina – a micro-algae with “more betacarotene than carrots, more chlorophyll than wheatgrass, 50 times the iron of spinach”. space10.io

TOM GUISE

E

ver wondered what’s in your fast food? The maker of this burger is proud to tell you what it’s made of – and it’s worse than you might expect. Among the ingredients are mealworms (the larvae of the darkling beetle), which resemble Bombay mix, albeit a variety that wriggles. The dish has been created by IKEA research lab Space10, which develops sustainable solutions to our overcrowded tomorrow.

Being almost as well-known for its Swedish meatballs as for its affordable furniture, IKEA’s focus on future-proof food makes sense. According to the UN, in the next 35 years food demand will increase by 70 per cent. Lab-grown meat is one solution, but a simpler bet is insects. Already consumed by 80 per cent of the world’s nations, they contain more

Single track paradise of the Alps Highlight: Alps Epic Trail Davos davos.ch/bike klosters.ch/bike

Festivals

JONATHAN FERREIRA/RED BULL CONTENT POOL ANDREAS ROTTENSCHLAGER

FEEL THE BEAT Every year, the Red Bull Music Festival touches down in cities across the world, presenting expertly curated line-ups that tap into the musical culture of each guest country and introduce international newcomers.

Pictured: the audience at grime star Skepta’s show at this year’s festival in Johannesburg, South Africa. For more info, go to redbull.com/music

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THE RED BULLETIN

BULLEVARD Striking it lucky: the crowd at Joburg’s Fox Junction – a former warehouse dating back to the gold-rush years

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15

Kjeld Nuis

THE WORLD’S FASTEST HUMAN n Berlin in 2009, Usain Bolt became the world’s fastest human, reaching 44.72kph and breaking the 100m sprint record. On March 28 this year, Kjeld Nuis more than doubled that speed. Sure, he was on ice, behind a car pulling a drag-resistant shield, but that had its own risks. For a start, the track was formed from the frozen sea near the Swedish coastal city of Luleå.

“Natural ice is worse than an infield track, which is flat and neat like a mirror,” says the 28-year-old Olympian.

“Here, there are cracks and bumps. If my blade gets stuck at 90kph, it rips my foot off.”

To avoid this, the track was hurriedly repaired between runs. “There were people tipping snow into the cracks,” he says. “They had a Zamboni [ice resurfacer], too, to make the ice as flat as possible.”

Special skates were crafted.

“They were a half-inch longer than my race blades, with a radius of 30m [the larger the radius, the flatter the blade].

After a test run, we flattened them to 36m – that’s why the acceleration was so great.

They also took the edges off so I wouldn’t hit the cracks.”

Incredibly, Nuis didn’t strap on the skates until three days before the attempt: “I was at the Olympics when they did the trials. They had to ask me on FaceTime for thoughts on the blades.” This also meant

16

“IF MY BLADE GETS STUCK AT 90KPH, IT RIPS MY FOOT OFF”

JARNO SCHURGERS/RED BULL CONTENT POOL

I

he didn’t have long to practise behind the SEAT Ateca driven

by Swedish touring-car pro Mikaela Ahlin-Kottulinsky.

“As the SEAT accelerated, the wheels spun. Being a drift queen, Mikaela has experience at that, but it was hard for me to accelerate with the car. They extended the track because the car couldn’t gain speed as I would have liked. The shield had been weighted with bricks to stop it flying around.”

As it was, Nuis exceeded his expectations. “When I saw the track, I was like, ‘If we hit 50kph, I’m happy.’ It was easy up to 30kph. To 50, it was hard because I had to do it on my own. But from 70 the wind sucked me into the screen and my legs just took me. I could feel the cracks under my feet.”

But before he could push beyond 93kph, Nuis had to brake. “The track was ending, so I stepped out from the windshield to slow down. It’s like sticking your head out of the window on the highway.”

Nuis is not only the fastest speed skater ever, but the quickest animal on two legs, beating the ostrich at 70kph.

And he’s aiming even higher: “With a longer track, the dream is to hit 100kph.” Which doesn’t quite top the cheetah’s personal best of 104kph...

As for Nuis’ greatest-ever moment, could this even beat his two golds at PyeongChang?

“As a boy, I dreamt of being an Olympic champion, but in four years there will be a new champion. Nobody will do this. That’s a special feeling.”

Watch Nuis’ Quest For Speed at redbull.tv

TOM GUISE

Clocking 93kph, the Dutch speed skater is also the fastest animal on two legs

The ice track in Sweden wasn’t perfectly flat, and cracks were a hazard for Nuis

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BULLEVARD

The double Olympic goldwinner – 1,000m and 1,500m speed skating at PyeongChang – in Luleå THE RED BULLETIN

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BULLEVARD

Mikme

What the action cam did for outdoor video, the inventor of this microphone wants to do for live music

Mikme – 2cm smaller than this in real life – records studio-grade audio, syncing it to video captured live on a smartphone

F

ive years ago, Philipp Sonnleitner had a problem. The Austrian musician wanted to capture moments of inspiration as they came to him, but, he recalls, “It always took too long to set up a device capable of recording sound good enough to add to a song. I used an iPhone, but the audio sucks.” His solution: “A device capable of onebutton recording in superhigh quality.” Easy.

In fact, it was anything but.

“Mobile audio recorders use a small capsule [the part that captures the sound]. They’re cheap and of limited quality.

I decided to use a large goldplated capsule, as found on $1,000 studio mics. But they need phantom power – superstable voltage only available from a big, stationary mixer.

Putting that in a wireless case with a battery and internal memory was hard.”

It took him three years to crack it, whereupon he was faced with a new challenge.

“Musicians kept asking, ‘Could you find a way to record video on a smartphone with audio from the mic?’” The answer was to also develop an app that shoots video and syncs it perfectly to the studio-grade audio, wirelessly, in real time.

Sonnleitner believes that his device, Mikme, could revolutionise everything from podcasts to documentaries and concert recordings. “It’s like GoPro, where once you needed expensive gear to make videos, but now, for a few hundred bucks, anyone can do it.” The next challenge, reveals the 39-year-old, is streaming. “To share live audiovisuals with branding overlays to multiple channels at the push of a button – that’s the future product.” mikme.com TOM GUISE

IT’S LIKE A GOPRO FOR SOUND

Founder Philipp Sonnleitner is a former engineer for acoustics company AKG

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THE RED BULLETIN

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*Cool and laid-back – or “lässig” as the Austrians say.

BULLEVARD

Janelle Monáe

“LET’S GO CRAZY IS ABOUT RESISTANCE” The US queen of art pop on four songs that have fuelled her creativity

F

rom her 2010 debut The ArchAndroid – a concept album inspired by Fritz Lang’s 1927 sci-fi epic Metropolis – and her acting roles in award-winning 2016 films Moonlight and Hidden Figures, to her empowering #MeToo speech at last year’s Grammys, Janelle Monáe is the quintessential star of today.

Monáe’s new album, Dirty Computer – a blend of futuristic funk and politics – is another prime example of her progressive pop aesthetic.

Here, she names four of her musical influences. jmonae.com

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STEVIE WONDER LOVE’S IN NEED OF LOVE TODAY (1976)

LAURYN HILL THE MISEDUCATION OF LAURYN HILL (1998)

PRINCE LET’S GO CRAZY (1984)

“Bowie has been a huge inspiration to me with regard to creating concept albums, new worlds and alter egos.

When I heard this song for the first time, it took my musical tastes to another level – I wanted my own writing to be just as interesting and clever.

I once performed a cover of Moonage Daydream with one of my favourite bands, Of Montreal. The song remains a source of inspiration to me.”

“I first met Stevie when he invited me to play at his charity event in LA in 2011. I was backstage when I heard a voice singing my song Tightrope – it was Stevie Wonder. My mind was blown: he’s been a hero all my life. I sing this song with my family, and it never gets old. When you see the news or social media, there are things constantly trying to divide us; this song brings you closer to loving your neighbour.”

“I sang this song a capella at a talent show and won three weeks in a row. As a young African-American woman, I found the lyrics resonated with me, because I was still trying to find out who I was, what I wanted to say, and how I was going to make music.

Everything she says in the song helped shape my early thoughts. She hasn’t made an album in a long time, but that’s cool – I’ll be here waiting.”

“I performed this for a Prince tribute [at the BET Awards in 2010] at his request. He told me, ‘This is an uptempo [song] I think that you can really do; it’s part of your spirit.’ His affirmation brought tears to my eyes. Let’s Go Crazy is a resistance song. It’s a song for those marginalised because of their skin colour, sexual identity or gender. There will never be a wrong time to dance to it like nobody’s watching.”

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JUCO

DAVID BOWIE MOONAGE DAYDREAM (1972)

FLORIAN OBKIRCHER

Janelle Monáe, 32, worked with Prince on her new album just before his death in 2016

L A I C E P S G N I H T H E R E ’ S N OT L L ’ U O Y T S U ABOUT THE D KICK UP HERE. n u f e r o m e v a h l ’l u But yo in the process.

ZERMATT.CH

BULLEVARD

Volkswagen ID R Pikes Peak

ALTITUDE SLICKNESS

VOLKSWAGEN

MATT YOUSON

This car has been built for one job: avenging a three-decade-old defeat at one of the world’s greatest motorsport challenges

The Volkswagen ID R Pikes Peak is big – 5.2m x 2.35m – but surprisingly light at 1,100kg, including driver

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THE RED BULLETIN

FINISH 31.2km; 4,300m

A

t 4,302m tall, Pikes Peak is the highest summit in the Southern Front Range of Colorado’s Rocky Mountains. It’s named after US explorer Zebulon Pike, who, in 1806, made a failed attempt to scale it. Where he capitulated, others continue to dare, most gloriously at the annual Pikes Peak International Hill Climb.

This is motorsport at its purest: no practice, no limits, just one shot at getting to the top as quickly as possible.

The event is billed as the ‘Race to the Clouds’, but on the wrong day (of which there are many) it’s a race through them, with bands of rain and

fog swathing the track. Many strive, not all succeed.

One such failure was Volkswagen’s in 1987, when the German car-maker entered a bizarre Golf Mk2 with two engines – one powering the front wheels, the other the rear – which pumped out a combined 652hp and was capable of 0-100kph in 3.4 seconds. The Golf BiMotor seemed a cert to win, until its suspension gave out with just 400m to go. Humiliated, VW fled, never to return. Until now.

After three decades of brewing, Volkswagen has responded with the ID R Pikes Peak, again sporting twin motors, only this time allelectric and capable of 680hp (500kW) and 0-100kph in 2.25 seconds, leaving an F1 car for dust. In profile, the new VW

resembles a Le Mans prototype, but it’s not built for a 335kph zip down the Mulsanne Straight. The supersize wings give away its true calling: the demands of clawing downforce, corner after corner, from rapidly thinning air.

Doubling down on success, Volkswagen has enlisted driver Romain Dumas – a double LeMans winner, and victor at three of the last four Hill Climbs. The Frenchman has high hopes of shattering the current electric-car record of 8m 57.118s when the flag drops on June 24, and may even get near Sébastien Loeb’s all-time record of 8m 13.878s.

An electric vehicle may not be capable of taking this ultimate prize just yet, but we won’t be waiting another 30 years. ppihc.org

29km; 4,078m

25.7km; 3,895m

22.5km; 3,627m

20.9km; 3,487m

17.7km; 3,218m

THE ROUTE

START 11.2km from tollgate; 2,860m in altitude

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The Hill Climb is raced on a public toll road, with a start line 11.2km from the tollgate. Along the 19.99km route, the altitude rises 1,440m, with 156 turns and a gradient averaging 7.2 per cent. Once a mix of gravel and asphalt, today the road is fully sealed.

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BULLEVARD

How to…

SURVIVE ON THE SIDE OF A MOUNTAIN

day and night. You’re tied to the wall with little space to move on each side, so if six rocks fall you’re waiting to be either killed or missed. After seven days of that, we were mentally shot – there’s an adrenalin spike at first, but then it slumps, making you complacent. You get used to the rockfall; to being only attached with one rope when it should be three, because the others were chopped by rocks.”

British adventurer Aldo Kane had lofty ambitions to scale a South American peak that no human had set foot on before. The gods, it seems, had other plans…

Just hang on

“One evening, a huge electrical storm whipped around the corner of the tepui. It was so strong! I was on the rope and couldn’t look up it because of all the rain. Rocks whistled past my head in the dark, smashing into the trees at the bottom. The lightning was blinding and there was no immediate way out. I was stuck hanging on the rope for hours, going hypothermic.”

Never shut up

Former Royal Marines sniper Aldo Kane provides support to film and TV crews in extreme environments

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veinticuatro, which means 24, because that’s the number of hours you’re in agony.”

Know what you’re in for

“At the rainforest base of the tepui, you look for dark orange bits of rock to climb because they’re dry and overhanging.

It’s hard climbing: the first 100m is covered in jungle and you’re absolutely soaked. John Arran wasn’t able to put in any protection [from falling] for the first 50m, so if he’d come off… Expeditions like this come with the knowledge that there’s no safety net.”

Don’t lose focus

“There are big, life-threatening rocks raining down hourly,

If you fail, accept it

‘‘After seven days, we were three-quarters there, out of food, low on water, but still going. We hit a new band of brittle rock that snapped when touched. Ivan took a 40m fall – all of his protection ripped out, arms and legs everywhere, and he pulled John into the wall on the rope. We’d drilled in a bolt and that was the only thing that saved the climb.

That’s when we decided to bail.

It’s a fine line between setting a goal and achieving it, and achieving a goal at all costs.”

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MATT RAY

T

he tepuis – tabletop mountains in South America’s Guiana Highlands whose name means ‘house of the gods’ – were the inspiration for Arthur Conan Doyle’s 1912 novel The Lost World. In 2015, adventurer Aldo Kane joined TV presenter Steve Backshall and tepui-climbing veterans John Arran and Ivan Calderon on an quest to become the first humans to set foot atop Amurí Tepui, 2,200m above sea level.

But when you gatecrash a deity’s home, expect to incur wrath in the form of lightning, a hail of killer rocks, and scorpion-infested caves. “I was bitten twice by bullet ants,” says Kane. “Locals call them

ALDO KANE

Planning to climb Amuri Tepuí, like Kane?

Watch out for rockfall.

And bullet ants. And imminent death

“Imagine we’re on a rock face and I assume you’re OK, but I haven’t asked you. If I had, you might have said, ‘Actually, I’ve had the shits all morning and been stung by bullet ants. I’m not feeling right, but I’ll still crack on and belay you.’ Then you lose consciousness during the hardest part of my climb.

Miscommunication costs lives, so always over-communicate: ‘Have you drunk water? Tied on? Double-clipped?’”

This Spring, we’re out there with you.

Our new collection has landed.

# U N I T E DBYAT T I T U D E Stores nationwide | snowandrock.com

BULLEVARD

007 Elements

A VIEW TO A CHILL

“Damn that estate agent,” said Bond. “There’s no way the Tube is only a 10-minute walk away”

James Bond always has to visit his enemies in their spectacular hidden lairs.

Now, finally, they can come to his…

Sölden, AUSTRIA f you think the summit of Gaislachkogl Mountain in the Austrian Ötztal Alps looks like something out of a James Bond movie, that’s because it is: the ice Q restaurant, 3,048m above sea level, doubled for the Hoffler Klinik in 2015’s Spectre. But anyone stepping out of the ski lift today will be shaken and stirred to find a full-blown Bond fortress.

007 Elements is a 1,300m² complex bored into the side of the mountain and entered through a tunnel recreating the film’s iconic gun-barrel opening sequence. Inside are nine chambers the creators describe as taking visitors on a ‘multi-sensory experience’, including M’s briefing room, Q’s tech lab – with wireframe models of the Jaguar I-PACE concept car from Spectre – and an action hall with vehicles and sets from the film’s snowplane chase down the Ötztal Glacier Road. Gaze out of the large windows and the actual highway, along with the Sölden ski resort, is visible

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Innsbruck

James Bond (Daniel Craig) takes in the Austrian mountain air in Spectre

in the valley below. There’s also, naturally, a room called ‘The Lair’ and a legacy gallery with historic props such as the ski-pole guns from The Spy Who Loved Me. It’s all the brainchild of Austrian architect Johann Obermoser – who created ice Q and the cable-car station – Berlin production designer Tino Schaedler and Bond film art director Neal Callow, who thinks of the experience as far more than just a museum. “A museum is static; here, you’re

It’s a 70-minute drive from Innsbruck airport to Sölden ski resort in the Ötztal Valley. Once there, two cable cars will take you to the top of Gaislachkogl Mountain – an elevation of 1,677m

part of the film,” says Callow.

“It’s a cinematic installation.”

While the building is cavernous on the inside, the exterior is discreet: sealed beneath rock and ice, only the entrance, two windows and an open-air plaza are visible.

And the temperature of the building’s exterior is stabilised at 1ºC, so as not to affect the surrounding permafrost, making it the perfect hideaway for Bond, should he decide to bunk off work. soelden.com/007-elements THE RED BULLETIN

007 ELEMENTS/KRISTOPHER GRUNERT, COLUMBIA PICTURES/EVERETT COLLECTION/PICTUREDESK.COM CHRISTIAN EBERLE-ABASOLO

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THE ONLY WAY IS UP

SHAUNA COXSEY’s bouldering skills have made her the UK’s most successful competition climber. But when climbing makes its Olympic debut at Tokyo 2020, it’ll comprise three disciplines, two of which she has no high-level experience in.

The world champion will have to become a student again Words MATT BLAKE Photography RICK GUEST 28

Gripping stuff: Coxsey has her eye on Olympic gold

hauna Coxsey has no respect for gravity. The most successful competitive climber in British history has spent her entire life flouting the Earth’s planetary pull. Right now, she’s dangling breezily from an overhanging wedge of artificial rock at Plymouth’s new £500,000 bouldering cavern, The Climbing Hangar, in what looks more like a CIA stress position than a muscle-tuning exercise. Yet Coxsey is as relaxed as a bat at bedtime.

She hoiks her right foot onto a fluorescent pink handhold above her head, sways her body right, then left to gain momentum – setting her long, blonde ponytail swinging like a pendulum – and launches herself into the air with a dynamic move that appears to be another breach of natural law. Then, using just three fingers on her right hand, she catches herself on a hold the size of a hot cross bun. Climbers call this a ‘dyno’, but to mere mortals she might as well be flying.

The 25-year-old from Runcorn, Cheshire, is the best female climber there is right now. Or, more accurately, the best female boulderer. Bouldering is a climbing discipline that involves the gymnastic negotiation of short routes, or ‘problems’, close to the ground (usually below 4.5m) and without a rope. This demanding sport requires climbers to think quickly in competition to plot a route to the top of a wall, against the clock – and Coxsey excels at it. In June last year, she won the Women’s Bouldering title at the International Federation of Sport Climbing (IFSC) World Cup for the second year in a row. She’s also the reigning La Sportiva Legends Only champion (the climbing equivalent of football’s Champions League) and only the third woman ever to scale a V14-difficulty rock face. Oh, and she has an MBE for services to the sport.

But, surprisingly for someone at the forefront of a professional sport, Coxsey is about to become a student again for what will be, without doubt, the 30

THE RED BULLETIN

The world champion takes on The Climbing Hangar

“IT‘S ONLY 20 PER CENT ABOUT STRENGTH”

Coxsey has been climbing since the age of four

“IT’S ALMOST LIKE PLAYING CHESS AGAINST THE WALL”

toughest test of her career so far. In two years’ time, climbing will make its debut at the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo. But for Coxsey there’s a catch: athletes must compete in three separate climbing disciplines – lead, speed and bouldering – and Coxsey has almost no top-level experience in two of them. “It’s like asking Usain Bolt to run a marathon, then do an egg-andspoon race,” she laughs. “They’re not just different disciplines, they’re completely different sports.”

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nlike bouldering, lead climbing requires competitors to tether themselves to a 30m wall for safety as they climb as high as they can. Competitive lead-climbing events were first established in the mid-’80s in Italy and were staged on real rock, but in their modern form they take place on towering, eye-catching structures.

Then there’s speed climbing, which is not only the oldest of the disciplines – its competitive origins date back to 1940s Russia – but also the most explosive, set to become the fastest Olympic sport as climbers scurry up 15m-high walls in under eight seconds.

The triathlon format has proved controversial; purists have branded it a gimmick that ridicules the art of each specialist discipline. But, after a lot of thought, Coxsey has decided to take on the challenge.

“In a lot of ways it makes sense,” she says. “It will showcase our sport. And I never imagined in my wildest dreams that climbing would be an Olympic sport. It’s such a young sport. This is like someone going, ‘Oh, you can go to Mars if you want.’ It feels that unlikely.” And, though it will mean jumping off into the unknown, Coxsey is approaching the task with characteristic gusto. “I can’t think of one person who stands out in all three disciplines. It’s going to be very difficult to train: there’s no history, no knowledge, nobody to turn to, no research done on training for all three. But I’m a person who, if I’m motivated to do something, will give 110 per cent.”

Coxsey has always been this way when it comes to her sport. “Asking me what I love about climbing is like asking someone why they like walking or breathing,” she shrugs. Her obsession began at the age of four. “She was sat on my knee, watching TV,” recalls her dad Mike, an IT consultant. “And a film about [French freeclimber] Catherine Destivelle came

“INJURIES ARE A BLESSING IN DISGUISE” on. Shauna looked up at me and said, ‘Daddy, can I do that?’ I said, ‘I don’t see why not.’” And so it began.

“It became a thing we did on a Sunday,” recalls Mike.

“She’d come over and we’d spend all day climbing.

She wanted to learn. She never tired of it. Not once.”

They would spend the next decade driving across the UK, to and from competitions. As bouldering became more widely recognised as a distinct climbing discipline thanks to YouTube videos and specialist blogs, Coxsey was part of an explosion in popularity of this accessible, equipment-light sport. By the time she was 19, it was clear she had a rare ability to overcome its mental and physical tests, and she decided to spend her gap year seeing if she could make it as a pro. Six years on, Coxsey still hasn’t made it to university. As well as advancing her own skills, she has furthered her sport by founding the Women’s Climbing Symposium, an annual event aimed at inspiring more women to take up the sport that now attracts hundreds of female climbers each year.

So, what makes Coxsey better than all those other dedicated climbers? “A lot of people think climbing is about upper body strength, but you don’t need to do a pull-up to climb a wall,” she says, effortlessly performing a pull-up. “Bouldering is only 20 per cent about strength. To win, you have to be in control of your mind even more than your body. It’s about working out routes before you climb, like a puzzle.”

This, it seems, is what sets Coxsey apart. “What makes Shauna the best isn’t her strength,” says her training partner Leah Crane. “It’s an understanding of the climb before she does it. It’s route reading, finger strength, coordination. And it’s the ability to bring them out first go – not third go, not fifth go – that’s leaving everyone else behind.”

When Coxsey looks at a boulder, she doesn’t see a boulder but a Rubik’s Cube – unfurled and made

What is competition bouldering?

Bouldering is one of the toughest and most exhilarating competition climbing disciplines thanks to its short routes (‘problems’) and physically demanding moves Boulderers usually compete indoors on walls below 4.5m in height, although outdoor competitions take place, too The sport requires relatively little kit: chalk and a chalk bag,

climbing shoes, and a ‘crash mat’ to prevent injuries when falling The aim of bouldering is to ‘solve’ (to complete by reaching the top) the most problems in the smallest number of attempts A standard bouldering competition consists of three rounds: qualifying (five problems), semi-finals (four) and final (four)

At the World Cup, boulderers get five minutes to complete each problem in qualifying rounds and semi-finals, and four per problem in the final New problems are set each round, usually increasing in difficulty as the competition progresses Climbing will debut at the Olympics in Tokyo 2020, where all contestants will compete in three disciplines: bouldering, lead and speed climbing 33

Coxsey’s muscular grip and agility are key to her success

TO MERE MORTALS, SHE MIGHT AS WELL BE FLYING

of plywood and resin. And her ability to quickly solve these mental conundrums translates into physical grace: she doesn’t so much climb a wall as dance across it, swinging, twisting, thrusting and gliding.

“When I’m on a wall, I’m not thinking about what I need to do because I’ve already worked it out,” she says. “It’s almost like playing chess against the wall.

You’re always thinking two or three moves ahead.”

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tanding 5ft 4in [163cm] tall, Coxsey is petite, but clearly strong and toned. There are few people in the world who could accurately be described as having athletic fingers, but Coxsey is one of them. When she extends her hand in greeting, pink nail polish glittering in the light, her grip is strong, her fingers made muscular by years of training and competition.

They’re key to her success, as well Coxsey knows from having tried to manage without one of them. In January, she snapped the tendon inside her right ring finger almost clean in half. “I was climbing outdoors and I went to go for a move and it went bang! Actually, it was more of a pop; a really loud, satisfying pop.

Everyone heard it go. It turned out to be a significant partial rupture of my A2 pulley tendon.”

There are few sports in which a pulled finger would be more devastating – and few people who could bring themselves to describe the sound as ‘satisfying’. Ever the keen student, Coxsey finds new

HAIR AND MAKE-UP: KATIE BEVERIDGE USING CLINIQUE; PHOTOGRAPHY ASSISTANT: FRANKIE LODGE

In January, Coxsey snapped a tendon in her right ring finger

possibilities in such set-backs. “Injuries are always a blessing in disguise,” she says. “They give you an opportunity to work on something you wouldn’t otherwise have time for.” Rather than focusing on her climbing, recently she’s been forced to work on “glute strength, leg strength, explosivity”. That, and climbing one-handed. “Not being able to climb makes me want to climb even more,” she says. Over the years, the world champion has had plenty of practice at resisting that urge. She’s broken her leg, dislocated shoulders, had a litany of muscle tears up and down her arms, ruptured fingers... “If you can stay positive, you can always make use of the time and come back from injuries stronger,” she says. “That’s always my goal. I never want to come back and just be as good as I was – I want to come back better. And now I am.”

Coxsey will need to stay fighting fit to have a chance at Olympic success. On paper, the task seems Herculean: in just over 800 days, she must go from near-novice to Olympic-grade master in not one but two new sports – a feat most athletes fail to achieve in a lifetime. “The only way to train for speed climbing is on an Olympic-replica wall, practising until it becomes second nature,” she says.

“But because nobody knows how the speed wall will look, there’s no way of telling who’ll be at the top of their game come 2020.”

Still, train she must. So Coxsey has upped her routine from your standard nine-to-five to more than eight hours a day, six days a week, splitting her time between her usual training centre in Liverpool and Sheffield, where she lives with her boyfriend Ned Feehally – a pro outdoor climber himself – and their Border Terrier, Arthur. Half of that time is spent climbing, the rest on core strength, or sessions on a wooden finger board – the Beastmaker – where Coxsey, sometimes with half her own bodyweight in additional weights strapped to her, dangles by her fingertips in 30-second stints for hours on end.

“Shauna has such a strong desire to be better,” says coach Adela Carter, who specialises in strength and conditioning. “Her drive is superhuman. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her give up at anything.” Coxsey, who lists her hobbies outside climbing as baking and sleeping, is relying on this dogged, focused determination to get her through the relatively small number of months before the Olympics kick off in Tokyo. It will pay dividends, and she knows it.

Coxsey is confident when asked if she can win a gold medal. “My finger’s on the mend, and I’m in better shape than ever,” she says. Gold would be the pinnacle of a career that already contains some extraordinary accomplishments, but she’s not counting. “My motivation isn’t the podium; it’s to be the best possible climber I can be,” she says.

“That’s what motivates me. Learning. Improving.”

Perhaps she’s right: in life, as in climbing, you progress by focusing on where you’re going, not on where you’ve already been. Coxsey has her eyes firmly set on the summit.

For more on Shauna Coxsey, visit redbull.com.

Thanks to The Climbing Hangar in Plymouth; theclimbinghangar.com THE RED BULLETIN

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DO IT YOURSELF JULIE ADENUGA has never waited around for permission to do what she wants in life – and it’s paid off.

Despite having had no formal training, the DJ is now one of the UK’s most influential tastemakers Words KATE HUTCHINSON

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Skepta and Jme, both MCs, spearheaded the inner-city genre of grime in the mid2000s with their label Boy Better Know.

Regardless of these family ties, Adenuga has made her own mark in music as a fearless personality who’s helping to change the UK’s creative landscape.

In addition to her radio show, in 2016 she launched a youth project, One True Calling, with her friend Sian Anderson – former co-host and now a presenter on BBC 1Xtra – to help would-be journalists and presenters from diverse backgrounds get their start. The help this provides was something Adenuga never had.

“I’m not doing DIY stuff on purpose,” she says. “I don’t have any other way.

TOM JOHNSON

There are forces of nature and then there’s Julie Adenuga. The 29-year-old broadcaster has become one of the most trusted voices championing new music from the UK underground, thanks to her keen ear for talent and an unshakeable confidence in her own ability. Her unstoppable rise has taken her from hustling for a show, despite having no DJ experience, at London’s Rinse FM – the former pirate radio station that was awarded a broadcast licence in 2010 – to being one of the faces of Apple Music’s global station Beats 1.

Born to Nigerian parents, Adenuga grew up in Tottenham, north London, with her three siblings – two of whom,

THE RED BULLETIN

“I’M GLAD THAT MY ACTIONS CAN INSPIRE PEOPLE”

Julie Adenuga got her break in broadcasting when she convinced Rinse FM to let her host a weekend show

Adenuga, one of the three premier DJs on Apple’s Beats 1, attributes her cando attitude to her family’s influence

“WHATEVER I NEED TO DO TO MAKE SOMETHING HAPPEN, I’LL MAKE IT HAPPEN”

I wish people knew that if something’s not there, or if someone’s not allowing you to do something, then you have to do it yourself.” the red bulletin: Where does your can-do attitude come from? julie adenuga: That comes from my parents, my brothers, my family. My [attitude to] life has always been like, whatever I need to do to make something happen, I’ll make it happen. If I want to make a teapot, this is what the teapot’s going to look like, and that’s it.

Your family have clearly had a big influence on you. Earlier this year, you hosted a series of shows with your mother to celebrate the women in your family. What did she pass down from your grandmother to you?

Hard work and resilience. I sometimes wake up and I’ll be stressed out because, I don’t know, the milk’s finished. And my mum’s like, “We used to go and hunt food for the family.” Every single woman before her worked so hard without feeling like, “Oh my God, life’s really difficult.” That definitely made me stop caring about the little things.

Did having that perspective help with your confidence?

Yeah, I never felt there was anything to be scared of. I never thought I was going to be alone, or unsafe, or vulnerable. I never thought there would be a moment in my life where I was like, “I can’t go on.”

TOM JOHNSON

Have your parents always approved of your life choices?

My parents were adjusting to having British-born Nigerian children, and they lacked the knowledge of being a young person growing up in Britain. I think there was a fear that their children were not going to be OK, because our paths were so different to the paths they had taken. In [my mum’s] head, we’re running around being creative; she had to go to school, and then she moved to England, and then she got a job. As things started to happen for all of us, though, they began to chill out a little bit more.

You’re a role model now. Is that something that sits comfortably?

When people tell me I’m inspirational, I’m glad that my actions can inspire them, [but] it makes me uncomfortable that people look at me in that way.

Your projection of who I am isn’t who I actually am. I say that because of how many times I’ve seen people trying THE RED BULLETIN

Adenuga’s Beats 1 show is broadcast from a converted church turned studio in north London

to tear someone down because of what they thought they were, [when] they never told you they were that person.

I’m glad that I’m a beacon of hope for someone who didn’t think something was possible before, but I’m just a person.

Have there been moments during your career when you doubted yourself?

I have never felt like I’m incapable of doing my job, but I have felt like I’m incapable of doing the things that come along with doing my job – being anywhere where people aren’t like me, in an industry place.

So how do you manage to stand your ground in those situations?

For ages, I felt like I was the angry black woman at work. Then I realised I don’t care. Because I have to be me when I leave the building; no one else does. I was adamant from day one that I was never going to be somewhere that I didn’t want to be. I will never put myself in a place where I have to compromise.

Is that’s what’s most important to you at work?

Yes, that I don’t do anything I wouldn’t normally do. Sometimes I have to step outside of my own body, and I say, “Is that something Julie would ask? Is that someone who Julie would really care about? Are you speaking in a tone that sounds like yourself?” I always ask in my head, “Are you being you?” If I’m not being myself, we’ve got a problem.

RED BULL MUSIC ODYSSEY What do you get when you fill six boats with the finest DJs, musicians and MCs, and float them down the Thames?

One of the summer’s most unusual – and memorable – live music events.

Julie Adenuga is known for championing new talent – now she’s captaining it, too. On June 30, she’ll be one of six musical heavyweights taking charge of a vessel packed with some of the best artists from the UK and beyond.

Each boat represents distinct pockets of the UK music scene, from those breaking through on underground radio – in Adenuga’s case – to the stars of the home-grown rap scene, plus many more.

More tickets will be released on June 25, so the only decision that’s left for you to make is which boat to board…

Julie Adenuga is one of the headliners at Red Bull Music Odyssey on June 30. For tickets and info, visit redbull.com/odyssey 39

TAKE FIVE

Emojipedia founder JEREMY BURGE on…

CHANGING THE WORLD WITH EMOJIS The 33-year-old Australian explains how these inescapable little characters are making us all better communicators – and have given him the best job he’s ever had

I discovered emojis in 2012, while I was consulting for Australian universities on all things web. Apple released them in Japan, and you couldn’t get them in the rest of the world unless you downloaded one of these dodgy phone apps. When computers started to support emojis, too, I thought there should be some sort of canonical reference site for them, so in 2013 I started Emojipedia. I didn’t realise there would be new emojis – that blew my mind!

And I didn’t know they look different on different phones. It was a basic website, just a fun project. Then I found myself on the treadmill of updating it, and now it’s my life! We get 25m page views a month.

They make it easier to share how you feel

Your most-used emojis say something about you; I’m a frequent user of the upsidedown smiley face. It’s a bit counter-culture, a bit ambiguous – are you trying to say that you don’t mean what you just said?

I like the crossed fingers, too – I guess I’m always hopeful. People tell me emojis make it easier for them to share their feelings. You don’t necessarily want to get all touchy-feely with language in a message, so putting a heart at the end is a much simpler way to express how you feel. We’re becoming better communicators thanks to emojis.

Tony Hawk said our skateboard looked like it was from the ’80s. We’d worked for months on it!”

JEREMY BURGE 40

There’s a committee that approves emojis

The Unicode Consortium is a not-for-profit, somewhat academic institution [established in 1991 in Mountain View, California] that sets the standard for translating alphabets into code that can be read on all computers. I find it amusing and interesting that because emojis are considered text characters, the consortium now looks after them, too. These are the people who have to say, “Yes, we need an emoji that looks like it has had a big night.” You have the Unicode Technical Committee, and then below that is the Emoji SubCommittee, which is the one I sit on.

Companies such as Apple send the consortium their proposals for new emojis, as do ordinary people – anyone can submit a proposal. These documents can be as long as 20 pages. We will then check the proposed emojis to ensure they meet the necessary criteria, and recommend those we like.

Jeremy Burge: he’s happy and he knows it

Attention to detail is very important

A year ago, we created a skateboard emoji. It was a proposal from a member of the public. The Unicode Consortium don’t design the emojis, just approve them, so Emojipedia does that. This year, when Tony Hawk saw our skateboard emoji, he said on Instagram that it looked like it was from the ’80s. We’d worked for months on it! So I contacted him and he said, “Here’s a photo of my board,” so we redesigned it. Last year, we were having some issues with the rock-climber emoji, so [American] world champion Sasha DiGiulian worked with us, sending pictures of poses. The rope hangs differently depending on whether you’re amateur or pro, so you’re constantly evaluating these style questions, too.

Laughter is the ultimate winner

In 2014, I created World Emoji Day. Then came the World Emoji Awards, where people vote for winners in different categories. I was sure the pile of poo was going to win the Lifetime Achievement Award last year, but instead it was the tears of joy – the laughing-so-much-it’scrying smiley. It’s the mostused emoji on Twitter, Facebook, iMessage… Having said that, our stats show its usage is dropping, so everything could change this year.

World Emoji Day is July 17; emojipedia. org

Interview RUTH MORGAN THE RED BULLETIN

GETTY IMAGES

There’s an emoji for almost everything

THE UNLIKELY

ADVENTURER When small-town boy ASH DYKES first decided to become an explorer, he had no real experience and plenty of doubters.

Now, at the age of 27, the Welshman has two world firsts to his name. Here’s how he went from zero to action hero…

Words MATT RAY Photography DAVID GOLDMAN Dykes trains on the streets and paths of Old Colwyn, as well as the kit (pull-up bar, pictured) in his garden and garage

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Small-town explorer

With its wind-battered promenade, open-air market, derelict pier and ageing residents, the Welsh seaside town of Old Colwyn pretty much defines the unremarkable. You might imagine someone such as Ash Dykes – a modern-day adventurer with two world firsts to his name, and TV execs on speed dial – would live somewhere more exotic, or at least cosmopolitan.

But he still calls this sleepy town home.

Dykes lives with his parents and does all his expedition training in their garage, garden and around town – he doesn’t even have a gym membership.

After trekking solo and unsupported across Mongolia, and navigating the length of Madagascar via its highest peaks, it turns out Old Colwyn is the perfect place for an adventurer to lay low. “I call it Oldsville!” Dykes laughs. “It’s great because there are no distractions – I can focus solely on my training and planning the next expedition.”

While most explorers have a military background or come from wealthy roots, Dykes is a cheerful anomaly. In his tracksuit and trainers, he doesn’t look out of place in Old Colwyn. But from this local boy, who lists Floyd Mayweather and David Attenborough as childhood inspirations, has emerged a worldclass adventurer.

Dykes has always had energy to spare. He’s long been into fitness and ran cross-country for North Wales in his teens. Then, when he left school and started a BTEC National Diploma in Outdoor Education, he began to seriously consider channelling his talents into adventure. As his peers set off on their pre-planned life paths, Dykes knew he needed his own plan of action – with an emphasis on action.

“Adventure had a hook in me,” he says. “I was fascinated by the skills tiny communities use to survive in harsh, remote environments. I’d hear people’s travel stories, see incredible footage on David Attenborough

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DITCH THE GYM Ash Dykes’ guide to getting fit without the cost of a health club membership

shows, and I wasn’t just satisfied watching and listening; I wanted to be out there doing it.”

First, Dykes needed to acquire some skills of his own. Laughing, he tells a story about embarking on a winter skills course in the mountains of Scotland. “I rocked up in my Adidas overalls and 99p Woolworths gloves – just ridiculous! They said, ‘Ash, what are you doing?! You’re going to freeze out here!’ I guess that fired me up. As we were trekking up the mountain, I took the lead, motivating the rest: ‘Come on, let’s get up this thing!’ Which they hated, of course.”

Travelling economy

It’s this inexhaustible enthusiasm, combined with an almost old-worldly recklessness, that underpins Dykes’ success. “I would go out with minimal kit,” he says. “And that’s an arrogant thing to do, but I was only young. I was cocky, confident; I was like, ‘Yes, let’s do it!’” Fortunately, this gung-ho attitude complemented his learning style, helping him make quick progress. “I found that I was more of a kinaesthetic learner,” he says. “I learnt far more through experience and hands-on, practical work; making mistakes, but trying never to make the same ones twice.”

To make ends meet, he washed spuds in a chippy, then worked as a lifeguard while saving obsessively to go travelling with friends – “there were certainly no nights out around that time” – most of which they blew in a few frustrating months on Southeast Asia’s backpacking trail.

Fed up with the beaten track, they

1. Step it up

Dykes loves running, sometimes using a weighted vest – the key is to keep it varied. “It can be hill sprints, it can be step sprints; it can be one, two, three or 10km… it doesn’t matter,” he says.

“A good jog sets off the endorphins and works on your cardio.”

bought £10 bikes – with pink baskets on the front – and proceeded to pedal out of Cambodia and almost 1,800km down the length of Vietnam. Then they rode into Thailand and sneaked into Myanmar under the cover of the jungle. “We didn’t have the money to buy permits,” Dykes shrugs.

Luckily for the untrained trio, along the way they met a hill tribe and spent some time learning jungle survival skills using hand signals.

Ash Dykes the adventurer was born.

Going it alone

Dykes’ expeditions are well planned, but they rely on gritty determination rather than a big budget and an onhand support crew. The world first he set by trekking across Mongolia is a case in point: Dykes only secured funding two weeks before his flight THE RED BULLETIN

“I’ve learnt more by being hands-on” Dykes uses battle ropes (pictured) to train his core and upper body

“Old Colwyn is great…

There are no distractions” Plyometric moves such as stair jumps are a key part of Dykes’ workout

departed, but he was committed regardless. And even then, it was bare-bones stuff: man-hauling a lowtech mild steel trailer, carrying a text-only sat phone, with no prospect of helicopter evacuation. The solo trek from the most western city to the most eastern had been attempted before by an explorer with a naval background. Despite, on paper, being far more qualified than Dykes, he’d had to give up partway.

“He gave me a list of dangers: drunken nomadic drifters, dry wells, stagnant water, grey wolves, snow blizzards, sandstorms, steep ravines,” says Dykes, who also heard from riders in an annual 1,600km horse race across the Mongolian steppe that the terrain was a struggle for native steeds, never mind inexperienced humans from Old Colwyn.

Disheartened by the negativity, he enlisted a logistics manager who helped break down the challenge into daily chunks. “He said, ‘The biggest challenge will be your mental state.

It’s a lonely place – the world’s second most sparsely populated country.

You’ll have to motivate yourself and make your own decisions.’”

Desert dehydration

The 2,400km trek took 78 days, during which Dykes hauled the 120kg of food, water and kit necessary for survival: “That’s the weight of a baby elephant. It was three weeks over the Altai Mountains, five across the Gobi Desert, then three up through the Mongolian steppe.” In the 45°C heat of the Gobi, with no natural shade, he suffered severe dehydration, got bogged down in sand and came close to death.

“I was leaning forward in this four-point harness at almost 90°, trying to pull what felt like a concrete block through hell,” he says. “I was delirious, hallucinating. I could almost feel my insides drying up. Everything was in slow motion. It was awful.”

Stopping to rest in the stifling shade beneath his trailer, Dykes realised that without a plan he was in trouble – if he called for help, it would take at least four days to arrive. He was running perilously THE RED BULLETIN

Every self-respecting explorer and adventurer should have a gigantic tractor tyre at their disposal in their back garden

2. Build monster sets

Short of time? Combine different exercises into big, continuous sets to increase intensity and shorten sessions. “I’ll do 13 wide-arm pull-ups, 25 push-ups and 15 dips. That’s one set. I’ll look to do 10 of those.”

3. Set mini-goals

Classic exercises can be boring, so set progressions. “Set yourself the goal to become so good at normal push-ups that you can master the one-handed push-up, or clap push-ups. That adds more excitement to your training session.”

low on water. And he knew a wolf pack was hunting close by.

“It was time to do what I had visualised during training; to break down the goals,” Dykes says. “I was in too much pain to visualise walking four days in that heat to the next settlement and water, but I could see myself covering 100m.

“So I told myself to rest no more than five minutes under the trailer, walk for 100 or 200m, then rest another five minutes. If I could keep doing that, as painful as it would be, I’d slowly make progress. They were four very long days, but I survived.”

Training for adversity

Dykes’ surprising reserves of mental and physical strength have been built up with tough training at his Old Colwyn base. A high level of fitness has always been important to him. A keen boxer at college, he switched to Muay Thai after training with locals in Thailand: “I was working on my kicking every day, killing the nerve endings in my shins with drills.”

Thanks to the kinaesthetic learning skills that first got him up that Scottish mountain, before his Mongolia trek Dykes was able to support himself by working in Thailand as a scuba dive instructor 47

“I came close to death in the Gobi Desert” “You’re building yourself physically, but also mentally. You push harder in the prep, knowing there’s a much worse scenario ahead of you.”

Optimism has no place in Dykes’ world. But he’s not defeatist, he’s prepared. “If there are going to be wolves, I expect to be attacked,” he says. “If there are going to be snow blizzards or sandstorms, I expect them to be the biggest. If a worstcase scenario was to hit, at least you don’t flip into flight mode, which can be fatal. You stay in fight mode. You expected it, you visualised how you would handle it, and you crack on as if it’s nothing new.’

Cutting a path Dykes makes use of every piece of open-air ‘gym equipment’ in his local area – these high-backed wooden benches are well suited to core work

and Muay Thai fighter. He has since embraced callisthenics and parkour, and cherry-picks elements from various disciplines to create the lowbudget, high-intensity workouts that keep him fit for purpose.

Back in Old Colwyn, Dykes films them for his YouTube following. In his garden are the tractor tyre, pullup bar, sledgehammer and battle ropes he uses. He busts out some impressive ‘Superman’ flying pressups, one-handed handstands and parkour-inspired moves. Endurance is an important part of his training: “To build my cardio for pulling the trailer, I’d run up and down the hill near home with a weighted backpack, then go home, get on my bike with the same backpack and do the same route. People thought I was mad.”

Never beaten

If Dykes is mad, there’s method in it.

“I had £100 in my account when I came back from Thailand, so a gym membership wasn’t an option,” he says. “My experiences from travelling told me you can get fit in a hotel room – by wearing a backpack during pressups, for instance – so I was confident the home workout would do the job.”

In fact, his circuits got so advanced they would take him three hours: 48

4. Target your core

Dykes recommends the humble plank as an ideal core move. “Crunches can arch your back a bit more, whereas with the plank you’re keeping a steady posture and you’re looking up slightly, and that’s really good for your abs and your inner core.”

5. Set up a bar

Get a home pull-up bar. “The wide-arm pullup is the best exercise in the world: it’s good for the posture, for your lats, for your arms, and for your inner core because you have to stop your legs swinging.”

Dykes’ second world first was won in the thick jungle and remote mountains of Madagascar, when he trekked along the 2,600km length of the interior, following a plateau and summiting its eight highest peaks along the way.

No one had attempted it before – and with good reason. As Dykes points out, the distance was only 200km further than Mongolia, but the 155day trek took twice as long.

“The jungles were brutal,” he says.

“And when they’re mountainous jungles, man…” He drifts into silent reverie for a second before snapping back, all energy again. “People ask, ‘Is it technical? Were you using rope?’

No, I was using a machete to hack my way through the bush, because there were no tracks! They’re some of the hardest mountains I’ve ever climbed.”

The bamboo bush was so thick in places that he and his photographer would only cover 2.5km in 12 hours.

“We had blisters on our hands from hacking, hacking, hacking,” Dykes says. “You’d take five hacks at every bamboo shard to get through, then look up and see thousands more ahead. Once, on the fourth highest mountain, we had to turn around and walk three days back on ourselves to find a different way up. That was hard. It’s annoying enough when you have to do a U-turn in a car!”

High and low spirits

Dykes had to push on through during the cyclone season, which wasn’t part of the plan. Down south, he THE RED BULLETIN

“Joining a gym wasn’t an option” at more than 6,300km. It will take him at least a year. It turns out this hasn’t been done before either, though that’s not what drew Dykes to the challenge. “I started to look into the Yangtze, and it’s the longest river to run through a single country,” he says. “Its source is the highest of any major river – more than 5,100m up in the Tibetan Plateau – which only a handful of people have visited. All of these facts were popping out at me. It was fascinating and it started to fuel the drive in me, the passion.”

The terrain will present many challenges. “It’s not like the Amazon where it’s a lot of jungle, or the Nile where it’s constantly hot,” he says.

“You’ve got sub-zero temperatures and glaciers in the far west of China, with the altitude, the blizzards, the isolation, the brown bears and the wolves. Then you drop down off the glacier – by that time, I reckon my lips will be all blistered and bleeding – into a tropical, more forested area.”

Craving adventure Strapped for cash, Dykes devised his own low-budget, high-intensity training regime using elements of callisthenics and parkour

caught the deadliest strain of malaria – a dinner of “pretty rotten eel” triggered dysentery, so his malaria tablets were going straight through him – which meant a dash to a city doctor. At this point, most would have given up, and a chorus of alarmed voices back home were urging Dykes to return. But here he employed the other essential quality of the bootstrap explorer: sheer bloody-mindedness.

Trekking on in the wettest season meant crossing raging, crocodileinfested rivers – one of which almost killed his photographer – and a daily shower of leeches. “They fall from the trees and down your top, so you get into your tent ready for a good night’s sleep and come across five or six blood-filled leeches on your skin,” Dykes says. “I got a spider bite in two different locations, too, after one dropped down my top.”

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He also went to great lengths to respect the traditions of the locals: “They said, ‘You must take this white chicken to the peak with you, or the bad spirits of the forest will kill you.

So I took this chicken, which I named Gertrude, all the way to the summit.

I had to water her, feed her, and she’d sleep on top of my tent. We also had to down a shot of rum and honey on the peak so the bad spirits would allow us back down safely.”

Spirits appeased, Dykes made it to the finish intact and claimed his second world first in as many years.

The next steps

Dykes’ thirst for adventure remains undimmed, despite his now-rich experience of hardship. Right now, he’s planning his next expedition – and it’s a doozy. Dykes plans to walk the length of China’s Yangtze River, the third longest river in the world

A big part of the draw for Dykes is that the terrain is so remote it’s had very few visitors, but people still survive there. “I’ll be coming across small local communities, far out in the depths of China, where they use zip lines to cross the rivers and go on treks for days just to get to the local market. People can tell me how to get there, but not what it’s like, because they don’t know. I don’t have a lot of information – that’s what excites me.”

It’s a monstrously ambitious challenge, but one he will rise to if his track record is anything to go by.

Though the stakes seem to get higher with every project, this isn’t about world firsts or fame and fortune; it’s simply about satisfying the yearning for adventure he had as a boy.

“I’d still cycle the UK on a mountain bike with a pink basket and a little bell on the front,” Dykes says earnestly as he heads inside after his workout. “Why not? It’s a proper adventure, isn’t it?”

Follow his latest trek at ashdykes. com, on Instagram @ash_dykes, and on Twitter @AshDykes THE RED BULLETIN

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”I TRY TO MAKE WHAT’S MISSING IN MY LIFE” Brian Eno’s name is synonymous with innovation. Since the early ’70s, when his out-there synthesizer sounds were an integral part of glam-rock band Roxy Music’s success, the Suffolk-born musician has been ahead of his time. Eno is credited as the inventor of the ‘ambient music’ genre, and has shared his talents as a producer, most notably on David Bowie’s late-’70s ‘Berlin Trilogy’: the albums Low, Heroes and Lodger. He’s also a successful audio-visual artist with numerous exhibitions to his name. The 70-year-old is still a highly sought-after – and selective – producer: he has helped U2 and Coldplay reinvent themselves, but turned down the Red Hot Chili Peppers eight times, according to the band’s singer, Anthony Kiedis.

The reason for Eno’s popularity among his peers? He challenges them musically as well as intellectually. He encourages them to overcome habitual thinking patterns and to try something new. “I wanted to hear music that had not yet happened,” Eno once said of his own creative process. With this in mind, the release of his 2017 album, Reflection, 52

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SHAMIL TANNA

He launched Roxy Music, inspired Bowie, reinvented Coldplay, and invented a music genre. He’s a successful visual artist, too. Affable overachiever BRIAN ENO on the power of play, the myth of repetition, and finding contemplation in the modern world Words MARCEL ANDERS

Brian Eno – pictured left in 1974 – has been an innovator throughout his music career

was accompanied by a ‘generative’ app version that plays infinitely, the music changing throughout the day. Eno has also created numerous audiovisual installations for galleries and therapeutic settings, with constantly evolving coloured shapes in seemingly infinite permutations set to an ambient soundtrack. As his latest gallery work was unveiled at the Gropius Bau in Berlin, Eno sat down with The Red Bulletin. the red bulletin: You celebrated your 70th birthday in May. At this age, many musicians just recycle their old ideas. You, on the other hand, are constantly searching for new sounds.

What’s your inspiration? brian eno: I’ve always been trying to make what I was missing, what wasn’t in my life. For example, the quietest and – I should say – most natural-sounding music I ever made was when I lived on one of the busiest intersections in New York. It was very noisy, and at that time I made the album Ambient 4: On Land [1982], which is a very, very quiet kind of wild – it sounds like an outside landscape somewhere.

Today, you live in London. Is there anything you’re missing right now?

When I do installations, I’m always thinking, “If I lived in this city, where

With Bowie and Bono

“You should never work with people who are fans [of yours] – that’s my opinion. I knew that [Eno] wasn’t a fan of us, and that was one of the reasons we got to work with him.

I wanted to know the other side of the argument. I already knew what was right about us… I wanted to find out what wasn’t” bono, u2 THE RED BULLETIN

GETTY IMAGES

“IT HELPS ME AT 70 TO STILL BE ABLE TO PLAY LIKE A CHILD”

Valais is a land of adventure par excellence, a vast playground for altitude junkies. This is where well-marked mountain-bike trails lead past rushing mountain streams and Alpine lakes, or wind their way over mountainsides and through dense forests. visitvalais.ch/bike

From left: guitarist Robert Fripp, Eno and Bowie at Hansa Studios in 1976

Could that be because of its hypnotic, repetitive nature?

That’s probably the reason. But repetition is a form of change.

“Brian would set tasks to define the movements of the day, then redefine that plan in the studio. As he says, ‘When you ask musicians to jam, the common ground is always the bloody blues.’ His thing is to break the structure from the beginning and enter into a feeling of improvisation…” david bowie

Wouldn’t that place for most people be at home?

Well, if you think about mainstream media [outlets], they survive on alarm.

They survive on a constant feed of conflict: “Pay attention to this… watch out for this… this is terrible… look what just happened.” That whole thing is constantly working on the part of your brain that says, “Oh my God, I’ve got to do something. Oh, this is dangerous, I’ve got to be careful.” And we have phones giving us the news constantly.

We never shut off any more, not even when we’re at home.

Where does the modern city-dweller find a place for contemplation?

It used to be that church was the place you’d go if you wanted to be transported to another world for a short while. Today, many people go to galleries for that purpose. That’s why I love to present my art there.

“REPETITION IS A CHANCE FOR YOUR BRAIN TO DO THE WORK. YOUR BRAIN BECOMES THE COMPOSER” 56

How does your art affect the people who experience it?

It doesn’t go anywhere: there’s no narrative to it, no story. After being in [the installation] for two or three minutes, you realise nothing else is going to happen. [Laughs]. And yet people stay for a long time and seem very happy with that.

When was the first time you were aware of your brain reconfiguring like that?

I’ve had very little experience of drugs in my life, but I did have one really important experience on mescaline.

[Laughs.] I went for a walk, and the streets were grey and wet, with lots of brown leaves sort of squashed into them.

I looked at them and I thought, “I wonder if I could ever find that beautiful?” It looked very ugly at first, you know. So I looked again and I thought, “That grey and that brown is actually beautiful.”

And then I realised I’d found like a switch in my brain I could access.

Are you advocating drugs, then?

No, no. I only ever took mescaline on one occasion. It made it a bit easier, perhaps, but the capacity is in my brain to do this and I can still access that switch. Everybody can, I think.

With Chris Martin

“Brian Eno has become not a session musician but a player. He loves to just stand in the circle and play with the band. So he’s kind of more of a band member than producer, which is fun.

He comes up with very strange ideas and crazy noises, and they always eventually sound irreplaceable” chris martin, coldplay

Has that switch helped you in the creative process?

A lot of my work comes out of that experience in some ways, because what’s being generated in my installations are constantly new colour combinations. I’ve never seen most of those combinations before. And I’ll never see them again! It helps me at 70 to still be able to play like a child. That’s what I’m doing: I’m a child with a paint box. It’s an incredible thing.

Brian Eno’s new six-CD box set, Music For Installations, is out now; brian-eno.net THE RED BULLETIN

GETTY IMAGES

would I like to go as an alternative?”

I mean, I love cities; I always will live in cities. But whenever I’m in a city, I also find the places where time has kind of stood still a little bit, you know? Places that counterbalance the city.

Is it? Most people would associate repetition with boredom…

Repetition doesn’t really exist. Have you ever had that situation where someone plays a loop of a little bit of language?

Something like “something like”. [Repeats the words several times.] And then, after a little while, you’re hearing “sunlight”, or “am I light”, or “light me up”, or… the meaning keeps changing. So obviously you know it’s not changing – it’s you who are changing. Your brain is reconfiguring, reading it in a different way. So repetition is actually a chance for your brain to do the work. Your brain becomes the composer. I think repetition is a very, very useful exercise for humans, and I’m sure this is what people who meditate and do mantras and chant and so on have discovered. [Chuckles.] Many thousands of years before I did!

TAKE FIVE

Professional puzzler ROBERT YAU on…

SOLVING A RUBIK’S CUBE FOR A LIVING The 2015 UK speed-cubing champion can unscramble the classic combination puzzle in 6.9 seconds. Here’s how he got so fast… times where the hands screw up and the brain suddenly switches on. You need to constantly be looking ahead, hunting down pieces to solve. Eventually you can’t get any faster unless you identify your bad habits. Solving Rubik’s Cubes has helped me develop a more logical mind.

3 All cubes are not equal

We use our own cubes, like a tennis pro uses their own rackets. Hardware improvements have helped shave off milliseconds. Modern Rubik’s Cubes let you cut corners, literally – you don’t have to turn each side 90° before making the next turn. [With a perfect cube], my limit might be around seven seconds. I’m not sure I can progress beyond that, because as you age, your turning speed becomes more limited. I’m 26. I’m not past my prime, but I feel I don’t have a shot at most world records these days.

4 Size matters

Yau can even complete a Rubik’s Cube with his feet

1 To enter the UK qualifier of the Red Bull World Championships at the Red Bull Gaming Sphere in London on June 16, go to win.gs/rubikslondon

58

I felt the need for speed

The first time I picked up a Rubik’s Cube was summer 2005. I was 13. My dad was solving one and I asked him to teach me. I watched online videos of guys who could do it in under 50 seconds. By 2009, I was averaging 12, but the world record was seven. That year, when my parents finally let me compete, I broke the national record for a single solve at 9.9 seconds.

2 It’s all about muscle memory

I do 100 solves a day, but others do a thousand. Our hands get so used to it, we do it without concentrating. There are

The largest cube in World Cube Association competitions is 7x7 [squares], but the biggest that’s been manufactured is 17x17. Companies are always outdoing one another, so eventually you’ll see an 18x18 cube. To solve these, we reduce the puzzle down so it functions like a regular 3x3 Rubik’s Cube – solve the centres, pair the edges – but it takes more time because there are so many chances for the pieces to catch one another as they turn.

5 I’m fun at parties

I can solve a Rubik’s Cube with my feet – my personal best is around 30-40 seconds. The world record is 16. To solve one blindfolded, you memorise it first.

The timer starts when you begin studying it – you loop around the cube, forming a string of destinations for every piece. Most pros don’t need more than 20 seconds to study. You can only memorise it once, and you can’t lift the blindfold until it’s solved.

I average under two minutes. That’s not so good. World class is 20-25 seconds.

Words TOM GUISE Illustration TOMA VAGNER THE RED BULLETIN

HOCKEY’S SAVIOUR The world’s best goalkeeper has already secured Team GB an Olympic gold. Now, as the World Cup in London approaches, MADDIE HINCH is focused on a new goal Words RUTH MORGAN Photography RICHIE HOPSON

Few things could top the achievements that hockey goalkeeper Maddie ‘Mad Dog’ Hinch has under her belt. The Sussex-born 29-year-old has been voted the best in the world for two years running, has two Commonwealth Games medals, and made history in 2016 by securing Team GB’s first-ever Olympic gold medal in women’s hockey by saving all four penalties in the final shoot-out in Rio. All this despite the fact that Hinch didn’t even know what hockey was until she was 13. Having lived abroad for most of her young life – her father was in the Navy – the self-confessed sport-obsessed tomboy arrived at a UK boarding school to discover games she’d never heard of: rounders, hockey, netball. After Hinch displayed some dramatic fielding moves during 60

Hinch’s fast and powerful goalkeeping style has been a genuine game-changer in the world of women’s hockey

“PEOPLE ARE SHOCKED BY THE PHYSICALITY INVOLVED”

a rounders match, the school coach decided she’d do well in the hockey goal.

“I just remember thinking that I didn’t want to be the goalie, as I loved being in the thick of the action,” she says. But some 16 years later, keeping hockey balls out of the net is all Hinch cares about.

She plays for Team GB, England and Dutch club SCHC, and has an unwavering passion for her position.

“I know now that you can feel like a hero,” she says. “That one save, that one big moment is what you’re playing so hard for. I’ve learnt to love that constant living-on-the-edge pressure. If you can’t learn to enjoy that, you’re going to spend the whole time being scared.”

If one thing could top Hinch’s successes to date, it would be winning a World Cup on home soil. And her chance to do that starts in London next month…

consistently had this amount of attention.

A home World Cup brings with it plenty of expectation, so as a group we’re working hard to embrace that and not fear it. It’s really exciting that there’s an expectation for us to do well, and we have to use that to our advantage. We’re anticipating 15,000-strong crowds in London and we can only imagine how having that many people on our side is going to feel! The crowd can be a talisman for us and, if we use it to our advantage, being at home could really bring the results home, too.

the red bulletin: The World Cup in London is set to draw the most spectators of any women’s sport event in UK history. Does that fact spur you on, or pile on the pressure? maddie hinch: There are generally more eyes on us than ever before; we’ve never

Why should people who don’t know about hockey come to watch it?

Hockey has always had a bit of a stigma of being a game on grass with wooden sticks and not that much speed. What we’ve shown, especially since [the 2016 Olympics in] Rio, is that it has changed.

This game is exciting – it’s so end-toend. People are shocked by the level of physicality involved in hockey, and the fitness required, not only for the outfield players but for the goalkeepers, too. So I think that if people are willing to open their eyes to the sport, they’ll come away from it pretty impressed.

You’ve been voted the Best Goalkeeper in the World at the FIH Hockey Stars Awards in both 2017 and 2018. How did you get to that stage?

I had a pretty rough journey when I first started, as I’m a bit smaller than the average keeper and I was always a bit more active. When I first began, being a goalkeeper was about standing in the goal and filling it, whereas I wanted to be out and about and off my line a bit more.

People hadn’t seen that before and they didn’t really like it. I always had people telling me I had to change and be different, but I fully believed that my strengths lay in my particular physical attributes – I’m quick, even wearing my kit. Those attributes are what I had to bring to my game: I had to be the keeper who was quick off her line and superaggressive. In the end, that’s where the game has gone now. Goalies putting on their pads now know the physical requirements are that you need to be really fit, really strong and really quick.

Hinch (centre) celebrates as England win 2015’s EuroHockey Championship

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Would you say strength is your real superpower, then?

I’m 5ft 6in [1.7m] and 60kg or whatever and, yes, I want to be as strong and THE RED BULLETIN

GETTY IMAGES

So you changed the game?

Yeah, I think so. I always stuck to what I believed were my strengths, and I was really fortunate: the final in Rio was a great advertisement not only for the women’s game in general but for my style of goalkeeping as well. It was so active and showed how the game was changing.

People were intrigued about how you get to that point; the point where the kit feels like a second skin and doesn’t stop you from doing anything.

“The mental side of the game is the difference between being good and great,� says the Team GB Olympic gold medallist

Team GB and England’s number one made her international debut in 2008

as powerful as possible. Then, when I put 15kg of kit on top, it makes no difference. Now, in fact, I’m slightly faster when I’m wearing it than when I’ve not got it on! That comes down to hard work off the pitch and in the gym – to become as strong and as powerful as I can be for my bodyweight.

Is it true that you sometimes train with an eye patch on?

Yes, I have done. Since I’ve come over to Holland [to play for SCHC] I’ve been fortunate enough to train with a goalkeeping coach named Martijn Drijver and he’s continuing to push my game on. We’ve been looking at all sorts of different ways of putting me outside my comfort zone, so he gets me to wear an eye patch or will suddenly throw a cone at me out of nowhere while I’m trying to do a drill. You’re constantly trying to over-train to the point that you feel uncomfortable. And if you can deliver then, you’ll ace it every time when you do feel comfortable. This is the challenge now. I’m in my ninth year of full-time hockey and I’ve got to where I want to be. Now it’s a question of how I stay there and keep pushing myself to be better and better. These little things 64

“AS A GOALIE, YOU’RE EITHER THE HERO OR THE VILLAIN” that Martijn adds to my training constantly challenge me.

No sport is purely physical – there’s also the mental aspect. How do you train your mind to be the best?

The mental side of the game is the difference between being good and great. Goalkeeping in particular is so mentally challenging. You can have days when the ball keeps hitting you, and you don’t know why it’s different to the day where nothing hits you at all. Or, if you’ve made an absolute blunder and you’re heading into a penalty shoot-out, how do you still perform at your best?

Eventually, I learnt that it really doesn’t matter what I do in the gym or off the pitch if I don’t believe that I’m better

than the people I’m up against and that I can stop the ball. Without that belief, it’s all pointless. And that’s the really tough part, as there are so many days on the pitch when you don’t feel great about yourself, or you’re tired or not on top form. It’s then that you have to know how to shake that off and bring out your A-game.

That sounds as if it’s easier said than done, though…

For me, it’s all about being able to see myself in the distance. I know exactly what I look and feel like when I’m playing at my best. You have to understand it: are your shoulders back? Do you walk with a little bit of a swagger? I can see myself at my best and at my worst. And I think that the more you play and the more time that you spend off the pitch thinking about these things, the more you can understand it and replicate it in the moment. But, yeah, it is tough.

Goalies have an almost singular pressure on them – you get all the glory or all the blame…

It’s a really unforgiving position – essentially, you’re either the hero or the villain. And I think you can spend THE RED BULLETIN

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calm. I’ve always been a lot less calm than that. When I was younger, I didn’t realise the consequence of having a ‘Maddie paddy’, as people used to call it!

Or the effect that it had on my team. The older I got, the more I realised that my role is being the backbone of the team.

You are at that starting line, and whatever confidence you exude passes on to the backline, which passes on to the midfield.

I always want my teammates to be able to turn around, look at me and say to themselves, “Well, she’s still fine, so I should be, too.”

Hinch is looking forward to playing in front of large crowds at this summer’s World Cup

Do other people know when you’re feeling bad?

When I was growing up, one of the keepers I always looked up to was Beth Storry [who won bronze with the British Olympics team in 2012]. And what I always remember about watching her was that you could never tell what she was thinking or how she was feeling.

You would never see any emotion from her – she was very consistent, ice cool.

A little bit like Roger Federer. But very

“IF I LOOK, ACT AND FEEL BIG, THEN I PLAY BIG” 66

THE WOMEN’S HOCKEY WORLD CUP The 14th Women’s Hockey World Cup is coming to London from July 21 to August 5.

This is the first time that the tournament, which now takes place every four years, has been hosted in the UK. It will be held at the Lee Valley Hockey and Tennis Centre. More than 80,000 tickets have already been sold.

Sixteen teams will compete, including reigning champions The Netherlands, who have won the tournament a record seven times.

The England team is in Pool B, along with the United States, India and Ireland.

The highest-ever finish for an England side was third place in Argentina in 2010.

Could Maddie Hinch help change that?

Do you ever attempt to psych out the other side?

I’ve never been someone who’s tried to distract the opposition. I’ve always tried to get on with my own business.

If you celebrate saves or whatever, you’re potentially setting yourself up for a fall. But I want people to look at me from a distance and say, “She looks confident.” I literally walk around like I own the joint. It’s not arrogance at all, it’s just that I’m feeling good. I’m feeling 6ft 10in instead of 5ft 6in. I’m feeling 10ft wide. And that’s how I carry myself.

What’s the secret to saving a penalty?

Before the 2016 Olympic final, my coach Martijn texted me and said, “You’re playing great. Just remember to stay big.” For a second, I thought, “What’s he talking about?” But I realised it actually does summarise goalkeeping, especially for me. I’m not big, but if I look, act and feel big, all of a sudden I play big. I always write that on my water bottle now to remind me: Stay Big. The Hockey Women’s World Cup begins in London on July 21. For more information and to book tickets, visit fih.ch GETTY IMAGES

all your time – and I was probably guilty of this when I was younger – worrying about the consequences. You’re worried about making a mistake before you’ve even got there. When I’m at my best, I look forward to my next save; I’m almost wanting them to shoot. But when I know I’m not playing well, I’m like, “Please don’t, please don’t.”

So would you say you’re ice cool?

It’s not that you have to be ice cool. I still show emotion, just in a different way.

I turn it into passion and the will to win, rather than frustration. To do that, I basically just spend more time talking to the team, rather than quietly thinking about the mistake I’ve made.

World Cup holders The Netherlands

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FEVER PITCH

Karin Dreijer, the Swedish singer-songwriter known as FEVER RAY, RAY has built a career cloaked in mystery. But behind the curtain of her world tour is a very different environment: a place of artistic freedom, open collaboration and natural kindness that’s hitting all the right notes Words LAURA SNAPES

JULIE GLASSBERG

From black-clad entity to shaven neon zombie: Dreijer’s stage persona has changed dramatically since she last played in London, back in 2010

  69

Sound engineer Laura Davis says she's amused by the house staff’s confusion when a crew of women walk into a venue

70

by women and individuals who are not bound by gender. According to her team, who shared their uncensored thoughts before taking the stage in London, the results are radical.

“I feel really comfortable with myself,” says Diva Cruz, one of the show’s two drummers. “When you’re with guys, you have to show what you can do, but here it’s so nice to play with strong women who give you the freedom to express yourself and to feel what you want. And to see that there are so many incredible artists, with the lights, the sound and everything… there’s so much kindness and power.”

L

ondon venue Troxy sits in Limehouse, a poorly connected district in an easterly kink of the River Thames. The area is industrial, the only signs of life between the train station and the concert hall being a pub, some convenience stores, a gay sauna and bored schoolchildren. Troxy’s lavish Art Deco décor speaks to a different age; the Fever Ray cohort liken its frilly tiers to a giant cake. Down a backstage corridor, performer Helena Gutarra is FaceTiming her kids as the skeletal crew run through last-minute checks, clicking the neon stage lights scattered across the backdrop through their rainbow hues.

The Plunge tour started life more than nine months ago. Dreijer knew she wanted to hire only women or non-binary people – or, at least, as many as the maleheavy music industry would allow. (There are four men on the tour and nine women, including truck driver Jessica Thorzén.) She first turned to performers she knew: dancer Maryam Nikandish was part of the Shaking The Habitual tour; drummer Lili Zavala was hired for the first Fever Ray tour after responding to Dreijer’s post on a listserv – a mailing list – for female musicians in Sweden. Nikandish introduced dancer Gutarra to the fold: “She told me Karin was looking for someone with a strong voice, who loves to stand in the middle of the stage,” Gutarra says cheekily, perched on the arm of the couch backstage.

“And she found the right person!” says keyboard player Miko Hansson, who joined through Zavala, as did Diva Cruz, who she plays with in a salsa band.

On the last Fever Ray tour, Zavala was the only live musician; everything else was on a backing track. When Dreijer invited the drummer to join the production this time around, Zavala assented on the condition that everything would be performed live, not just the drums. “She was like, ‘What? How?’” says Zavala, pulling a face. “I said, ‘Yeah, we can do it! We listen on the beats, we play live.’” She mimics Dreijer’s enthusiastic response.

“All of us musicians thought that if we were going to be doing 60 shows, we wanted to play, otherwise it would not be fun,’” adds Hansson. “Even though it would involve much more work at first, it would last

“It’s not six women making a protest on stage. We’re here to give you good energy” THE RED BULLETIN

JULIE GLASSBERG, ALEXA VACHON (2)

F

ever Ray presents one of the most inscrutable fronts in music. Karin Dreijer was a gothic shaman on her self-titled 2009 debut album, her face shrouded by capes and corpse paint; at Sweden’s P3 Guld Awards the following year, the Stockholm-based artist collected the award for Best Dance Act while made up to resemble a melted claymation figure, fleshy folds of ‘skin’ cascading down her face. Interviews were cryptic and rare, the music equally terse: a claustrophobic battle cry about the isolation of motherhood.

When Dreijer re-emerged in 2017 – divorced and minus the surname Andersson – the project had opened up like a Venus flytrap. Her face may have appeared on the cover of second album Plunge, but she stared nonchalantly from between bloody rivulets that spelt ‘Fever Ray’ across her countenance. Plunge was clubbier and more confrontational than its predecessor, laying bare Dreijer’s newly explored queerness and desire in terms so frank – “I want to run my fingers up your pussy,” she declares on the album’s lead single, To The Moon And Back – that it stood as a challenge to sexual repression (and a call to arms for the liberated few who have escaped it).

Whether as one half of electronic-pop duo The Knife – with her younger brother Olof – or solo, Dreijer has always fiercely guarded her privacy, and even sought to bamboozle. (The Knife’s final tour, for their 2013 album Shaking The Habitual, was so heavily theoretical and anti-hierarchical that even audiences accustomed to their provocations almost mutinied.) Yet behind the scenes on the Fever Ray tour as it passed through Europe this March, Dreijer cultivated an atmosphere of total transparency: of community, compassion, freedom and empowerment among her predominantly – and defiantly – female performers and crew.

In an industry that struggles with gender diversity, Dreijer is smashing boundaries, breaking free of the patriarchy, and creating an enterprise that is driven

Sarah Landau’s lighting design gives Nikandish’s gaudy costume a superhuman aura

Dancer Maryam Nikandish (left) and drummer Diva Cruz limber up before the show

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longer and be a better show – we could pick up the crowd’s energy, and the other way around.”

Rather than presenting a top-down concept for the tour, Dreijer invited the five other performers to help her conceptualise the show. Nikandish says Dreijer prefers to see Fever Ray as a collective effort rather than as a solo project. “We had a meeting together, heard the music together, then we talked about the imagination, the songs,” says Zavala.

“The dramaturgy – what it would look like, what you want people to feel – is like on the Shaking The Habitual tour,” Nikandish adds. “It’s very lust-driven; doing what you think is fun and pulling it off together.”

“It feels like we’ve all been given space and a free hand to think, ‘How do we want to do this?’” says Hansson. “Musically, we can try out what we want to do, and then Karin will be super clear about what she likes. There’s been a lot of time for testing things out and finding out how we can all put a part of ourselves into the show – that goes for the lighting, the music, and the guys in the front, too. We’ve been given a lot of confidence.” The primary ethos of the show is sexual: “The right to your own body,” Nikandish continues. “The right to your sexuality, your own gender… Being free from the male gaze, the patriarchal structures that oppress sexuality, is the one big topic we have discussed.”

As conceived by Dreijer and creative director Martin Falck, each performer was given a character – eco-warrior, anarchic scientist, fashion hag, dumpster diver, and Gutarra’s shapely bodybuilder outfit with its cartoonish foam pectorals – all lonely Avengers who find community together “and have fun with each other”, says Nikandish.

“As we do!” declares Zavala. “On the stage and after the stage.”

I

n many ways, the tour is as unconventional as the artist at its centre. Five of the six performers are around the age of 40 (Hansson is 30), and four of them have children. This is uncommon, says Gutarra: “It’s like something new is happening! And so it is very important to do this tour.”

The importance of being predominantly women in a production celebrating queer, female sexual agency has struck a chord. They all reference a Swedish newspaper review of Plunge that questioned the legitimacy of a 42-year-old woman from the Stockholm suburbs expressing her sexual desires. “There was a lot of prejudice when the album came out, but I was like, ‘I love to be here, because I am over 40, I have kids, I live in the suburbs, so I can identify with this,’” says Zavala. “Why can I not talk about my sexuality? Why?” “This old woman who wants to have sex!” shrieks Nikandish in mock outrage.

“Definitely as a queer person into weird, kinky sex, sure, I’m into the message of the show,” says wry lighting designer Sarah Landau, who has worked in the past with the likes of M83, Tegan and Sara, and A Perfect Circle. “It does feel like I’m much more aligned with my true self being on this tour than I am with 44 bros, doing stadium-rock tours.”

“And it’s so nice to walk into venues and the house people are like, ‘Oh, you’re doing front of house, you’re 72

The show’s primary ethos is sexual: “The right to your own body. The right to your sexuality, your own gender”

ALEXA VACHON

Dreijer embodies positive energy and sexual liberation on stage as Fever Ray

Whether fixing hair or collaborating on ideas, Dreijer brings a level of care and respect to her team

Each performer has a character. Here, Lili Zavala dons ecowarrior garb

In an industry that struggles with gender diversity, Fever Ray is smashing boundaries 74

THE RED BULLETIN

doing lights… oh, all women!’” says sound engineer Laura Davis. “The confusion is just amazing.”

“And the bus smells better,” adds Landau.

The makeup and message of the tour may be radical, but its logistics seem plainly logical: every day, there’s a meeting before the soundcheck to air technical or emotional issues. Prior to the UK leg of the tour, everyone took a week off “to hug our kids and lovers”, as Dreijer wrote on Instagram. On days off, she has taken the performers and female crew members to Turkish saunas for scrubs and steaming; they’ve gone on boat trips, danced kizomba in Paris, used the Happy Cow app to find vegetarian restaurants, and practised yoga and meditation together.

The budget necessitates a somewhat skeletal production, meaning the slim crew don’t get a moment to themselves; one limitation of Landau’s lighting design was that she had to be able to assemble everything herself. But Dreijer is conscious of the pressures she puts on her employees. “If we’re working too hard, she’ll come out and make sure we’ve got lunch, or make us tea and bring it into the venue,” says Davis, sounding touched. “They always thank us, which is really nice,” adds Landau. “An artist thanking you for your work on a random day – it doesn’t really happen. Here, it happens all the time.”

None of this happens all the time anywhere else, apparently: the Fever Ray tour is dysfunctionally functional. Taking a week off to let people meet their

ALEXA VACHON

Rebel beats: Cruz plays her drums of war

emotional needs and family responsibilities is bad business, says tour manager Lotje Horvers, who has also worked with Robyn, M83 and The Knife, but it’s an expense that Dreijer is willing to incur.

H

orvers first worked with Dreijer on The Knife’s Shaking The Habitual tour and was surprised to be interviewed about her politics before being given the job. This is another thing that doesn’t normally happen. Horvers has now adopted the approach herself: while recruiting, she interviewed a merchandise vendor who didn’t understand why she was being quizzed about what feminism meant to her – unsurprisingly, she didn’t get the position.

This level of care and respect has made Dreijer’s group feel genuinely empowered. “It’s like I’m taking up more space in the room,” says Hansson. “And it’s been kind of painful to discover that normally I back up a little bit more when I play with mostly guys – nice guys, but we still take different roles.” She adds that being on tour has challenged her worldview, particularly concerning sexuality. “I really enjoy it because I get to learn new stuff, and rethink stuff, and I can do that in an environment that feels safe.”

Truck driver Thorzén praises a tour environment “that’s not so macho”, while Zavala remarks on its powerful energy. “Because men think of drums as masculine, they think I can’t do it, and I come back like, ‘Yes, I can,’” she says. “I make the bad energy positive. But with this tour, it’s not six women making a protest on stage. Instead, we dance. We’re here to give you good energy.”

In keeping with the tour’s sensibility, the preshow preparations don’t resemble any kind of rock ’n’ roll bacchanal. Make-up is applied, fiddly costumes wriggled into, then the performers warm up by dancing to salsa music and sharing some prosecco. Inside the theatre, now packed, the Troxy’s illuminated signs display a request from Fever Ray to “kindly leave your phones and cameras in your pockets. Share this moment with us”. They also ask that “tall people please stand back and give space to the shorter ones”. It concludes with what Horvers calls the “ethos of the tour”: “Women to the front.”

The care that Dreijer has put into nurturing her employees manifests in the show. Unusually for a London gig on a Tuesday night, the crowd dances – exuberantly, too, responding to the jungle and samba influences that writhe through Plunge’s songs thanks to Zavala and Cruz. Landau’s intuitive lighting washes each performer in her own hue, giving their gaudy costumes a superhuman aura. They look like makeshift Avengers ready to take down the patriarchy: Gutarra, Nikandish and Dreijer leading the battle cry, Cruz and Zavala beating the drums of war.

“We are so alive, we’re there, we’re dancing, we’re with you, there’s drums – what is not authentic about this moment?” Nikandish had commented before the show. Unwittingly, she was speaking for a lot more than just the spectacle playing out onstage.

Catch Fever Ray at the Body & Soul Festival at Ballinlough Castle in County Westmeath, Ireland, on June 22; bodyandsoul.ie THE RED BULLETIN

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THE NEW HOME OF GAMING AND ESPORTS IN THE UK

REDBULL.C O.U K/GAMINGSPHERE

guide

ERIC PARKER/RED BULL CONTENT POOL

Get it. Do it. See it.

TAKE THE PLUNGE IN ICELAND

Spain’s Aniol Serrasolses paddles a waterfall in eastern Iceland in 2015

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Last year, Iceland had six times as many visitors as it has residents. This weird but welcoming island needs no Instagram filter. Here’s how to have a real adventure in the land of fire and ice Words EVELYN SPENCE 77

Do it

24 HOURS Nowhere on earth besides Reykjavík can you land at 7am, be inside a volcano by noon, eat herring for dinner, and then stay out until 4am dancing to the next Björk.

The first order of business: a stop for Danish pastries and Icelandic doughnuts at Sandholt (sandholt.is), a legendary bakery that has been in operation since 1920. Next, hook up with Inside The Volcano (insidethevolcano.com), a tour that will whisk you away from town and drop you straight into the bowels of the dormant Thrihnukagigur. Then stretch your legs with a hike to the summit of Mount Esja. “You’ll get amazing views of Reykjavík and Faxaflói,” says Scott Drummond, an Aussie who recently co-founded new tour operators Hidden Iceland (hiddeniceland.is).

In town, graze your way through Hlemmur Mathöll (hlemmurmatholl.is), a new food hall in a former bus depot. Then grab a ticket to whatever is on stage at the Harpa concert hall (en.harpa.is). Remember, Reykjavík has a small-town feel: pub crawls are a real thing, and if you get sloppy on main shopping street Laugavegur, you’ll run into the same people all night. For live music, check Reykjavík Grapevine (grapevine.is) magazine, but a good bet is always Húrra (hurra.is). For dancing, Pablo Discobar (facebook.com/ discobarrvk) is so over-the-top tacky it’s hip.

SUP on the water at Jökulsárlón Glacier Lagoon

Kitsch is king at Reykjavík venue Pablo Discobar

78

STAY Located right on Laugavegur, the design-led Ion City Hotel mixes Icelandic motifs with futuristic touches; ioniceland.is Former biscuit factory Kex Hostel also has a music venue, gastropub and bar; kexhostel.is EAT 3 Frakkar is a great place to eat Icelandic staples like mixed herring and eggs and fried fish with black bread; 3frakkar.com Housed in a former stable is Dill, reputed to be the best restaurant in town, with a head chef who bikes to work so he can forage en route; dillrestaurant.is DRINK Meditation guru Tristan Gribbin is partial to the coffee at Reykjavík Roasters, which has two shops in the centre of town; reykjavikroasters.is Bryggjan Brugghús is the first microbrewery on the island; bryggjanbrugghus.is Kaffibarinn – a bar part-owned by Blur’s Damon Albarn – is cosy and candlelit in the early evening, sweaty and loud after midnight; kaffibarinn.is SOAK The Blue Lagoon is worth the hype for many, though the vibe can be closer to spring break than spa; bluelagoon.com Instead, take a dip at the geothermal beach at Nauthólsvík; visitreykjavik.is

The Vatnajökull glacier, the largest in Iceland, is full of ice caves to explore

ICELAND IN

A LONG WEEKEND “This is a land of extremes,” says Drummond.

“There are Martian landscapes, lush valleys with waterfalls around every corner, active volcanoes that erupt every three to four years, and massive glaciers sitting right on top.” Which means you only need a few days to run the gamut. First, book onto Hidden Iceland’s two-day Glacier Lagoon Tour, which takes in the black-sand beach and Qbert-like basalt columns of Reynisfjara, the 60m cascade of Seljalandsfoss waterfall, and Vatnajökull, Europe’s largest ice cap.

Most visitors to Jökulsárlón Glacier Lagoon (icelagoon.is) view it by boat, but Drummond can take you out to weave around the bussized icebergs on a stand-up paddleboard.

Back in Reykjavík, rent a car, then take yourself on a road trip that (sort of) follows the popular Golden Circle, a 300km loop through the southern uplands. Gullfoss (gullfoss.is) – a waterfall that seems to

EAT At Efstidalur II farm, the burgers come from cows on site.

Try the Farmer’s Son (blueberry jam and peanut butter – and yes, it’s good) with homemade ice cream for a chaser; efstidalur.is Geothermally heated greenhouse Friðheimar produces a tonne of tomatoes a day – and has a restaurant in the middle of the action; fridheimar.is SOAK At Laugarvatn Fontana, you can hop from toasty spring to freezing lake and back again – then eat rye bread that’s baked by the water in hot sand; fontana.is

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BEN HORTON(2), SIGURJON RAGNAR, ALEX REVERS/RED BULL CONTENT POOL, RAGNAR TH. SIGURDSSON/ARCTIC IMAGES

ICELAND IN

Iceland Dutch kitesurfer Ruben Lenten at Iceland’s Westfjords in 2016

ICELAND IN

A WEEK

STAY Ion Adventure Hotel sits on lava fields and is a quick hop from Thingvellir National Park, where parliament was established in the year 930; ioniceland.is

disappear into the earth – and the original Geysir are tour-bus magnets, but, advises Drummond, don’t miss the 3km hike into Reykjadalur, a hot river in an open valley. At Silfra (silfra.org), you can snorkel or scuba in the clear waters between the Eurasian and North American tectonic plates.

The Ion Adventure Hotel is an hour – and a world – away from Reykjavík

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Only about 10 per cent of Iceland’s visitors make it all the way out to the Westfjords (westfjords.is), a 22,000km2 peninsula that spreads its claws into the Denmark Strait and has a legitimate end-of-the-world feel.

Here, the roads are potholed, the storms are ferocious, and the landscape is jumbled, wide and empty – save for Arctic foxes and sea birds (Látrabjarg has one of the world’s largest colonies of puffins and razorbills).

Occasionally, polar bears drift in on ice from Greenland. “It’s a great place to be alone with nature and feel small and insignificant,” says Guðrún Stefánsdóttir, a scientist who works at the Icelandic Medicines Agency and grew up in Reykjavík.

“It’s incredibly peaceful.”

Even Icelanders have found it too harsh here: the remains of abandoned farmhouses and workshops dot Hornstrandir, a rugged peninsula of greener-than-green hillsides and incisor-like geology that’s reachable only by boat from the Westfjords’ largest town, Ísafjörður. But it makes for a dramatic fourday-plus backpacking trip along the edges of 450m cliffs, over sheer basalt dykes that drop into the ocean, and through hidden valleys. If you can, unroll your sleeping bag in Hornbjargsviti lighthouse (fi.is), which opens up for business, of sorts, each summer. Unless you’re comfortable with maps and GPS navigation, sign up with one of the few companies that offer multi-day adventures – Trek Iceland (trek.is) runs a six-day tour.

STAY Guesthouse Kirkjuból í Bjarnardal is a remote, familyrun farmstead in Önundarfjörður with spectacular views down a fjord; kirkjubol.is (There are at least three other Kirkjubóls nearby, so make sure you’re aiming for the right one) EAT/DRINK There’s no menu at Tjöruhúsið in Ísafjörður – they just serve up whatever is fresh from the sea on any given day. “No nonsense, only good ingredients,” says Guðrún Stefánsdóttir.

Locals and tourists share communal tables, and live bands often keep it hopping till late; facebook.com/ tjoruhusid SOAK Brave a gravel road past the tiny town of Djúpavík to Krossneslaug, an isolated pool sitting right on a rocky beach; facebook.com/ krossneslaug The tiny hot pots of Pollurinn (“the Puddle”) are a few minutes from Tálknafjörður. One of them tops 46°C; westfjords.is

Despite its proximity to the Arctic Circle, Iceland has a temperate climate

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Gear UP Whether you prefer tarmac or heading off track, here’s the very best of bike Photography TIM KENT

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City guide

GOING SOUTH

In recent years, Peckham in southeast London has built a reputation for offering the capital’s most vibrant nightlife. Here’s our pick of where to eat, drink or just hang out Words FLORIAN OBKIRCHER

Copeland Park is another summer Peckham hot spot

90

THE RED BULLETIN

London

ONE NIGHT IN PECKHAM

Enjoy cocktails and a panoramic view at Near & Far

One of Peckham’s best beer gardens: The White Horse

PECKHAM LEVELS Famed for its stunning views and relaxed atmosphere, Frank’s Café, located on the rooftop of a disused car park on Rye Lane, has become a staple of summer evenings in south-east London.

Since December, this Peckham mainstay has shared the building with a new, multifaceted community and events space.

Spread across the six floors beneath Frank’s Café, Peckham Levels unites more than 70 traders and small businesses, 65 per cent of them local.

RYAN DINHAM

From morning yoga classes at LEVELSIX to brunch at the vegan café Wildflower (try the seitan sausage sarnie) and lunch at one of seven street food traders (Nandine’s Kurdish cuisine is a

By night, Wildflower turns into Ghost Notes

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highlight), Peckham Levels has plenty to offer. You could get a haircut at Cahoona’s Hair Hub (run by the woman who crafted Amy Winehouse’s beehive), try pottery classes in the afternoon, and later sip biodynamic wines at Lady Godiva or the signature Peckham Sunrise cocktail at Near & Far, before enjoying the tunes at Ghost Notes (recent acts include Detroit soul/funk veteran Amp Fiddler and Afrobeat legend Tony Allen).

Southwark Council’s original plans to demolish the building have been put on hold, proving that Frank’s Café and Peckham Levels are leaving their mark on the community – not only because they attract new people from across London, but also because of the support that Peckham Levels’ organisers give to local creatives. As part of its Creators in Residence programme, the project offers 10 studios at discount rates to local artists who otherwise couldn’t afford membership.

95a Rye Lane, London SE15 4ST; peckhamlevels.org

6PM

THE WHITE HORSE The old-

man’s boozer turned trendy pub impresses with its big patio. whitehorsepeckham.co.uk

PRINCE OF PECKHAM

If you fancy disco yoga, swing dance or just a pint, POP is the place. princeofpeckham.co.uk

8PM

BAR STORY/PECKHAM SPRINGS Housed beneath the

railway arches of Peckham Rye, these two gallery bars attract art lovers and cocktail fans alike.

Bar Story also serves a great selection of pizzas and sides, while Peckham Springs’ eclectic list of events includes an evening car boot sale. barstory.co.uk; peckhamsprings.co.uk

VOODOO RAYS

The capital’s coolest pizza chain set up shop in Peckham last year. voodoorays.com/peckham

FRANK’S CAFÉ

The 10th-floor rooftop bar is hugely popular, so arrive early on sunny days. frankscafe.org.uk

11PM

THE FOUR QUARTERS

Retro arcade cabs, cheese-heavy food and craft beer: enough said. geocities.fourquarters bar.co.uk

Crate digging at Rye Wax

1AM

RYE WAX

Located in the basement of the Bussey Building arts complex, this record shop by day and club by night is Peckham’s hot spot for music lovers. ryewax.com

TOLA Trendy without being snobby: Peckham Springs

Specialising in disco and house, this hidden gem hosts some of Peckham’s most exciting parties. facebook.com/tolapeckham

91

GUIDE

See it

RIDERS ON THE STORM

Hawaiian surfers versus El Niño; mountain-bike mayhem, and the heroes of skateboard filmmaking.

See them all on Red Bull TV this month…

WATCH RED BULL TV ANYWHERE

Red Bull TV is a global digital entertainment destination featuring programming that is beyond the ordinary and is available any time, anywhere. Go online at redbull.tv, download the app, or connect via your Smart TV. To find out more, visit redbull.tv

92

9 July

ON DEMAND

NERVOUS LAUGHTER

Off the north shore of Maui in Hawaii, huge 18m waves can be surfed. This break, known as Jaws, attracts elite surfers from around the world, but it’s the local crew – friends since childhood – who regularly steal the show. Through peer pressure and rivalry, the group have pushed each other to unprecedented performances. Providing an insider’s view of the crew during the 2015-16 El Niño season, this film is a tale of nerves, injury, triumph and true friendship.

THE RED BULLETIN

June/July The wave at Jaws in Hawaii is one of the most fearsome on the planet

Hear hand-picked music and interviews with influential artists.

This month’s pick is…

24

June

LIVE

CRANKWORX LES GETS

After rain cancelled play in 2016, last year’s instalment of this five-day MTB event in France was breathtaking.

Fingers crossed for the same this month as riders eye the ultimate prize: the Triple Crown of Slopestyle.

Friends Joao Marco Maffini and Tyler Larronde wait for the right moment

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TAKE SHELTER PRODUCTIONS, BARTEK WOLINSKI/RED BULL CONTENT POOL, ISAAC BOXALL

BIEN BUENA

7

18

June

LIVE

UCI DH & XCO, VAL DI SOLE

Northern Italy plays host to the mountain-biking World Cup once more for this seventh stop of the 2018 season.

Watch out for skids, skills and thrills on the steep downhill course and the physical cross-country route.

June

ON DEMAND

ROLLING: WITHOUT FOOTAGE IT’S FICTION

This documentary follows skate filmmakers including Ty Evans (LA) and Henry Edwards-Wood (London) to discover what goes into producing their amazing videos.

20 June ON AIR

One of Red Bull Radio’s newest shows explores the musical connections between New York City, Latin America and the Caribbean. Every third Wednesday of the month (9-11pm BST), hosts Uproot Andy and Riobamba play the hottest new tracks from genres including reggaetón, cumbia, Latin trap and champeta, and discuss the histories, contexts, and exciting topics of the day within Latinx communities.

LISTEN AT REDBULLRADIO.COM

93

GUIDE

Do it

June/July

15

to 17 June

F1H20 WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS

The name says it all: it’s the Formula One of inshore powerboat racing. Returning to the capital for the first time in 33 years, the UIM F1H2O Grand Prix of London sees high-powered, single-seater catamarans race the 1.72km River Thames circuit at speeds of up to 225kph. Qualifying takes place on Saturday, and the weekend also features races between 112kph F4-S boats, demos from historic racing boats, and a 14m-long, V12 offshore powerboat.

River Thames, London; f1h2o.com

1 94

Built in 1891, Herne Hill Velodrome is one of the world’s oldest cycle-racing tracks – ideal for a vintage bike party.

Guests in 1940s dress will enjoy music, exhibitions, champers on the lawn, and races. Hopefully the latter will go better than the Olympics event in 1948: it was run after 9pm in such poor light the photo-finish camera couldn’t snap it. Herne Hill Velodrome, London; cyclingrevival.com

15

to 24 June Robert Smith’s Meltdown

In previous years, the line-up of the artist-curated Meltdown festival has been chosen by the likes of David Bowie, Nick Cave and MIA. This time, it’s the turn of The Cure’s Robert Smith, who has invited the Manic Street Preachers, Mogwai, Nine Inch Nails, The Libertines and more, as well as performing his own set with special guests. The Cure will be at British Summer Time in Hyde Park on July 7, too. Southbank Centre, London; southbankcentre.co.uk

13

to 14 July The Muppets Take The O2 Much like Elvis Presley, The Muppets have never performed in the UK. Until now. Based on the format of the TV show, this concert will see Kermit, Miss Piggy and the gang belt out classics such as Mahna Mahna, as well as a few famous covers, while, no doubt, disaster unfolds in the wings – and Statler and Waldorf heckle from the expensive balcony seats.

The O2, London; theo2.co.uk

to 31 July Red Bull Million Mile Commute Tired of traffic jams, and stinky armpits on public transport? Why not run or cycle to and from work? Last year, we challenged UK workers to clock up a combined commute of one million miles – and we hit our target after 84 days.

This year, we want you to do it all over again, but in just one month. Sign up at the Red Bull Million Mile Commute website and travel by bike or foot for a chance to win great prizes.

SIMON PALFRADER, GETTY IMAGES

14

to 16 June World Cycling Revival

Across the UK; redbull.co.uk/millionmilecommute

THE RED BULLETIN

THE RED BULLETIN PROMOTION

The Maluku Flying Frog Eco uses innovative green chemistry.

Available at Surfdome

CLEANING THE WAVES Surfdome supports a Sustainable Surf culture

Surfdome aims to eradicate as much plastic as possible from its operations

PHOTOS: FMLY CRTV, NICK PUMPHREY

F

or too long, marine plastic has been a major issue in the surf industry, polluting the very oceans that surfers love to enjoy. Harmful plastic continues to litter the lineup – a whole rubbish truck’s worth finds its way into the ocean every minute. Surfdome is on a mission to eradicate plastic from its operations, and to also educate others about its use. To date, Surfdome has eliminated 74 per cent of plastic from its own packaging. Ending the damaging cycle of plastic production is essential to the preservation of our oceans, and Surfdome continues to make sustainable choices to clean up its operational footprint.

surfdome.com/sustainability

Surfdome endorses the Sustainable Surf #DeepBlueLife movement

GUIDE

Check it

THE RED BULLETIN WORLDWIDE

SWITZERLAND ANNA BADER

Women pushing the boundaries in elite sports, the world’s fastest 20-year-old, an icon in electronic music, and a digital/ analogue footballing friendship – just some of the highlights from our issues around the globe this month

Meet the German cliff diver who regularly plunges from a height of 22m, but still describes herself as a coward

”I TRY TO MAKE WHAT’S MISSING IN MY LIFE” Brian Eno’s name is synonymous with innovation. Since the early ’70s, when his out-there synthesizer sounds were an integral part of glam-rock band Roxy Music’s success, the Suffolk-born musician has been ahead of his time. Eno is credited as the inventor of the ‘ambient music’ genre, and has shared his talents as a producer, most notably on David Bowie’s late-’70s ‘Berlin Trilogy’: the albums Low, Heroes and Lodger. He’s also a successful audio-visual artist with numerous exhibitions to his name. The 70-year-old is still a highly sought-after – and selective – producer: he has helped U2 and Coldplay reinvent themselves, but turned down the Red Hot Chili Peppers eight times, according to the band’s singer, Anthony Kiedis.

The reason for Eno’s popularity among his peers? He challenges them, musically as well as intellectually. He encourages them to overcome habitual thinking patterns and to try something new. “I wanted to hear music that had not yet happened,” Eno once said of his own creative process. With this in mind, the release of his 2017 album, Reflection, 52

SHAMIL TANNA

He launched Roxy Music, inspired Bowie, reinvented Coldplay, and invented a music genre. He’s a successful visual artist, too. Affable overachiever Brian Eno on the power of play, the myth of repetition, and finding contemplation in the modern world Words MARCEL ANDERS

THE RED BULLETIN

UNITED KINGDOM BRIAN ENO From the glam-rock days of Roxy Music to inventing the ambient genre, the synth pioneer reveals what keeps him inspired

Agarrada: Coxsey tiene la mirada en el oro olímpico.

SÓLO EXISTE UN CAMINO

Las habilidades de SHAUNA COXSEY en el bouldering la han convertido en una de las escaladoras de competencia más exitosas en Gran Bretaña. Pero cuando la escalada haga su debut en Tokio 2020, comprenderá tres disciplinas y en dos de ellas no tiene experiencia. La campeona mundial tendrá que ser estudiante una vez más Texto MATT BLAKE Fotografía RICK GUEST 50

MEXICO SHAUNA COXSEY Olympic gold is within reach of the champion climber – but first she must relearn her craft

96

“FOCUS ON THE THINGS YOU CAN INFLUENCE” FRANCE PIERRE GASLY The 22-year-old Formula One driver – and cover star of our French issue – knows how to achieve his goals

THE RED BULLETIN

July

GLOBAL TEAM DER E-SPORTLER Name:

DER PROFI-KICKER

Cihan Yasarlar

Name:

Alter: 25

Alter: 22 Sportart: Fußball

Sportart: „FIFA 18“ Größter Erfolg: Europameister 2017

Größter Erfolg: Confederations-Cup-Sieg 2017 Markenzeichen: sprintet jedem Verteidiger davon (auf 30 Metern fast so schnell wie Usain Bolt)

Markenzeichen: verschleißt die Vorwärts-Taste als Erstes (aus Liebe zum Offensivspiel)

Wenige schießen präziser aufs Tor als sie: Nationalstürmer TIMO WERNER mit dem Fuß, Red Bull-E-Sportler CIHAN YASARLAR mit dem Controller.

Beide wollen in ihren Disziplinen Weltmeister werden – und haben auch sonst mehr gemeinsam, als du denkst.

Bullen unter sich: Timo und Cihan spielen beide für RB Leipzig – in der Fußball-Bundesliga bzw. auf E-Sport-Turnieren.

46

UNITED KINGDOM

Timo Werner

Text DAVID MAYER Fotos CHRISTOPH NEUMANN

GIPFEL DER ENDGEGNER GERMANY TIMO WERNER AND CIHAN YASARLAR

Star striker Werner and professional gamer Yasarlar – players for RB Leipzig’s football and eSports squads respectively – talk friendship and mental strength

AUSTRIA MAX VERSTAPPEN He’s the youngest ever winner of a Grand Prix. Now 20, the Belgian-born F1 sensation reveals how he got there – and where he goes from here

CARISSA MOORE’S BALANCING ACT As the three-time world champion surfer has discovered, the quest for real greatness sometimes begins with a journey to figure out who you really are.

Words JEN SEE

Photography TREVOR PIKHART

26

USA CARISSA MOORE Winning is a breeze for the three-time world champion surfer. The real challenge, says the 25-year-old American, was finding herself

THE RED BULLETIN

“It’s just so hard on the body,” says Moore, describing what it’s like to surf the pool at Surf Ranch, where she was photographed for The Red Bulletin on April 27.

The Red Bulletin United Kingdom, ISSN 2308-5894 Editor Ruth Morgan Associate Editor Tom Guise Music Editor Florian Obkircher Chief Sub-Editor Davydd Chong Sub-Editor Nick Mee Publishing Manager Ollie Stretton Advertisement Sales Mark Bishop, mark.bishop@redbull.com Thomas Ryan, thomas.ryan@redbull.com Printed by Prinovis GmbH & Co KG, Printing Company Nuremberg, 90471 Nuremberg, Germany UK Office 155-171 Tooley Street, London SE1 2JP 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 Basic subscription rate is £20.00 per year. International rates are available The Red Bulletin is published 10 times a year. Please allow four to six weeks for delivery of the first issue Customer Service +44 (0)1227 277248 subs@uk.redbulletin.com

Editor-in-Chief Alexander Macheck Deputy Editors-in-Chief Waltraud Hable, Andreas Rottenschlager Creative Director Erik Turek Art Directors Kasimir Reimann (Stv. CD), Miles English Head of Photo Fritz Schuster Deputy Head of Photography Marion Batty Photo Director Rudi Übelhör Production Editor Marion Lukas-Wildmann Managing Editor Ulrich Corazza Editors Stefan Wagner (Chief Copy Editor), Christian Eberle-Abasolo, Arek Piatek Design Marco Arcangeli, Marion BernertThomann, Martina de Carvalho-Hutter, Kevin Goll, Carita Najewitz Photo Editors Susie Forman, Ellen Haas, Eva Kerschbaum, Tahira Mirza Global Head of Media Sales Gerhard Riedler Head of Media Sales International Peter Strutz Head of Commercial Publishing Birgit Gasser Head of Publishing Development and Product Management Stefan Ebner Head of Creative Markus Kietreiber Creative Solutions Eva Locker (manager), Verena Schörkhuber, Edith Zöchling-Marchart Country Management and Marketing Sara Varming (Ltg.), Magdalena Bonecker, Julia Gerber, Kristina Hummel, Melissa Stutz Commercial Design Peter Knehtl (manager), Sasha Bunch, Simone Fischer, Martina Maier Advertising Placement Andrea Tamás-Loprais Production Wolfgang Stecher (manager), Walter O. Sádaba, Friedrich Indich, Michael Menitz (digital) Repro Clemens Ragotzky (manager), Claudia Heis, Nenad Isailovi c,̀ Maximilian Kment, Josef Mühlbacher Office Management Kristina Krizmanic, Yvonne Tremmel IT Systems Engineer Michael Thaler Subscriptions and Distribution Peter Schiffer (manager), Klaus Pleninger (distribution), Nicole Glaser (distribution), Yoldaş Yarar (subscriptions) Global Editorial Office Heinrich-Collin-Straße 1, A-1140 Vienna Phone +43 1 90221-28800, Fax +43 1 90221-28809 Web www.redbulletin.com Red Bull Media House GmbH Oberst-Lepperdinger-Straße 11–15, A-5071 Wals bei Salzburg, FN 297115i, Landesgericht Salzburg, ATU63611700 General Manager and Publisher Andreas Kornhofer Directors Dietrich Mateschitz, Gerrit Meier, Dietmar Otti, Christopher Reindl

97

GUIDE

Action highlight

Makes you fly

Chilean artist Aura Castro’s 1997 sculpture Templo del Sol (Sun Temple) is one of the most spectacular sights in her country’s capital, Santiago.

For Marcelo Jiménez, though, viewing the structure was not enough: the 21-year-old had to pay homage as only a local skateboarding hero could.

The next issue of THE RED BULLETIN is out on August 14 98

THE RED BULLETIN

NICOLAS GANTZ/RED BULL CONTENT POOL

Skate of the art

THE ALL NEW GENIUS

ANY TRAIL. ANY TIME. NO SHORTCUTS When designing the all new Genius, we wanted to finish with a bike that was perfect for our backyard. We wanted a bike that could clear any climb and tackle any descent.

A bike for any trail, any time. What we got is exactly that, and much more. Capable, lightweight, fun, the all new Genius is just calling for the mountains.

SCOTT-SPORTS.COM © SCOTT SPORTS SA 2018 | Photo: Scott Markewitz

A N E N T I R E LY N E W C L A S S O F YA C H T

PRINCESS YACHTS PRESENT A CRAFT FILMS PRODUCTION R/EVOLUTION STARRING THE ALL-NEW R35 TECHNICAL PARTNER BAR TECHNOLOGIES MANUFACTURED BY PRINCESS YACHTS LIMITED STYLING BY THE PRINCESS DESIGN STUDIO IN COLLABORATION WITH PININFARINA POWERED BY VOLVO PENTA ART DIRECTION JAUME VILARDELL & BSUR SOUNDTRACK GANDO & DR K’S ‘REFOOLUTION’ ANIMATION BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS

10.09.2018 #EXPERIENCETHEREVOLUTION P R I N C E S S YA C H T S . C O M