UK EDITION NOVEMBER 2019, £3.50
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DANNY MACASKILL 10 years of bike trials and triumphs
DEEP FREEZE Freediving beneath Arctic ice floes
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PATH OF MOST RESISTANCE Whoever said “Good things come to those who wait” hasn’t met the stars of this month’s The Red Bulletin. There’s trail-riding superstar Danny MacAskill (page 56), who, a decade ago, worked in an Edinburgh bike shop and dreamt of making a huge gap jump onto the roof of the store next door. Two years earlier, Anna von Boetticher (page 30) tried diving without an air tank. Today, she’s our cover star, freediving beneath icebergs. Strongman Mike McCastle (page 40) reprogrammed his own survival mechanism to motivate himself to help others. Japanese band DYGL (page 48) wanted to emulate their western idols; in the process they’ve found themselves at war with the hypocrisy of their homeland’s music industry. Meanwhile, Michael Kiwanuka (page 26) kickstarted his music career by walking out on Kanye, and actor Linda Hamilton (page 24) is battling Terminators and Hollywood ageism at a youthful 63 years old.
CONTRIBUTORS THIS ISSUE
MAUREEN O’HAGAN
The Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalist has met many surprising characters in her career, but none quite like strongman Mike McCastle. “Before I sat down with Mike, I had a picture in my mind that turned out to be completely wrong,” she says. “I don’t think I’ve met someone so different from what his list of achievements would suggest.” Page 40
STUART KENNY
For the Edinburgh-based writer, interviewing Danny MacAskill was an achievement unlocked. “I’ve been a follower since 2009, watching him ride his bike along railings in The Meadows without impaling himself,” he says. “Ten years later, it was a few hundred yards from that railing that we chatted. They say don’t meet your heroes, but if that hero is Danny, you’re safe.” Page 56 TOBIAS FRIEDRICH (COVER)
EDITOR’S LETTER
For photographer Tobias Friedrich, shooting in Greenland’s fjords wasn’t easy: “It was -2°C, so Anna [von Boetticher] only had 15-20 minutes in such an extreme environment.” Page 30 04
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CONTENTS November 2019
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The power of 10: Danny MacAskill talks us through his decade of spectacular trials and YouTube hits
08 Fantasy island: psychedelic
paragliding in Bali
10 Ahead of the curve: shadow
skating in Singapore
11 Photo finish: the climbers who
wouldn’t be beaten
12 Perpetual ocean: an encounter
with one of Hawaii’s fiercest waves
15 Can you dig it: Metronomy’s
Joseph Mount shares his four favourite garden-themed tracks 16 Coffee break: the man who makes surfboards from takeaway cups 18 Fly by night: check into Tokyo’s flight-simulator hotel room 20 Balanced view: expert tips from German slackliner Lukas Irmler 22 Bring the noise: the ‘museum’ conserving sounds of the past
2 4 Linda Hamilton Terminator’s Sarah Connor on reprising her most iconic role
26 Michael Kiwanuka The singer-songwriter whose
route to success wasn’t Yeezy
28 Beauden Barrett Back in black: home truths from
the New Zealand rugby ace
30 Freediving
Fjord escort: beneath the ice with diver Anna von Boetticher
DAVE MACKISON
4 0 Mike McCastle America’s very own Hercules 48 DYGL
Rocking Japan to its foundations
56 Danny MacAskill The Scottish MTB rider revisits
his career highlights to date THE RED BULLETIN
70 Pressure drop: American
skydiver Tom Noonan and the Mount Everest freefall that became a labour of love 80 Meet Erwan Le Corre, the French physical trainer whose fitness regime takes you back to nature 81 In the world of gaming, the FIFA franchise is a colossus. We explore how the football title grew from meagre-budget minnow to league leader 82 Unmissable dates for your calendar 83 This month’s highlights on Red Bull TV 85 Equipment: watches for every terrain, plus the hiking, biking and grooming kit you’ll want to be using this month 98 Bird’s-eye biking: freeriding with a drone in France 07
MOUNT AGUNG, BALI
Tripping the lıght fantastic
SERGE SHAKUTO / RED BULL ILLUME
“A trippy full moon in Bali” is how surf coach Ivan Fominykh describes this amazing shot of him paragliding through the air near Mount Agung, the island’s active volcano. While it appears to have captured a psychedelic night-time light show, the image was actually achieved thanks to a combination of clever photography and specialist equipment. “I took this shot using an LED light strap,” says photographer Serge Shakuto. “It was shot with a 20-second-long exposure and one strobe light with a wireless remote.” Instagram: @shakuto
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SINGAPORE
Curves and shadows Shot from above by drone, this photo was taken in Singapore during a session with members of the country’s tight local skate scene. The image, which uses shadow play and the natural lines of the park, is just one in a collection snapped by photographer Ebrahim Adam and shortlisted for Red Bull Illume’s Instagram community vote in June. “Stoked that three of my images have been selected,” Adam wrote in his Instagram post. Instagram: @ebra_cadabra
BIDEAN NAM BIAN, SCOTLAND
Saving face
EBRAHIM ADAM/RED BULL ILLUME, HAMISH FROST/RED BULL ILLUME
When climbers Guy Robertson and Greg Boswell attempted the summer route at Bidean nam Bian, near Glen Coe in Scotland, in 2017, they hadn’t anticipated failure, but that’s how the day ended. Returning to the location later that year to complete the climb, they took along photographer Hamish Frost to record their triumph. This shot went on to win Red Bull Illume’s Best of Instagram category this June. “It’s awesome for Scottish winter climbing to get more exposure on a worldwide stage,” says Frost. “It’s bold, hard, technical climbing in unforgiving conditions, and often it goes without much fanfare.” Instagram: @hamishfrost
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RYAN CRAIG/RED BULL ILLUME
PE’AHI, HAWAII
Rider on the storm Ask someone to imagine surfing in Hawaii and they’ll most likely think of blue skies, clear waters, and dudes throwing the shaka sign. But, as this image shows, that’s not always the true picture. The dramatic shot was taken by Ryan ‘Chachi’ Craig, who captions it “a tale of trying to wrangle the biggest catch, on the windiest day, at a notoriously moody and dangerous spot, Pe’ahi. [Hawaiian surfer] Nathan Florence trying to read a turbulent ocean while also trying to avoid being blown away into the great blue ocean. What a day”. Instagram: @chachfiles
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METRONOMY
Hanging out in the green room When he’s not writing indie-pop anthems, you’ll find Metronomy’s Joseph Mount in his garden. Here, he picks four horticultural tracks
GREGOIRE ALEXANDRE
MARCEL ANDERS
Formed in 1999, Metronomy have created their own idiosyncratic synth-pop style over the years, influenced by everything from ’60s psych-rock and electronica to Prince and NERD. The British band regularly feature in music magazines’ best-of-the year lists, and their albums have gone top 10 in France as well as in the UK. For their sixth album, Metronomy Forever, founder Joseph Mount found inspiration in his own backyard. “Gardening is something I’ve become very involved in,” says the 37-year-old songwriter, and this passion has had an impact on his personal playlist. Here are four of his green-fingered favourites… Metronomy Forever is out now; metronomy.co.uk
Talking Heads
Pull Up The Roots (1983) “It’s a pun, isn’t it? It’s about pulling up the roots when you’re gardening. It’s what you’ve got to do with, like, potatoes. In gardening, I’m sort of the muscle, and Mariam, my girlfriend, is the more creative gardener. So I do things like rotovate, which is turning the soil. I get rid of weeds, do big destructive work. That’s my speciality.” THE RED BULLETIN
The Kinks
Stevie Wonder
Miles Davis
“Gardening is about seeing yourself, seeing the human cycle and the seasons and things like that. This is a good track to play when you’re literally getting ready to garden. It gets you in the mood to grab your trowel and put on your gloves. It also reminds you about the futility of what you’re doing, which is essentially trying to fight nature.”
“This is about wanting to come back as a flower when you die. Which is a nice idea, but one thing I’ve learnt is that growing flowers is actually one of the least gratifying things. It’s an incredibly laborious task, because you’re always having to split them and reseed stuff. It’s a super-involved type of gardening, so I don’t really do that. I destroy things.”
“As a teenage boy, I’d have breakfast at 11am on weekends. I’d be listening to some Miles [Davis] and watch my parents in the garden. I couldn’t really understand what they were doing, but this track is 16 minutes long, so it’s a good one to get you into some kind of zone. Like, if you have a long task – weeding, that kind of thing – it’s nice. Give it a try.”
The Village Green Preservation Society (1968)
Come Back As A Flower (1979)
Concierto De Aranjuez (Adagio) (1960)
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Dunkin’ without dumpin’ New Hampshire surfer Korey Nolan is bringing attention to throwaway culture through his boards made from recycled coffee cups
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As lovers of the ocean, most surfers are defenders of the environment. The boards and equipment they use, however, are far less eco-conscious, made from non-recyclable materials with a large carbon footprint. One surfer fighting back against environmentally unfriendly waste is Korey Nolan, 32, a shaper from New Hampshire who has created a board from more than 700 recycled Dunkin’ Donuts cups. Nolan’s board was inspired by the profusion of discarded coffee cups he saw in his local area. “I wanted to make what people throw away daily more apparent, to make them question it,” he says. “I collected a thousand Styrofoam cups in less than 10 months, just from family and friends. They started saying that I’d made them realise how much take-out coffee they bought.” The surfboard was created by compressing the cups in a mould, which were then set with bamboo and bio-based epoxy. Last October, it won second
place in a challenge, hosted by Californian brand Vissla, to make a ride-able piece of surf equipment from garbage or recycled materials. But Nolan doesn’t want his board’s success to encourage the continued use of Styrofoam by companies. “If you start using these items as source material for boards, you’re still creating a second-hand demand. Styrofoam has been around for almost 80 years and every piece ever made is still out there, because it doesn’t biodegrade. I want my board to raise awareness of that.” Instagram: @koreytnolan THE RED BULLETIN
KOREY NOLAN, AARON MCNULTY
SUSTAINABLE SURFING
LOU BOYD
Clockwise from left: Nolan takes his surfboard back to its birthplace for coffee; the board before shaping; fin detail; the Vissla contest logo
MAXX-D SYNC 3300 LUMENS HANDLEBAR MOUNTED DIABLO SYNC 1850 LUMENS HELMET MOUNTED SYNC allows you to control the light with a remote switch and to make custom programs in the Exposure SYNC App, additionally both helmet and handlebar lights can be simultaneously controlled with a single remote via Bluetooth connectivity. App is available in both iOS and Android platforms.
The Superior Cockpit Room at the Haneda Excel: go to sleep in Tokyo and wake up in, er… Tokyo
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HANEDA EXCEL HOTEL TOKYU
The ultimate flying visit Check into the Japanese hotel with a lifesize Boeing flight simulator in one of its rooms LOU BOYD
says a representative for the Haneda Excel. “Under the guidance of a former captain who actually has a lot of flight experience, you can experience the operation of the aeroplane.” A night in the twin-bedded room costs 25,300 yen (£195) per night. However, guests cannot simply book in and play pilot all night long: the 90-minute flight simulation costs an extra 30,000 yen (£230) on top of the standard room rate and must only be controlled with an instructor present at all times. Also, guests are strictly forbidden from entering the simulator unsupervised or touching its handles at any other point during their stay. If you fancy a turn in the simulator at the Haneda Excel, you’d better act fast: the room has been entirely booked up for its first two months, and there are only a few upcoming vacancies remaining. tokyuhotels.co.jp
TOKYUHOTELSJAPAN.COM/HANEDA EXCEL HOTEL
When touching down after a long flight, the last thing most people want to think about is having to board another aeroplane. But that’s clearly not the case for every traveller. Which is why the Haneda Excel Hotel Tokyu has just created a guest room that allows visitors to continue their flight experience. Named the ‘Superior Cockpit Room’, the new space is fitted with a flight simulator that mimics a Boeing 737-800 flight from Tokyo to Osaka’s Itami Airport. Also on hand is an instructor with extensive experience of piloting Boeing planes, so guests can learn to fly like a pro. There is some meaning behind this madness: the hotel is connected to Tokyo’s Haneda International Airport and boasts a view of two of the main runways from most of its rooms, so it’s already a favourite stopover for flight enthusiasts. “We wanted to create something very ‘airport hotel’,”
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“It comes down to a tolerance of frustration. You’ll fail a lot before you succeed”
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THE RED BULLETIN
LUKAS IRMLER
Picking up the slack
Irmler walked his first slackline in 2006 and has gone on to break two Guinness World Records and set various highline standards
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VALENTIN RAPP
LOU BOYD
Before you set foot on a slackline, read and digest these tips from Germany’s world-record breaker
Slacklining is very simple and, at the same time, immensely hard. The sport may merely involve walking from one end of a length of flat webbing to the other, but only a small percentage of people have mastered it. One of these is Lukas Irmler. “In the beginning, slacklining didn’t feel at all possible to me,” says the 31-year-old German. “But I kept practising and practising and I started to make progress. After crossing my first little slackline and looking back at it, I was amazed at how I’d been able to make something that seemed impossible possible.” Irmler has now walked some of the world’s most impressive and intimidating slacklines and highlines, most notably this August when he set the record for the longest highline walk ever: 2,000m at Ville d’Asbestos in Quebec, Canada. “It was a long-standing dream of mine to have that pure record,” Irmler explains. “If you keep pushing yourself to the
outer limits of the sport, you push the sport with you. That was a really special moment for me.” Here, Irmler shares five of his top slacklining tips. “I think [success in the sport] comes down to a tolerance of frustration,” he says. “You will fail a lot before you succeed. You just have to be passionate and persistent enough to keep on going and continue to believe.” lukas-irmler.com
1. Take it easy “Start on a short, low slackline and practise until you can get across without falling.”
2. Ditch the shoes “Going barefoot will mean you get a much better feeling for the line itself.”
3. Face forward
“Place your feet forward in the direction of the line, not facing outwards. This way, you’ll be facing the line and the anchor.”
4. Check your poise
“Maintain a little bit of a bend in your knees and ensure that you keep your arms up high throughout. People often forget to use them for balance.”
5. Keep your focus “Remain focused on one point at the very end of the slackline. Many people make the mistake of looking down at their feet.”
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Blasts from the past These once-commonplace sounds have largely disappeared from our lives. But, thanks to an online archive, all is not lost
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A corded telephone, the handle to wind down a car window, the first Nintendo Entertainment System games console – their working noises were known to you, but your children and/or younger friends have probably never heard them. It’s almost as if they’ve been lost in time. But, for Daniel Chun and Jan Derksen, the German founders of audiovisual communication agency Chunderksen, the silence has grown too loud, so they have set up a “museum of sounds threatened with extinction”. Conserve the Sound is an online audio treasury for our ears, which showcases objects in danger of disappearing from our aural memories. “These days, the visual dominates and sound seems to play a secondary role,” explains Derksen. “We wanted to change that. Normally people collect paintings, illustrations, classic designs or sculptures and
curate them in an exhibition or museum. But collecting sounds is rare. We were fascinated by the idea of creating a multimedia space or a museum of sounds threatened with extinction.” Ninety-nine per cent of the objects and sounds in this growing interactive collection of audio memories (free of charge to everyone) were sourced and recorded by the duo themselves; the rest have been contributed. “You can send us sounds you’ve recorded yourself,” says Derksen. “Just attach them to an email, or go to the site’s upload section. There, you’ll find the information you need on how to get the right picture of the object and best record its sound.” Conserve the sounds dearest to you and they’ll be available to our collective memory for all eternity. Or, at least, for as long as the website exists… conservethesound.de THE RED BULLETIN
CHUNDERKSEN/CONSERVETHESOUND.DE
CONSERVE THE SOUND
HANS HAMMER
Above: exhibits range from an 8mm film projector to a manual typewriter. Below left: Chun (left) and Derksen
9 & 13 NEWBURGH STREET, LONDON, W1F FILSON.COM/UK
Linda Hamilton
Age against the machine At 63 years old, the Terminator star is back, fighting killer robots from the future and tired attitudes from the past Words TOM GUISE Photography JOHN RUSSO
To prepare for the role of Sarah Connor in 1991 sci-fi thriller Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Linda Hamilton enlisted an Israeli ex-commando to train her in martial arts and weapons handling. “I learnt to load clips, change mags, verify kills – it was vicious stuff,” she said of the experience. Working out six days a week, she would run 12km and bench-press 40kg. Co-star Arnold Schwarzenegger described her transformation as “extraordinary” – more so because her regime began just two weeks after she gave birth. In the film, Connor defeats a killing machine from the future. In real life, Hamilton was battling an enduring anachronism: the poor portrayal of women in action movies. She’s now returning to the role in Terminator: Dark Fate to vanquish another stubborn Hollywood monster: a lack of action roles for older women. “It’s nice that I’m seen as someone who opened possibilities for women in action films, but until this film I never thought of myself as badass,” the 63-year-old tells The Red Bulletin. “I didn’t want to play me as I was, I want to play me now. It was a journey of discovering who I am today and putting that on screen.” And naturally, she’s doing it all while pumping a shotgun with one arm. the red bulletin: What does the role of Sarah Connor mean to you, and why return to her now? linda hamilton: I can’t pretend it’s not important to me – Sarah Connor has been the identifying work in my career – but back then it was just another job. It’s only years later that it became this iconic performance. I was 26 when I shot the first one. A lifetime 24
later I felt it’d be interesting to see what time has done, who she is now – more bitter, no longer significant to the future in the way she knew she was before. There were many things for me to draw from, because I have life experience mapped on my face. The new film ignores the instalments that followed T2. Word has it you did, too… They approached me for the third one. I read it, but there was nothing new to say. I wanted to like the films, but they failed to create characters people could connect with. It was because Jim [Cameron, writer/ director of the first two films and producer of this one] was back at the helm that I even considered it. There’s a story that you refused some lines of dialogue in this film… That was misleading, because it wasn’t me versus Tim [Miller, the director], it was just juvenile dialogue. They created this artificial rivalry between these two women [Hamilton’s Connor and Mackenzie Davis’ Grace] and it sounded like they were in middle school. I was like, “It diminishes these characters. I’m not gonna say it.” I have an investment in not trivialising Sarah Connor – I’ve had a relationship with her for 35 years. I care that the movie is good, and that’s what I spent every day trying to do. You proved that in T2. Do women approach you about your physical transformation in that film? Definitely. They’re like, “My mother wanted your arms. She lost 60lb to look like you.” So much attention was paid to how I looked, but that was just a small part of what I did as an actor.
It might have even got in my way. I’d meet with directors who’d say, “You’ve never played a part like this before – one that’s normal.” I didn’t want to play the strong woman after that. But you hit the gym pretty hard again for this film… It was more time-consuming than on T2. You think you’ll work as hard and get the same result, but that doesn’t happen at my age – you need hormones to put muscle on [Hamilton took hormone supplements to prepare for this role, suffering mood swings and blood-pressure spikes]. I worked out with an amazing trainer, Mackie Shilstone, to strip the fat from my muscles. I gave up carbs, just ate meat and vegetables, did Pilates, weights – we focused on the body in motion. The look is different, but still a warrior at this age. Did you consider calling Arnie? At 72, he’s also working out at a different stage of life… And at the top of his game. We haven’t remained in touch much since he became Governor. You don’t just go, “Get the Governor on the line.” So, no, we didn’t consult Arnold. I didn’t see him until he showed up on set. Do you think audiences will accept you as an older action star? What’s compelling is the authenticity of the character. I might not look the same, but I have so much more to say. We’re obsessed with youth and beauty but I want to embrace everything I’ve got going on: wisdom and strength that doesn’t mean body strength. A real woman doing amazing things. What’s next for Sarah Connor and Linda Hamilton? I never think about what else I can do. Even in Judgment Day, creating this character was an accidental miracle. Jim wanted me to butch my hair up while escaping the mental hospital. I didn’t think we needed that, so I just threw it in a ponytail. People embraced that because I didn’t turn into a guy to play the role; they embraced Sarah Connor’s feminine ideal of strength. We don’t have to look like men to be strong. Terminator: Dark Fate is in cinemas from October 25; Twitter: @Terminator THE RED BULLETIN
“I didn’t want to play me as I was. I want to play me now”
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“I was like, ‘What? How did he even hear one of my songs?’”
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Michael Kiwanuka
“I’m glad I said no to Kanye” How walking out on one of music’s top producers helped the soulful singer-songwriter keep his feet on the ground and his career on the right track… Words BJÖRN SPRINGORUM Photography OLIVIA ROSE
It’s safe to say that you’re destined for greatness when Adele asks you to support her on tour before you’ve even released an album. And when folky London-Ugandan singersongwriter Michael Kiwanuka’s debut, Home Again, came out the year after he joined the awardwinning singer on her 2011 Adele Live tour, it reached number four in the UK album chart and went gold. His second album, 2016’s Love & Hate – produced by Danger Mouse – outperformed its successor, topping the UK album chart and affirming Kiwanuka’s reputation as one of the world’s most sought-after young soul voices. Another superstar who discovered Kiwanuka’s talent early on was Kanye West, who invited him into the studio to record together. As he prepares for the release of his eponymous third album, the 32-year-old reminisces about that Kanye moment, and reveals why he still believes that cancelling the session was the right decision for his fledgling career… the red bulletin: Kanye West is famous for collaborating with the world’s hottest and most talented musicians. How did it feel when he invited you to go into the studio with him? michael kiwanuka: The whole thing was utterly crazy, man.
Kanye West, the mightiest figure in music, invites me to Hawaii… and I didn’t really understand why. I didn’t even have my first album out, and I was only just learning the tricks of the trade. I was like, “What? How did he even hear one of my songs?” I was scared. I couldn’t believe that he really wanted to work with me. All I could do was try to second-guess how he wanted me to be. His invitation didn’t feel like a confidence boost? No, not for me. I arrived at his studio laden with self-doubt and disbelief. And perhaps the craziest thing of all was that he was being super nice the whole time. He let me sit in his main room while he was making music. He was so quiet and concentrated, and he worked constantly, almost 24 hours [a day] – I hardly ever saw him sleep. He had this confidence radiating off him, and he always told me that I could do anything I wanted to do if I just was being myself. He actually said that. So, what happened? I didn’t believe a single word. I was positively convinced that I had to become another person, because I couldn’t see that he wanted me the way I was. I went home, even left my guitar there.
To know that someone that talented can hear something special in my music is utterly surreal. Do you think that in life you sometimes have to sacrifice a big opportunity for an even larger goal? Well, you never know what would have happened. But yes, I guess it can be good to miss out on something. In the end, everything got me to the point where I am now, and I couldn’t be happier. So, in that sense, yeah, I’m glad I walked out on Kanye West. At the time, did it feel like you’d failed in some way? Yes, but that’s fine. People who have always been good at things, and who have got through life without any difficulties at all, really struggle when they fail for the first time, because they’re just not used to the feeling. Even Kanye West has failed a lot of times. Failing early on is the best way to learn. It’s not exactly fun, but it’s essential. Your debut album, Home Again, was a breakthrough hit, and the follow-up, Love & Hate, topped the album chart. With your third, Kiwanuka, ready for release, how do you define success? Ultimately, it’s about personal satisfaction; a contentment with what I am doing. I’m able to do what I love for a living: getting up in the morning and making music. And winning a major award – a Grammy, for instance – isn’t part of the equation? Awards are like landmarks: they keep you on this journey. A Grammy will never really solve any real issues, but it can make you keep going. Kiwanuka is released on October 25; michaelkiwanuka.com
Why was it so difficult to believe what he told you? I think the invitation came too early in my career. I learnt a lot from it, though, and I’m glad it happened that way. Who knows if it would have got to my head? Still, it was a great experience. THE RED BULLETIN
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Beauden Barrett
Tackling the myth The New Zealand rugby star can fend off tough challenges on the pitch, but how about misconceptions about his team? Words TOM GUISE Photography GRAEME MURRAY
The All Blacks have won more Rugby World Cups than any other national team and, as reigning champs, were favourites again as the competition kicked off in Japan on September 20. They are a team with a near mythical reputation for victory. Which makes player Beauden Barrett a virtual unicorn. The 28-year-old fly-half and fullback was core to the Kiwis’ 2015 victory, was voted World Rugby Player of the Year in 2016 and 2017, and is fourth on the All Blacks pointscoring chart in test matches. Now he’s here to unravel that legend and dispel a few of the myths surrounding his own formidable team. myth 1: To be in the All Blacks, you need to be the size of the Hulk. beauden barrett: I weigh 92kg – size doesn’t matter. Being big doesn’t mean you’re the boss. Every position requires a different physique or skill set: some guys have to be strong to push in the scrum; others need to be explosive and jump high to catch balls in line-outs, or do a lot of kicking and running. I have to be fast and powerful. Everyone knows their role within the team, but there’s no hierarchy due to size. You learn to respect the elders and those more experienced than yourself.
myth 2: All Blacks can only play for a local club team and not overseas rivals. That’s almost entirely true. You certainly won’t see players in the UK or Europe also playing for the All Blacks. There have been a few exceptions where it’s like a little sabbatical, playing in Japan for a short time. But I can’t recall a New Zealand rugby player returning from Europe to be an All Black – it doesn’t happen. Once you’re gone, you’re gone for good. myth 3: The All Blacks are just about unbeatable. No team is guaranteed a quarterfinal, because there are so many variables. There are a number of teams who can potentially win [the World Cup]. This shows the growth of a lot of countries. It’s interesting watching the Six Nations and seeing Wales finish the way they did [they won]. I know the Japanese are developing very quickly. They’re very well coached and will be dark horses. Our focus is on one game at a time, and then the pool games. myth 4: Success has made the All Blacks arrogant. You don’t just get selected on pure form or talent; it’s important to have good values, too. If you’re a good person, you’ll be a good All Black, because when it comes to team culture there is no place in this team for dickheads.
time. Every opposition will respond differently: some will smile, some look scared. I’ve faced the haka and it is intimidating – it sends a shiver down your spine. Because we understand the meaning of it, it’s quite emotional. myth 6: No other nation is allowed to do the haka. Oh, look, it’s up to the opposition what they decide to do. We see it as a sign that they’re up for a challenge. But when we see them do it and they don’t understand the meaning, we find that it can be disrespectful. myth 7: You practise the haka every time you train. At a low intensity we do it once a week, the new guys maybe a little bit more. You can’t lose connection with it or forget its meaning. It’s important not to take it for granted, because we’re in front of millions of people and we’re going out to win, so we have to do it well. myth 8: The All Blacks possess a powerful secret, one that helps you be the best. It’s not one thing, it’s a whole lot of things: hard work, high expectations and the discipline to live those every day and enjoy it. If you’re really enjoying something, you can challenge yourself. If you’re not enjoying it, you’re not going to push yourself to the limits when you’re training, when you’re playing. You don’t want to make it fake. myth 9: The black jersey has special powers. You once said that when you first put it on, you felt like Superman. I mean, there’s no time like the first. That was certainly the most powerful but, yes, every time I put it on I take a moment to gather my thoughts, reflect and realise what I’m about to do, because it’s a special time.
myth 5: The haka is a technique to gain a read on the opposition. It’s about us and what we bring. It’s about how well connected we are and how powerful we feel at the 28
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”You don’t get picked on pure talent. You need good values”
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COLD COMFORT Beneath a frozen fjord in eastern Greenland exists an underwater realm with a sky made of icebergs. For some it spells terror, but German freediver ANNA VON BOETTICHER sees it as therapy
Words SABRINA LUTTENBERGER Photography TOBIAS FRIEDRICH
Von Boetticher gently touches an iceberg at a depth of 12m. Down here, it’s -2°C. Above the surface, it’s -27°C.
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nna von Boetticher can hold her breath for six minutes and 12 seconds – longer than anyone else in her native Germany. But when the 49-year-old isn’t underwater, she can barely catch her breath as the words gush out in unbridled enthusiasm for freediving, a passion she only discovered 12 years ago. Since then, she has set an impressive 33 diving records in her homeland, as well as one world record, and earned three world championship bronze medals. But for Von Boetticher the appeal doesn’t come from titles or trophies as much as it does from diving in unusual locations. That’s what she was doing in Greenland this year, plunging into a frozen fjord with diving partner and photographer Tobias Friedrich. the red bulletin: You could dive anywhere and yet you chose an icecold location. Why? anna von boetticher: I’d just been through a turbulent time and needed peace of mind, and the best place for me to find that is in the extremes of nature. It was in the minimal world of Greenland that I was forced to expose myself mentally and physically; everything else stood still. Your base camp was in Tasiilaq – a place engulfed in ice for half the year. What challenges did you face? The main one was keeping warm when the outside temperature is -27°C. It’s better to freedive on an empty stomach, but I knew that wouldn’t work if I was standing in the cold for seven hours and didn’t want to freeze. I had to eat an extraordinary amount of high-energy food: peanut butter, porridge, sugar. I wore layer upon layer of clothing and made precise estimates of how long I could stay in the water. It was at the very limit of the demands you can make on yourself. How do you know when you’ve hit those limits? You’ve got to be honest with yourself. Of course I want to go a metre deeper, and I do get annoyed when I don’t do better than last time, but what physical 32
condition are you in? What are the external factors and how do you react to them? Only then can you make an objective decision not born from feelings or ego. Having that sort of control is one of the secrets to safe and successful freediving. How do you push yourself further from there? It takes great self-awareness of what’s happening inside your body. Freediving requires you to resist the natural urge to breathe – do I really have to breathe now or is it a false alarm? You realise you can override an instinct and do a lot more than you’d have thought. So the next time you’ll face a new situation with greater self-belief. Do you ever panic when you’re deep underwater? I get scared, but I’ve never panicked. I always react calmly to any problem and set the fear aside for later. Anyone can learn this: you just need to expose yourself to new things. This way, you learn to deal with the feeling of unease we all experience, then proceed in spite of it. Anyone who deliberately exposes themselves to stressful situations will eventually acquire greater peace. Is there any part of your sport that still surprises you? Experiencing the underwater world is intense, beautiful and different every time. It’s hard to compare it to anything else. As humans we don’t belong in it, and yet we can adapt to a sufficient enough extent to be able to spend time there. That never ceases to fascinate me. Instagram: @freediveanna
Freediving
“In Greenland, I was forced to expose myself mentally and physically”
WORLD OF THE ICE GIANTS On the way down, it isn’t long before icebergs and floes block the view above. This isn’t only psychologically unpleasant, it also impedes use of the usual safety rope 34
Freediving
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Freediving
Greenland
Nuuk
Tasiilaq
FJORD DIVING Pictured left: the ice near Tasiilaq, with a main triangular hole in the centre and three smaller holes – emergency exits for the divers – fanned out above it. When Von Boetticher lost her bearings at one point, one of these exits saved her life.
A good tip for Greenland: get undressed at the last possible moment
Von Boetticher defrosts her frozen feet with hot water
She has to move fast – the ice hole constantly freezes over THE RED BULLETIN
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Freediving
TEST OF NERVES Von Boetticher lights her way through the underwater canyon. The gorge in the fjord near Tasiilaq is about 20m long and far from the ice hole. It’s a risky move requiring all her experience and mental strength   39
Herculean Tasks With his unorthodox techniques, Mike McCastle has trained people to unlock their full potential, including the first person to cross Antarctica solo and unaided… and himself. His own record-breaking feats, inspired by the 12 Labours of Hercules, are mind-boggling journeys to the outer limits of mental and physical strength Words MAUREEN O’HAGAN Photography CAMERON BAIRD
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Breathtaking feats: using his unique training, McCastle, 32, has set multiple world records, including flipping a 113kg tyre a total distance of 21km
Gentle giant: McCastle brings a philosophical approach to his strongman tasks
Mike McCastle
If there’s one thing that winds up Mike McCastle, it’s when people say stuff like, “You’re insane, dude,” or, “That shit’s crazy!”
“I
just don’t see it that way,” the 32-year-old strongman says calmly. He’s responding to the question of whether it was crazy to try to break the record for the most pull-ups in 24 hours, even though it put him in hospital. Or whether it was crazy that he set out to pull a two-tonne truck for 35km through Death Valley, or to repeatedly climb a 7m rope until he’d ascended the height of Mount Everest. He definitely didn’t think it was crazy when a skinny-ass stranger named Colin O’Brady asked for training to trek solo across Antarctica, dragging a sled stocked with more than twice his weight in food and gear. Never mind that this task took the life of British explorer Henry Worsley in 2016 and was long thought impossible. From the get-go, McCastle knew each of these endeavours would bring extreme suffering. They’re part of a mission the 1.9m tall, 102kg Las Vegas resident calls the Twelve Labors Project – a homage to the 12 Labours of Hercules, the ultimate hero of Greco-Roman mythology. The question is: why in the world would anyone put themselves through all this? “I’d heard stories about people doing great things when another person’s life is on the line,” McCastle says. “I wanted to
test how much I’d be willing to suffer doing things for others.” Sacrifice is ingrained in US military service, and McCastle went into the Navy after high school, spending the next 11 years as an air traffic controller. He also served as a mental and physical conditioning trainer in a programme created by the Navy SEALs after 9/11 to help address a vexing problem: as many as 80 per cent of trainees drop out before earning their SEAL Trident. The physical training is notoriously tough, but these recruits are the fittest of the fit and they really want to become SEALs, so why were so many dropping out? The reason is biological. In moments of fear and stress, the area of the brain called the amygdala takes over. Part of the function of the amygdala – dubbed the ‘lizard brain’ due to its primitive nature – is to identify threatening situations and get you out. Physiologically, your body reacts similarly whether you’re facing down a tiger or engaging in high-intensity training: your heart rate spikes, you get tunnel vision and hearing loss; your conscious brain, laser-focused on becoming a Navy SEAL, shuts down. The lizard brain doesn’t care about goals, it’s a survival response. “It happens in a fraction of a second and gives you no room for conscious thought,” McCastle says. 43
Time trials: McCastle’s training challenges include tests of strength, endurance and mental focus
Moments later, the quitter’s heart rate slows down and it hits them: they’ve just tossed away their dreams. The realisation is devastating enough for the Navy to be concerned about the individual’s wellbeing. McCastle’s programme introduces to potential candidates the mental and physical tools used by SEALs in high-stress moments. One of these is to focus not on pain, but on the reason they wanted to become a SEAL in the first place: to serve.
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ack in 2012, McCastle himself was accepted into SEAL training. His chances of success seemed high. Each year, when the Navy set physical assessments, he always came top. He’d already learnt the lessons of the lizard. He also had years of experience in air traffic control, where you learn to manage stress; if you let day-to-day worries distract you in that control tower, people could die. McCastle was a master at compartmentalising, at being laserfocused on the task at hand. He calls it a ‘flow state’: “Your peripheral vision opens,
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your mind becomes clear and your words become more succinct, because your brain cuts the fat. And you’re very calm.” Less than two weeks into the training, McCastle was part of a formation running in the sand alongside Lake Michigan. Ahead there was a divot. “Twenty guys in front of me jumped into this divot and kept going,” he recalls. “I jumped down and both of my knees blew out.” He continued the exercise. His goal, after all, was to become a SEAL. That afternoon, his knees were like cantaloupes. He went to a pool training session and, for the first time in his life, his mind could not control his body. Pain shot through his swollen
Around 1,200 pull-ups into his challenge, the skin started ripping off his hands
legs. “I almost drowned,” he says. “They had to pull me out.” He had torn his right meniscus and left ACL, and seemingly, in one bad leap, destroyed his SEAL career. McCastle went into a deep depression. At the time, he saw himself as a highperformance athlete. “The problem with attaching yourself to one identity,” he says, “is the second it gets taken away, what do you have left? You’re nothing.” He returned to air traffic control duties and was able to re-enter that flow state, but inside he was raw. McCastle gained 20kg and started drinking to selfmedicate. Without his strength, he was worthless. He had been the guy in charge of fitness assessments on the base, and now what? He realised he needed a goal. In December 2013, McCastle set out on a 50K run in aid of children’s cancer research. He made it harder by wearing an 18kg vest to symbolise the weight of a child fighting cancer. The run was physically gruelling, but mentally, McCastle says, “It felt great. It wasn’t really about me and it opened the door. I was able to push myself beyond what I thought I was capable of.” Later, he learnt a veteran had posted a record for the most pull-ups in 24 hours, so he set his sights on breaking it. At the time, McCastle couldn’t even perform 10 successive pull-ups, but if he had a goal and a big enough reason, he thought it was possible. He devoted his effort to an organisation for wounded veterans. On a July morning in 2014, he went to a public park and got to work. Small crowds came and went; day turned to night. Around 1,200 pull-ups in, the skin started ripping off his hands. A buddy flushed the wounds, packed them with chalk, and he kept going. His bicep tendons began to rupture. He kept going. His urine started to look like “uh, you know, Irish whiskey”. He kept going. Seventeen hours in, at rep 3,202, he was simply unable to grip the bar. He’d missed the record by around 800 pull-ups. McCastle was hospitalised with the life-threatening condition rhabdomyolysis, caused by muscles that are so taxed they begin to release toxins. His spectacular failure made national headlines. McCastle told himself he was a quitter, a fake. He was ashamed. How could he tell Navy sailors they had to do callisthenics when he’d put his own damn self in the hospital? “My world was crushed,” he says. On McCastle’s second day in hospital, a teenage boy knocked on his door. The boy was facing life-or-death surgery and used THE RED BULLETIN
Squat goals: each of McCastle’s tasks is dedicated to raising awareness of a specific cause, including Parkinson’s disease and wounded veterans
“Find meaning in everything you do,” his father would say a wheelchair, but he came in with a huge smile, wanting to shake the older man’s hand. “He didn’t care that I didn’t break the record,” McCastle recalls. “He just wanted to tell me how inspired he was by the effort I gave for a cause. Even at my lowest low, I could still positively impact someone.” The boy, who held no records, had inspired him. McCastle re-examined the pull-up task, why he’d done it and why he kept going. “I was doing it to raise awareness for wounded vets,” he says, “but if you peel away the layers, I was trying to regain an identity I’d lost. That’s a very selfish reason to do anything, because it was dangerous.” It was the wrong ‘why’.
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n classical mythology, Hercules is a demigod who kills his wife and children after Hera, queen of the gods, drives him mad. As penance, Hercules serves King Eurystheus for 12 years, performing a series of difficult feats – the 12 Labours. McCastle saw the story as a journey of self-discovery, pushing through struggle to get closer to your
core identity. It wasn’t strength that kept Hercules going, it was resolve. A handshake from a kid in the hospital had given McCastle an idea: he would do his own 12 Labours, each dedicated to a cause. The point wasn’t to break records, but to focus on something outside himself and raise awareness about an issue. Maybe McCastle could inspire someone to run a 5K, to keep going in the face of illness, to overcome self-doubt. “In my interpretation, Hercules is the story of every human being on the planet,” he says. The run and the pull-up challenge became Labours one and two. For the third, he decided to flip a 113kg tyre for 21km to raise money for the Wounded Warrior Project. The tyre symbolised the physical and mental burden these men and women carry. He trained for six months. The day before the event, he was faced with another test: his sister called to say their father had passed away. Raymond McCastle had suffered from Parkinson’s disease for years, so his death wasn’t entirely unexpected, but it was still a blow to the family. It would have been entirely reasonable to postpone the event – that’s how the lizard is sometimes: reasonable – but McCastle thought about what his dad would say: “These are your plans, your aspirations, son.” So, at 4am on a cold, wet December morning in 2014, McCastle faced the tyre. Dig under the rubber, deadlift the tyre, push it over. Dig. Lift. Push.
All-time high: for the Twelve Labors Project, he climbed a rope for 27 hours, equivalent to the height of Everest
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If you were standing there watching in the cold, you might marvel at how a man could lift 113kg more than 1,000 times and still keep going. But you would think, “Well, he is a beast, after all.” What you wouldn’t see is what’s going on in his head – the same thing going on in your head when undertaking a big challenge: fear, doubt, self-flagellation. Painful memories started flooding in. Of growing up in a very challenging household. About being mercilessly bullied. Dig. Lift. Push. McCastle thought about his dad: stoic, robust, a Louisiana-born African-American, an Air Force veteran who managed a sodacan factory. He saw how Parkinson’s had robbed him of his strength, his voice, even his ravenous mind. Dig. Lift. Push. He pictured his mum, a Filipino immigrant who was so driven that she joined the Air Force in her forties, with two kids. After his parents separated, a teenage McCastle helped care for his dad, making sure he was shaved, fed, bathed. He remembered finding him on the floor, his blood sugar dangerously low because he couldn’t put food to mouth. In a panic, McCastle quit the basketball team to prevent a reoccurrence, and afterwards he felt nothing but shame. He thought about how he later left his dad to join the Navy. Quitter, he told himself. Loser. Dig. Lift. Push. As the physical pain and mental anguish washed over him, the layers began to peel back. Raymond McCastle was a man of few words, interested more in ideas than in possessions. McCastle recalls his dad reading to him as a child: The Dialogues of Plato, Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning, Nietzsche. “Find meaning in everything you do,” his father would say. It’s how, and why, we are able to push through challenges: because we’re serving something larger. As he continued, the tyre got lighter. The Parkinson’s? Struggles growing up? There wasn’t a damn thing he could do about them today. “I was letting go of things I didn’t need to hold onto,” he says. Ten hours in, he’d set what is considered to be his first world record (there was no certifying body present). He ate a huge steak, dragged himself home and slept. From here, McCastle was possessed by his Twelve Labors Project. In May 2015, for 27 hours, he climbed enough rope to reach the height of Everest, to raise money for Parkinson’s research. In September 2015, he reattempted the pull-up record, again dedicating it to wounded veterans. Wearing a 14kg pack, he did 5,804 pull-ups THE RED BULLETIN
Mike McCastle
Natural talent: McCastle trains in the forest for his ascent of Mount Whitney
without major injury. The following May, he rented a truck, loaded it with 19 gallons of drinking water and set out for Death Valley to raise awareness of veteran suicide. At the time, an estimated 22 veterans were taking their own life each day; some were his friends. His plan was to strap a harness to his chest, rig a tether and pull the vehicle for 22 miles (39km). “I took it as an opportunity to look inward,” McCastle says. Hours went by and the thermometer went up. Every cell in his body was screaming for him to quit. Every so often, he would look up and see a stranger’s taillights in the distance. After 19 hours, he reached his goal.
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y 2018, McCastle was physically drained and ready for a new kind of challenge. While going to school to study psychology and working as a trainer in Portland, Oregon, he received an email asking for a consultation. Some guy named Colin O’Brady. You may recognise the name thanks to his recordsetting 54-day crossing of Antarctica –
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“In my view, Hercules is the story of every human being on the planet” “The Impossible First” – but back when he met McCastle, he wasn’t so well-known. O’Brady knew McCastle was the coach he needed “within two minutes of looking into each other’s eyes”, he recalls. The programme McCastle devised had three components: strength, endurance and mental focus. The last turned out to be “the difference between success and failure”, says O’Brady. For example, McCastle would make him hold a plank with his hands submerged in ice and then do a wall squat with his feet in buckets of ice. Meanwhile he’d have to put together a Lego set, or tie dozens of knots, or solve maths problems.
Then, with frozen feet, came a balance test, an agility test, and so on. McCastle would note all of O’Brady’s errors. “The main focus was just to control his breathing,” McCastle explains. Controlling your breath means controlling your mind, and in moments of high stress it can be the difference between life and death. Like when you’re pitching a tent in 130km winds and -20°C, when your brain is rattled and your fine motor function is slowed by frozen hands. If O’Brady practised these tasks, getting into that flow state, he could prolong the time it took for the lizard brain to kick in. “When I got to Antarctica,” says O’Brady, “I realised this guy was a genius.” A few times a week, McCastle heads to Portland’s Forest Park, one of the largest urban forests in the US. In the cool, misty air, beneath a canopy of moss-covered trees that soar more than 60m, he feels at home. As the trail starts to climb, he pauses again and again to cinch up the pack tugging on his shoulders with 40kg of sand. He’s training for his next labour: climbing Mount Whitney, the highest summit on the US mainland, with a 70kg barbell. Why? Parkinson’s. The barbell symbolises the weight that sufferers carry as they struggle through the disease. McCastle knows the disease well. He knows that, as time passes, everything about these people’s lives becomes smaller. Tremors make hands unsteady, brain function slows; eventually, patients become disoriented, confused. He spends every Tuesday morning teaching a specialised fitness class that includes stability, strength and mental challenges. Stand on one leg with a weight in your hand. Count out loud as you slam a medicine ball. Row 500m while solving simple maths problems. Hold a PVC pipe like a sword a metre from a small plate hanging from a bar. Now aim that pipe through the hole in the plate. McCastle has thought a lot about what it means to pursue your fullest potential. He’s considered the lessons he learnt, not only from his labours, but from his dad, his mum, O’Brady, and now from these sixtysomethings focusing everything they have on a PVC pipe and a target. Research has shown that high-intensity exercise combined with cognitive tasks helps slow Parkinson’s symptoms. These things will also help a man walk across Antarctica. And so, every Tuesday, as he puts his Parkinson’s students through their drills, McCastle is filled with gratitude. “I tell them, ‘You really are changing the world.’” twelvelaborsproject.com 47
Get up,
Stand up DYGL have been dubbed Tokyo’s hottest new band, and they count members of The Strokes among their fan base. But it’s more than their massive melodies and effervescent guitar riffs that make them stand out. The quartet are the voice of a new generation in Japan who are tired of their country’s corrupt entertainment moguls and culture of obedience Words FLORIAN OBKIRCHER Photography ERIN UEMURA 48
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Let yourself go: DYGL guitarist Yosuke Shimonaka leads by example during his band’s gig in Yonago
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DYGL
Top: DYGL fans queue up to get their CDs signed after the band perform in Okayama
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hat’s different about the crowds in Japan?” Nobuki Akiyama thinks for a moment. The musician is crouching, sandwiched between speakers and instrument flight cases. “In cities like London, our fans dance and sing along, but people in Tokyo are shy and polite; they don’t want to bother anyone. At our shows, they are so quiet I can’t even tell if they liked the gig. I check the reactions on Twitter afterwards to make sure they enjoyed it,” he says with a smile. “You’ll see for yourself.” He points to the wall of the small green room. The space behind it is packed with fans waiting for Akiyama and his bandmates to go on stage. Akiyama, 27, is the frontman of DYGL – pronounced Dayglow – lauded to be one of Japan’s best young bands. Their 2017 debut album, Say Goodbye to Memory
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Den, was produced by one of the quartet’s early supporters, The Strokes’ guitarist Albert Hammond Jr, and praised by music magazine NME as a “riotous trip through indie, rock ’n’ roll and punk”. In July, DYGL released the follow-up, Songs of Innocence & Experience, recorded in the band’s adopted hometown of London and mastered at every music fan’s pilgrimage site, Abbey Road Studios. Back in Tokyo this summer, the band toured 300-capacity venues to hone the new songs live in front of small audiences before taking to one of the main stages at Japan’s Fuji Rock Festival. The Red Bulletin met up with them at Okayama’s Pepperland venue, which opened in 1974 and has played host to a who’s who of underground music over the decades. The DYGL gig sold out instantly, fans packed in like sardines. Defying Akiyama’s predictions, when the band start the show it doesn’t take long for the crowd to come out of their shell. During the fourth song of the set (and the new album’s first single), Spit it Out, fists start pumping the air, and fans dance and mosh enthusiastically. Akiyama is visibly delighted. With their catchy guitar riffs and singalong choruses, DYGL’s songs defy you to stand still, and this – encouraging fans to overcome their inhibitions – is part of a bigger plan that began almost a decade ago. Back then, Akiyama was obsessed with UK guitar music, from early Beatles to groups such as The Libertines. He wanted to play this type of music himself, but there weren’t many indie-rock role models for a teenager from Tokyo. “There were so many bands I was into, but almost all of them were white,” he says, “apart from Bloc Party and a few other indie acts that had people of colour.” It was the success of French rock band Phoenix that finally encouraged him to start DYGL with his college friends Kohei Kamoto (drums), Yotaro Kachi (bass) and Yosuke Shimonaka (guitar) in 2012. “Phoenix got really big in the US; people didn’t seem to mind their accents,” says Akiyama. Like Phoenix, DYGL decided to sing in English, something that made them THE RED BULLETIN
The band – (left to right) Nobuki Akiyama, Yosuke Shimonaka, Yotaro Kachi and Kohei Kamoto – met at university in 2011
“People in Japan label us as ‘the band that sings in English’”
DYGL – pictured on stage at Pepperland in Okayama – released their second album in July to much acclaim
Pepperland boss Iseo Nose, 72, has advice for DYGL: “You’re on the right path, remain true to yourselves”
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DYGL
who feel new and different. And since being able to gain attention and stand out are invaluable assets for any musician in the 21st century, the time seems right for a Japanese band playing fresher Britpop than any British act right now. Akiyama is quick, however, to state that DYGL’s musical direction is not some calculated marketing strategy. “Tokyo is far from the traditional epicentres of pop culture, like London and New York, so it feels natural for us to receive foreign music without bias, and to freely pick and choose elements from all genres and countries.” When asked about the Japanese elements in DYGL’s music, he replies like a shot: the melodies. “Music from foreign bands who break through in Japan is very melodic. The Japanese don’t speak much English, so they connect with the melodies, not with the lyrics,” he says. “I think that’s also why people here embrace our songs so much.”
A “Those in power don’t care about the impact of music. All they want is control”
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outsiders in their own country – “People label us as ‘the band that sings in English’” – as well as abroad. Yet the decision was vindicated. “A cultural paradigm shift happened around that time: people began to look over the rim of the teacup and be more open to minority culture.” Thanks to the likes of YouTube and Soundcloud, music lovers now have more opportunities to discover new sounds for themselves, and, importantly, have wider access to music outside the AngloAmerican canon, which explains the recent success of Korean pop music in the US charts, a phenomenon that would have been hard to imagine 15 years ago. People are seeking artists
lthough Akiyama stresses that DYGL aren’t an explicitly political band and that many of their songs are about love and friendship, it’s their more socially aware material that has gained them the most attention, especially abroad, since few Japanese bands grant Western listeners such an intriguing insight. Take the song Don’t You Wanna Dance in This Heaven?, which tackles Japan’s repressive history, specifically the country’s archaic fueihō law. Introduced in 1948 to regulate the sex industry, the law prohibited people from dancing after midnight at many venues, but this went largely unenforced until 2010, when authorities found a reason to crack down on nightlife and revived it. The law was revised in 2016, but it remains symbolic of politics in Japan, says Akiyama: if you strip people of their right to dance, you strip them of their freedom of expression. “It shows that the people in power don’t care about the cultural impact of modern music – all they want is to control people.” This tends to be a systemic problem in Japan, as Akiyama points out. In one recent scandal, it transpired that several 53
DYGL Classic tracks: downtime in a toy shop before a gig in Yonago, where the dressing room awaits (below)
prominent TV comedians had performed at parties held by an organised-crime syndicate. This led to the comics’ sacking by their talent agency, Yoshimoto Kogyo, Japan’s largest entertainment group. However, the comedians subsequently claimed the agency grossly underpays its artists and had also warned them not to speak to the media about its alleged ties to organised crime. Another talent agency has been accused of conspiring to keep three former members of the boy band SMAP off the air because they had left its management. “The entertainment business is controlled by these agencies,” Akiyama says. “As an artist, you’re at their mercy. The big problem is that nobody challenges them. People are too polite 54
“People are too polite to speak their mind, which is dangerous” to speak their mind, which can be really dangerous.” As a rock band scoring international success outside this talentagency system, DYGL see themselves as able to address such problems. “Politeness, which is deeply rooted in our society, isn’t necessarily a bad thing,” Akiyama continues, “but in these modern times, when the world is seeming to go
backwards, it’s the wrong moment to not want to bother someone.” In the aftermath of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, big protests in Japan seemed like an overdue awakening of a politically apathetic population. But, eight years on, this hunger for protest and change has dwindled again. A few days prior to our interview, the voter turnout in Japan’s Upper House election fell below 50 per cent, the second lowest since World War II. Akiyama is keen to bring up the issue at tonight’s gig. “Now we’ve lived in cities like London and New York, we see Japan’s politics in a new light,” he says. “Overseas, it’s normal to discuss politics and voice opinions. Here, that doesn’t happen a lot.” At the concert, just before playing Don’t You Wanna Dance in This Heaven?, Akiyama makes a heartfelt, humorous plea to the fans, encouraging them to speak their minds. “It’s not about the country, it’s about individuals, it’s about you,” he finishes. “So say something if you have something to say. Let yourself go!” Three minutes later, guitarist Shimonaka’s T-shirt is off and he’s diving into the crowd as Akiyama shouts and lays into his strings. As a role model, you should always lead by example. dayglotheband.com THE RED BULLETIN
GIVES YOU WIIINGS. ALSO WITH THE TASTE OF COCONUT & BERRY.
NEW
In 2009, 23-year-old Scottish cyclist DANNY MACASKILL released Inspired Bicycles – a five-and-a-half-minute film on YouTube that contained “probably the best collection of street trials riding [the mountain-bike discipline of manoeuvring across obstacles without a rider’s feet touching the floor] ever seen”. The film, which has had more than 39 million views to date, transformed MacAskill into a global superstar. Here, he looks back at his greatest moments of the decade that followed… Interviewed by STU KENNY 56
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ADIDAS OUTDOOR/DAVE MACKISON ADIDAS,FRED MURRAY/RED BULL CONTENT POOL
Danny’s Decade
Imaginate (2013) I’d made a few films outdoors, but for Imaginate I wanted to try something different: to recreate my childhood bedroom floor and ride these giant toys. We had a £4million Formula One car and a real tank. The loop-the-loop was Hot Wheels-esque and I’d never attempted one – they’re disorientating, and if you watch anyone try on the internet, it always ends badly. I’d been off my bike for a year after my back operation, so my riding wasn’t where it needed to be. Each morning, I’d go into the warehouse, do eight flip step-downs onto a giant Dandy comic and build up to the loop. Eventually I got it dialled.
“We went all-out when we filmed Inspired Bicycles”
Danny MacAskill
Inspired Bicycles (2009) This [opposite page] is me launching off the roof of Macdonald Cycles in Edinburgh, where I worked from 2006 to 2009. Every day, I’d stand across the road with my lunch and look at the gap between the bike shop and the copy shop. When [director] Dave Sowerby and I started filming Inspired Bicycles, I set my sights on bigger and bigger goals. This gap was one of those. Before I tried it, I gapped the curb below – that’s the way I eye up gaps sometimes. The first time I tried, I overcooked it and landed on my back on the roof. You can’t overshoot it too much or you’ll fall onto the rails below. It was so satisfying when we did it; one of the standout moments of the film. Good bang for your buck! Dave is such a good filmmaker, so with Inspired Bicycles I felt I had this big opportunity. We went all-out with it: the riding was new, and the way he filmed and edited it to that music [The Funeral by Band of Horses]… This tree [above] in The Meadows in Edinburgh is quite famous among BMXers, and I dreamt of doing a flare off it for Inspired Bicycles. In this picture, I’m actually doing a tap, which is quite an easy trick. I used to do this in the dark on my way home.
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Danny MacAskill
I signed with Red Bull at the end of 2009, and the idea for this film came up during one of our first meetings. I’m from rural Scotland – the Isle of Skye – so locating man-made concrete in my homeland appealed to me. In this shot [above], I’m at the foundations of an old railroad track on the Isle of Raasay. I remember being a bit disappointed by Way Back Home at the time. I had ridiculously high aspirations because of the bar I’d set for myself with Inspired Bicycles; I even had a plan to jump 140ft [43m] off the Skye Bridge and into the sea. Dave and I worked so hard to film some of the crazier ideas, driving 18,000 miles [29,000km] in six months to get to locations when the sun was right. Looking back, I’m really pleased with the film. This shot [below] sums it up: we’ve got wheelbarrows, and there’s a microwaveable meal in the oven. That was our life back then.
The Olympic Torch (2012) This was a slow year for me. I had a back operation on a disc I’d torn in 2009, so it was more of a planning year. One of the cool things that came out of it, though, was getting involved in the Olympic Torch relay. I was intending to do a big bike part with [film director] Danny Boyle in the opening ceremony, but sadly it fell through because of my health. However, getting to carry the torch outside Kelvingrove Art Gallery & Museum was cool. It was me, the actor James McAvoy and the curler Rhona Martin. I remember it being quite random, riding my bike in this white suit with a flaming torch. I practised outside my flat with a pump beforehand to see if I could do any tricks. I did a couple of manuals in the end. 60
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DAVE SOWERBY, PA, FRED MURRAY/RED BULL CONTENT POOL
Way Back Home (2010)
Epecuén (2014) This film has a sad story. There was a town on the edge of this salt lake in Argentina, and in the late ’70s it had a long drought. Villa Epecuén was reliant on the tourism the lake attracted, so a canal was built, connecting it to other lakes at higher elevations. But then, when the rains returned years later, the town was flooded. I wanted to make a film that was sensitive to the residents. The town was eerie, but so beautiful. All the walls are covered in a layer of salt, which makes the landscape quite uniform. You never knew how good the structures would be – you could stand on a huge block of concrete and it’d snap in half – so it was probably one of the most dangerous films I’ve made.
“Epecuén was probably one of the most dangerous films I’ve made”
danny macaskill SIGNATURE stamp 7
CRANKBROTHERS.COM
Danny MacAskill
The Ridge (2014) My friend Stu Thomson, from Cut Media, and I decided we’d make a little mountain-bike film on the Cuillin [mountain range] on the Isle of Skye. I hadn’t spent that much time there, because it’s so severe you need a proper guide. The first day was a 23-hour shift. Drone technology wasn’t what it is today – we had these massive, heavy batteries. Apart from burning serious calories, it was one of the easiest projects I’ve filmed. Compared with technical trials riding, this was so within my comfort zone and just a lot of fun: rowing, chasing seals, a couple of more technical tricks like the front flip over the fence. The success of The Ridge was as much of a shock as Inspired Bicycles was: it got about 20 million views in a month, and half of it is me bloody rowing a boat!
STU THOMSON & CHRIS PRESCOTT/CUT MEDIA, DAVE MACKISON/GOPRO
“The feeling I had was that I was only going to clear the rocks by a tiny fraction”
Cascadia (2015) This [above] is me doing a front flip off some scaffolding we built in El Roque in Gran Canaria. I’d wanted to do a rooftop video for a while. We walked around Las Palmas and El Roque, knocking door to door, asking if we could look at people’s rooftops. It’s such a chilled country they were like, “Sure, come in!” Next thing we’d be on their roof. This was the final shot. I was actually overly confident about the set-up, because I’m not really scared of water compared with the risks you take on concrete. And it was only 60ft [18m] – I could belly-flop and I still wouldn’t die. But when I turned up, the run-up wasn’t very big and the rocks carried on under the water. The feeling I had was that I was only going to clear the rocks by a tiny fraction. It was quite a stress, but I sent it and it was maybe the most cushty banger I’ve done. As soon as I went off the lip, I felt total relief. THE RED BULLETIN
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Danny MacAskill
Wee Day Out was a film I’d wanted to make for a long time. The Ridge opened up this whole new world of mountain biking for me, but this time, rather than relying on scenery, I really wanted to up the technical difficulty of the riding. The cool thing about riding a mountain bike is that people’s perceptions of what you can do on it, compared with a trials bike, are a lot lower. I wanted to take my trials-riding skills and put them on a mountain bike – like one of my heroes, Chris Akrigg, had done. When I worked in Bothy Bikes [in Aviemore, Scotland, in 2003 – his first job], this steam train used to go past my house every day. So this [above] was a trick where I would gap from the railway platform onto the line. I thought the probability of it working was very, very low, but I actually landed it in an hour and a half – about 100 goes – which is pretty good for me. The grind on the log [right] I probably tried 150 times on the first day and didn’t come close. 64
We ended up trying that for another three days. My friend started rubbing the log down with Vaseline, because it was getting so grippy. Skateboarders have their wax, so we started lubing up this log. My pedals, shoes, grips and gloves were covered in Vaseline. We went up there on the fourth day, and then, on the last day, in the last bit of light, I landed the trick. Then I ended up doing it four times in a row. Jumping on a moving hay bale and rolling down a field was yet another ‘real good’ idea I had – again, it was a four-day one. We got the local farmer to combine three hay bales into one big one so it would be heavy enough to keep rolling with me on top. It took about 400 goes. Two of my friends would have to push the 450kg hay bale to get it rolling before I jumped on, then three friends – to whom I owe a lot – would have to try to catch it halfway down the hill. Every single time. It was madness, basically.
“I probably tried the grind on the log 150 times on the first day and didn’t come close” THE RED BULLETIN
FRED MURRAY/RED BULL CONTENT POOL
Wee Day Out (2016)
D A N N Y MA CASKILL PROFESSIONAL TRIALS RIDER
Photo: Tomás Montes
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Danny MacAskill Kilimanjaro: Mountain of Greatness (2018) Hans Rey is one of my heroes in riding, almost a mentor – he’s been there and done it all. So when he asked me to join him in summiting Mount Kenya and Kilimanjaro in one trip, I jumped at the chance. I’d had a lot of bike time that summer, having just filmed Wee Day Out, but I wouldn’t say I was particularly fit. That said, I was about to climb Kilimanjaro with a 51-yearold who has a passion for whisky and beer, so I thought I’d be fine fitness-wise. It ended up being a hell of a trip. We made a quick ascent on Mount Kenya, and I’d come straight from sea level and
never done anything at altitude before. I got altitude sickness and had to be helicoptered off. The next day, we travelled through to Tanzania to the foot of Kilimanjaro and, the day after, started making our way up. My body fared a lot better up there. That final climb with the bike on my back is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done – nobody normally carries that weight at that altitude. Type-two fun – I think that’s what people call it. But the beauty of lugging your bikes up there is getting to descend 5,000m back down to base camp.
“This is me doing a 180 between some rails on ‘The Bridge to Nowhere’”
Seaside Trials (2019)
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MARTIN BISSIG, ADIDAS OUTDOOR, DAVE MACKISON
This is a film I made for one of my new partners, Adidas. We had quite a short time-frame, so I went to a place near Dunbar in Scotland that I’d scouted for Way Back Home. It’s known as ‘The Bridge to Nowhere’ and it crosses a river, taking you to a beach [and at high tide the bridge is cut off on both sides]. I waded out in my bare feet and took my bike to get some cool shots. We filmed between Dunbar Harbour and Glen Coe so that we could have a contrast between mountain bike and trials. This [right] is me doing a 180 between some rails. Very easy riding – although it was very windy – but it made for a cool and unusual shot. My process hasn’t changed that much in the past 10 years. Scouting is an important part of making the films – not wasting your time on things that won’t make it in. But I’m still as ambitious as ever, trying to come up with tricks that are really out there and that you’ve never seen anyone else do. Going through the process of trying to make them work in the way that you hoped is a lot of fun. It’s been an amazing 10 years and I’ve got enough ideas written down in my books to last another 50 years. THE RED BULLETIN
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guide Get it. Do it. See it.
BODY MOVIN’
BALLS OF STEEL
ABOUT TIME
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EXPLORE HIMALAYA TRAVEL & ADVENTURE
MovNat promotes peak fitness through natural movement – we meet the regime’s creator
How the FIFA videogame franchise became as powerful as the sport it simulates
Our pick of the most desirable watches and wearable gear you can get your hands on
LEGEND OF THE FALL Record-breaking skydiver Tom Noonan tells us why leaping from 7,000m past the Himalayan mountains is the true summit of his freefall experience PAGE 70
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GUI D E
Do it
Drop kicks: the exhilarating leap from the helicopter marks the pinnacle of the Everest Skydive
EVEREST SKYDIVE
AIN’T NO MOUNTAIN HIGH ENOUGH Freefalling is not for the faint of heart. But doing it in sight of the world’s highest mountain is another adventure altogether, says record-breaking skydiver Tom Noonan
T
he instant I jump out of the chopper at 23,000ft [7,000m], I’m hurtling towards the ground at 210kph. A freefall has a certain frequency to it – a hum that’s reminiscent of a hairdryer – but I have a helmet on, so it’s not loud enough to cause
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physical damage. The dive lasts 45 seconds, but perhaps the most extraordinary aspect of this particular jump is that I’m actually in freefall beside the planet’s highest mountains. The point of reference is unlike anything else in the world; as I fall through the
Instructor Tom Noonan has skydived in more than 40 countries
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Nepal
TRAVEL TIPS
NEPALESE BY NATURE
Nepal is a trekking and hiking paradise, but the Roof of the World has much more to offer, including ‘mad honey’ and a tooth fairy
Nepal Mt Everest
The chopper ferries the jumpers up to a summit-equalling height of 7,000m
Kathmandu Lukla
The average daytime temperature during November’s Everest Skydive is around 15°C. Rainfall is low then, too, making it the best month to visit Nepal.
SEE Several exotic animals inhabit the Himalaya, says Tom Noonan, but some are more visible than others... YETI “There’s a belief the yeti is still out there, but no one has seen him recently. There are yeti bones in one of the temples.”
EXPLORE HIMALAYA TRAVEL & ADVENTURE
Trekkers’ paradise: the village of Namche Bazaar sits at an altitude of 3,440m
sky, the topography of the Himalaya seems to swallow me. Once the parachute opens, my speed slows to about 25kph and I’m level with Mount Everest for the next six minutes, not more than a couple of kilometres away. A quiet descent near one of the most awesome forces of nature on earth is humbling and lifechanging. It’s an incredible feeling to be able to experience something that so few people ever have the opportunity to try. Yet it always feels good to land on the ground safely at Syangboche Airstrip, 3,780m above sea level, where the temperature is balmy. As a tandem-skydive instructor, I’ve completed roughly 8,000
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“As I fall through the sky, the Himalayan topography seems to swallow me”
SNOW LEOPARD “Snow leopards are rare. I’m thankful I’ve not seen one, as I don’t want to bump into one in the middle of the night.” YAK “Massive yet beautiful and docile, yaks do the heavy lifting, carrying all the stuff that people can’t.”
VISIT There’s plenty to do in Kathmandu
dives in more than 40 countries in seven continents. I’ve dived into a sinkhole in Belize, onto Antarctic and Arctic ice sheets, and over the pyramids of Giza – remote locations are my speciality. But, as the operational manager, organising the annual trip to Nepal for Everest Skydive is a labour of love. For 11 months, I work hard on the logistics from my office in Florida.
HONOUR THE TOOTHACHE TREE In a part of town that’s home to many dentists is a chunk of Bangemudha tree covered in coins. These are offerings from orthodontically poor locals to Vaishya Dev, god of toothache. TRY HALLUCINOGENIC HONEY Procured in the Kathmandu Valley, this rhododendronenhanced liquid gold is known locally as ‘mad honey’ on account of its hallucinogenic qualities. It’s also used to relieve stress and is said to have Viagra-like properties. EAT YAK CHEESE Try this surprisingly delicate cheese, which has a mild, milky flavour and strong herbal notes, at local farmers’ markets.
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GUI D E
Do it
Nepal
THE DIVE
FREE, FREEFALLIN’
The music that forms the soundtrack to the skydive, and the pointers everyone needs to understand to safely negotiate the descent
SIGNALS Since you can’t hear speech during freefall, your instructor will communicate through the use of hand signals. The first is the most important of all.
CHECK ARMS Bring your shoulders together in a W position
ARCH Push your pelvis towards the earth
CIRCLE OF AWARENESS Observe your heading: read your altimeter
HEAR Tom Noonan on the music he and his co-divers listen to as they prepare to jump from a helicopter at 7,000m 1. JAMIROQUAI “One time, we were listening to Jamiroquai and half our group started line-dancing. Any time you put something on that people can jam to, that’s cool.” 2. TRADITIONAL CHANTING “The mountains are a very spiritual place, full of awesome energy, so we listen to a lot of local Nepali music and Buddhist mantras.” 3. SILENCE “The Western world is full of noise. There’s almost no noise in the Himalaya. To be around such quiet and calm is unlike anything in the world for me. The wind is the loudest thing you hear. It’s incredible.”
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The reward is in going back to Nepal every year to see friends and live part of my life in the Himalaya. I’ve been doing it since 2008. Every November or May, depending on the weather, my team and I take between five and 10 travellers on an extraordinary adventure from Kathmandu to the Himalaya. We fly to Kathmandu, explore the city for a couple of days and then take a short plane ride to Lukla, the gateway to Everest. We then spend three days trekking through valleys and mountains, climbing higher each day. We do these treks so we can acclimatise to the altitude. If we just flew in and tried to make a dive, we might get hypoxia – a lack of oxygen that makes you feel punch-drunk – so we need to reduce that possibility. The first-time divers have already committed to a week of adventure and exhaustion on the ground, so the skydives are the cherry on top of the experience. Personally, I’ve made more jumps than I could ever have hoped for. In 2009, myself and two colleagues set the world record for the highest parachute landing when we landed sport parachutes at 17,192ft (5,240m).
You never forget the first time you see Mount Everest. In my case, it happened as I turned the corner of a teahouse above Namche Bazaar: as I looked unobstructed across a 10km-long valley, Everest stared back at me. The locals on the Nepali side, the farmers and Sherpas, believe the mountains are goddesses who protect them. The area is very spiritual. I refer to the energy there as The Force, as in Star Wars, and there is something that resonates at a higher frequency. Before each expedition, we have a religious ceremony called a puja, where a lama [priest] blesses our equipment. Before I became a full-time skydiver in 2006, at the age of 32, I worked in pensions at a bank in Boston. But my hero was always Indiana Jones for the way he gets into trouble in foreign places, having fun, living life to the full and then returning home to a real-world job for a few weeks. I still have an office I go back to, and a classroom that I teach in. But it’s the people of Nepal I’m most grateful for. Their purity of thought and mind makes me want to be a better version of myself. everest-skydive.com
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EXPLORE HIMALAYA TRAVEL & ADVENTURE
PULL Immediately deploy your parachute
PIERS MARTIN
Permission to land: Syangboche Airstrip is also the drop zone for Everest Skydive
Ski Austria
One beautiful Alpine town combines the best of both city and slopes. Here’s how to explore it all
MIRJA GEH
PERFECT PISTES The slopes of Kitzsteinhorn Kaprun are extremely popular with freeskiers
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MAGIC MOUNTAINS Saalbach and its three neighbouring villages combine to make a skier’s paradise
Saalbach
The crowd pleaser Skicircus Saalbach Hinterglemm Leogang Fieberbrunn is – as its impressive full name suggests – a whole lot of ski resort; one that’s frequented by the world’s best skiers and snowboarders. To break down that name, Hinterglemm is in the same valley as Saalbach, and Leogang and Fieberbrunn are next door. Their combined 270km of pisted ski runs make the Skicircus one of the biggest resorts in Europe. As you’d expect, with such a large piste map comes a remarkable range of riding. Beginner or intermediate skiers have access to a variety of route options from most of the 70 lifts. 74
If you’re an expert, there are long, challenging black runs – not least the 12er KOGEL, which spans 3.6km on gradients of up to 72 per cent and has been used as an FIS World Cup route. Knee-deep off-piste is in no short supply, either. As well as the Lycra-clad racers, the world’s best freeriders come to the Skicircus to compete in the Freeride World Tour. They’re next scheduled to drop from the Wildseeloder in Fieberbrunn in March 2020. The Skicircus is worldrenowned for freeriding, worldclass for racing, and it has the tour stops to prove it.
MIRJA GEH (2), DER BRECHER, DANIEL ROOS
A snowsports mecca that pulls out all the stops
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Ski Austria
Resort fact box Distance to airport: Salzburg Airport – 90km Elevation: 1,003m to 2,100m Total piste distance: 270km Longest run: 7.5km – Jausernabfahrt slope (Vorderglemm) Difficulty: 140km blue (52%), 112km red (41%), 18km (7%) black runs Number of lifts: 70 saalbach.com
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Ticket alliance Skicircus Saalbach Hinterglemm Leogang Fieberbrunn, Schmittenhöhe in Zell am See, and Kitzsteinhorn Kaprun
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Zell am See-Kaprun
Glacier, mountains and lake A picturesque winter wonderland that packs a powdery punch
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Resort fact box Distance to airport: Salzburg Airport – 80km Elevation: 768m to 3,029m Total piste distance: 138km Longest run: 7km – down Maiskogel mountain from the top Difficulty: 56km blue (41%), 54km red (39%), 28km black runs (20%) Number of lifts: 51 zellamsee-kaprun.com
Ticket alliance Skicircus Saalbach Hinterglemm Leogang Fieberbrunn, Schmittenhöhe in Zell am See, and Kitzsteinhorn Kaprun
FAISTAUER PHOTOGRAPHY, KITZSTEINHORN
The small urban city of Zell am See has much to offer, including great shopping and a beautiful lake with a lovely promenade. The lake, which often freezes in winter, is a picture-perfect foreground for views of the mountains behind. But also Zell – and specifically the nearby glacier of Kitzsteinhorn – boasts some of the Alps’ best freeriding. The pisted skiing in Zell itself has many tree runs. It’s mostly an intermediate paradise, but there are 19km of black runs, too. A short bus ride to Kaprun gives you access to the Kitzsteinhorn glacier, complete with another 61km and a snowsure guarantee (the ski season lasts seven months here). On a powder day, it’s all about that glacier. The resort’s ‘Freeride XXL’ signposting system will point you to the powder lines, whether it’s fluffy runs, big cliffs or natural pipes you’re after. Also, two new cable cars – the K-ONNECTION Kaprun Kitzsteinhorn and zellamseeXpress Schmittenhöhe – have improved links in the area, paving the way for one of the biggest ski resorts in the Alps.
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Ski Austria
GLORIOUS VIEWS From picture-perfect vistas to first-class skiing, Zell am SeeKaprun has it all
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Carinthia
Sunshine and powder lines Bordering Italy and Slovenia, this resort in southernmost Austria clocks up around 100 hours more sun in winter than most resorts further north. But that doesn’t mean a lack of snow. There’s almost 350km of pisted ski runs between these four biggest resorts
Bad Kleinkirchheim
This family-friendly resort has 103km of slopes, 75 per cent of which are intermediate. That said, hometown Olympic gold medallist Franz Klammer also has a World Cup black slope on the mountain. It’s a beast of a piste. And you can explore it with the man himself, if you don’t mind an early start. On selected dates, Klammer guides skiers around the mountain from sunrise until 9.30am. Elevation: 1,100m to 2,055m Total piste distance: 103km Difficulty: 18km blue (17%), 77km red (75%), 8km black runs (8%), plus 5km ski routes Number of lifts: 24 badkleinkirchheim.com
Großglockner Heiligenblut
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KW JOHANNES PUCH, DANIEL ZUPANC
Not the biggest ski resort in the world, but it does boast Austria’s biggest mountain. The pointed peak of the 3,798m-high Großglockner dominates the skyline, just one of the reasons this resort is so photogenic. Another is the 1,500 hectare Freeride Arena in the area. Come for the stunning photographs, stay for the excellent skiing. Elevation: 1,300m to 2,900m Total piste distance: 55km Difficulty: 20km blue (36%), 34km red (62%), 1km black runs (2%), plus 10.4km ski routes Number of lifts: 12 grossglockner.at; heiligenbrut.at
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Ski Austria
Nassfeld
This is a rarity: a ski resort with its own microclimate. Channels from the Adriatic dump powder on the mountain, giving Nassfeld a reputation as the “snow hole of Carinthia”. Since it’s such a big area and relatively quiet, you don’t even have to rise early to guarantee fresh tracks. At 110km (plus the off-piste), there’s no lack of mountain. Ski from Austria to Italy and back in a day! Elevation: 600m to 2,000m Total piste distance: 110km Difficulty: 30km blue (27%), 69km red (63%), 11km black runs (10%) Number of lifts: 30 nassfeld.at
Katschberg
Snow-secure at 2,220m, this resort between Salzburg and Carinthia offers riding for every level. There’s 10km for beginners, 40km of reds, and also an impressive 20km of challenging black pistes. It’s well worth spending a couple of days off the skis, too – the area boasts stunning snowshoe routes and torchlit hiking. Elevation: 1,640m to 2,220m Total piste distance: 70km Difficulty: 10km blue (14%), 40km red (57%), 20 black runs (29%) Number of lifts: 16 katschberg.at
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Do it
Fitness
Bark to basics: Le Corre preaches universal fitness without all the technical frills
GET FIT
NATURAL ABILITY
Three signature moves to help you master the MovNat concept ELBOW PULL-UP Instead of hanging from the bar by your hands, haul yourself up so your forearms rest on top of it, hands touching. For one rep, lift yourself with your elbows until your chest reaches the bar. This method limits your range of motion and increases the efficiency of the exercise. POP-UP Start like an underarm pull-up, but instead of stopping when your chin reaches the bar, pull yourself up until your upper body is completely above it and you’re supported by your arms.
GRASSROOTS MOVEMENT Your body wasn’t built to sit around all day. Erwan Le Corre will help you rediscover its full potential – naturally
Erwan Le Corre
To see the exercises, go to: youtube.com/user/MovNat Le Corre’s book, The Practice of Natural Movement: Reclaim Power, Health and Freedom, is out now
swimming, diving etc. Performed either indoors or outdoors, these play-like exercises help to improve coordination, balance, strength and precision skills. The basis of Le Corre’s MovNat (Natural Movement) concept is La Méthode Naturelle, a training technique developed by French naval officer Georges Hébert in the early 19th century and which also gave rise to parkour. “The aim of MovNat isn’t to make you quicker or fitter,” says Le Corre, 48. “We want you to rediscover ancient patterns of movement.” The rest, including your increased self-confidence, will take care of itself. movnat.com
FLORIAN STURM
A
ccording to Erwan Le Corre, the way we humans move in our everyday lives is unnatural and even downright inhumane. “We sit in the office for hours at a time,” says the French-born sportsman and physical trainer, “then we might go to the gym once in a while after work. And that’s all we do.” The human musculoskeletal system is built for much more frequent and varied exertion, however, and if it doesn’t get this, it becomes sick. So Le Corre has come up with a fitness regime comprising all the elements we couldn’t get enough of as kids: balancing, jumping, climbing, crawling, running, throwing,
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“Increased natural movement in your daily routine will make you stronger, healthier and happier”
Nature boy: Le Corre has been compared to a modern-day Tarzan
THE RED BULLETIN
JESSIKA LE CORRE
MOVNAT FITNESS
HAND SWING-UP Holding onto the bar with both hands, lift yourself and hook one leg over the top. Kick out your other leg as high and straight as possible, then swing it downwards. Push with your arms at the same time and the momentum will lift the whole of your upper body above the bar.
GUI D E
Do it
Gaming
THE FIFA FACTOR
BIGGER THAN FOOTBALL
EXPERT PROFILE
Built to be the ultimate football game, FIFA now shapes the sport itself
L
aunched on a shoestring budget in 1993 with a licence purchased for a song from football’s governing body, FIFA has become the world’s best-selling sports game, with more than 280 million copies sold. The goal has always been to translate football – in all its elegance and complexity – into video-game form, but FIFA has transcended that ambition by influencing the beautiful game itself. It’s now where clubs scout new signings, brands hustle for enviable licensing deals, and pro footballers discover – to their delight or dismay – how they rank on the leaderboard. FIFA expert Simon Parkin explains…
ELECTRONIC ARTS
SIMON PARKIN
ITS RANKINGS REALLY MATTER Before each year’s FIFA launch, the game’s creator EA releases a list of the top 100 players, as ranked by 9,000 data reviewers, who distil the performance of 18,000-odd pro footballers into 34 personal attributes. Such is the clout of the list that scouts have been known to use these stats to identify emerging talent. In this year’s iteration of the game, FIFA 20, Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, Neymar Jr and Eden Hazard take the top spots with ratings of 94, 93, 92 and 91 respectively. But for others the results can be painful: Rio Ferdinand joked he’d “tear down” EA’s offices after he was only rated 65 for passing in FIFA 17.
the striker’s run-up in FIFA. “It was just like playing against him on PlayStation,” Amelia said. “It was very strange.” YOU NEED TO BE IN IT TO WIN IT EA aggressively secures licences for clubs, players, stadia, and commentators’ voice-overs. What the games firm pays is a secret (it’s rumoured to be in nine figures), but sometimes it’s not enough. This year, EA lost the rights to Juventus, so resorted to calling them ‘Piemonte Calcio’ in the game. However, the player likenesses remain: appearing in FIFA is about more than money for a footballer; it’s a status symbol. For FIFA: Road to World Cup ’98, David Beckham’s appearance on the cover “was a piece in the puzzle that led him to be the most marketable footballer on the planet”, Andy Bell, founder of sports talent agency Soap Box London, said in 2015.
SIMON PARKIN FIFA PUNDIT The games critic for The Observer newspaper has covered video games and their culture for 15 years. His book A Game of Birds and Wolves, out in November, tells the story of a group of women who developed a game during WWII to help the Allies outwit German U-boats.
IT’S A CHEERLEADER FOR FOOTBALL Such is FIFA’s cachet, it doesn’t have to actively seek big-name endorsement. NBA star LeBron James Instagrammed a photo of his sons playing it, with the caption, “Game is fresh to death!” And Justin Bieber tweeted at rapper Drake, “I’m getting nice at FIFA. Be prepared.” Indeed, the game creates interest in the real sport. In 2014, an ESPN poll found that 34 per cent of Americans became soccer fans after playing FIFA. “Nowadays,” says FIFA’s creative director Matt Prior, “people come to football through our game.” ITS WORK IS NEVER DONE “Until FIFA is indistinguishable from football in real life, we’ll always have more to do,” says Prior. It’s a quest that generates heated Reddit debates with every launch. “Some like it simbased, others want huge scorelines,” he adds. In FIFA 20, there’s a focus on ‘football intelligence’ with enhanced natural AI behaviour and ball physics, plus a street football mode, Volta. Will people like it? Time will tell. At games conference E3 in 2013, whoops of delight greeted the announcement of a ‘never before possible’ feature: players could now turn their neck to head the ball at a greater-than-90° angle. FIFA 20 is out now on PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch and PC; ea.com
Unplayable but playable: Borussia Dortmund and England superstar Jadon Sancho in FIFA 20 form
IT HELPS PROFESSIONAL PLAYERS UP THEIR GAME Footballing pros have been known to use FIFA to prepare for real-life matches. Everton forward Alex Iwobi said that, when he was starting out, if a player he’d never played against was on the other team, he’d “look at his name and try to remember how good he was on FIFA”. After saving a penalty from AC Milan’s Ronaldinho in 2008, Italian goalkeeper Marco Amelia claimed he’d familiarised himself with
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GUI D E
Do it
October/November
15
to 29 October Roundhouse Rising Festival
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Thrilling EVE: riot grrrls just wanna have fun
Camden’s Roundhouse has a long history of giving fresh talent a platform; at its opening concert in October 1966, two promising bands were on the bill: Soft Machine and Pink Floyd. For the past nine years, with partners such as Gilles Peterson’s talent discovery agency and BBC Music Introducing, the venue has dedicated an annual festival to the cause. This year, artists such as grime MC Big Zuu and art-pop act Æ MAK will follow in the footsteps of former Rising alumni like Little Simz by playing the intimate Sackler Space, while hip-hop avant-gardist GAIKA headlines the main stage with a 10-piece jazz ensemble. Camden Roundhouse, London; roundhouse.org.uk
to 10 November
EVE WRESTLING: SHE-1 SERIES
Resistance Gallery, Bethnal Green, London; evewrestling.com
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to 27 October Rebel Vision Havana Moon Tour Picture the immersive experience of Secret Cinema, but applied to recreating iconic concerts. Rebel Vision (aka former music moguls Andy Cuthbert and Tom Clarke) deliver this using theatrics, SFX and cinematics – here, they present The Rolling Stones’ 2016 Havana Moon gig in Cuba. There’s even a merchandise stand selling actual tour memorabilia from the day. Various cities around the UK; rebel-vision.com
Rising stars: Æ MAK
28 31 Oct to 23 Nov Reel Rock Film Tour
Enjoy a movie with a good cliffhanger? That’s what you get at this nationwide film festival: the best of the year’s climbing and adventure features, including four world premieres. One of these tells the story of two pairs of freeclimbing titans – Alex Honnold and Tommy Caldwell, and Jim Reynolds and Brad Gobright – going head-to-head to claim the speed record for scaling El Capitan’s famous Nose route. Various UK cities; reelrock.co.uk
Oct to 10 Nov Sonica Glasgow Is it art? Music? Audio-visual mumbo jumbo? Or a higher sensory experience that transcends mere categorisation to challenge our concepts of reality? You may be none the wiser after witnessing these incredible sound-and-image performances from as far afield as Slovenia and Argentina. It all kicks off with Aether, an immersive threedimensional light matrix sonically conducted by electronic musician and scientist Max Cooper. Across Glasgow; sonic-a.co.uk
THE RED BULLETIN
DALE BRODIE, ZOE HOLMAN
Regular readers of The Red Bulletin will know EVE from our November 2018 feature on the all-women, punk-rock, pro-wrestling organisation. The self-proclaimed ‘Riot Grrrls of Wrestling’ deliver all the action and theatrics you’d expect from the best in big-league brawling, but with a feminist message of inclusion – that women of any age can get crazy in the ring and enjoy themselves. And, you know, guys can spectate. This two-day, four-event fight series will see combatants from around the world battle to reach the Sunday final. And if you’re a girl who just wants to have fun (and dreams of the GLOW life), organisers Emily and Dann Read run training sessions at the EVE Academy in Bethnal Green.
See it
BARTEK WOLINSKI/RED BULL CONTENT POOL, SONSTAR/RED BULL CONTENT POOL, MIHAI STETCU/RED BULL CONTENT POOL
IT’S ALL FOR THE TAKING
The world’s top freeriders, breakdancers and enduro racers all have their eye on top prizes this month. Watch the action from these unmissable events and more on Red Bull TV…
October / November
25
This will be Virgin’s second year hosting Red Bull Rampage
October LIVE
RED BULL RAMPAGE
Twenty-one members of the freeride mountain-biking elite will gather in Virgin, Utah, for the 14th edition of the sport’s biggest and most intense contest. Riders including last year’s winner, Canada’s Brett Rheeder, will work with their two-person build crews to shape and perfect their ultimate lines down the mountain. Their goal: to ride them to victory.
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November LIVE
RED BULL BC ONE WORLD FINAL
WATCH RED BULL TV ANYWHERE
Red Bull TV is a global digital entertainment destination featuring programming that is beyond the ordinary and is available anytime, anywhere. Go online at redbull.tv, download the app, or connect via your Smart TV. To find out more, visit redbull.tv
THE RED BULLETIN
For the first time ever, Mumbai plays host to the ultimate breakdance challenge. See B-Boys and B-Girls from across the planet go head-to-head in the Indian city, competing for the Red Bull BC One crown.
2
to 3 November LIVE
GETZENRODEO
The 2019 World Enduro Super Series comes to a climax with the incredibly popular GetzenRodeo. Last year, 12,000 spectators travelled to Drebach in Germany and saw homegrown rider Mani Lettenbichler take first place. Don’t miss this year’s finale.
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Equipment Your guide to gear born with purpose, engineered to achieve, and built with style
SPACE
The right stuff Hamilton X-01
ELEMENTAL WATCHES The best timepieces for every terrain THE RED BULLETIN
The watch you see here is a vision of the future, but its creation is steeped in history. In 1968, American filmmaker Stanley Kubrick released his science-fiction epic 2001: A Space Odyssey. It caused a stir, and not for all the right reasons. At the film’s New York premiere, lead actor Keir Dullea witnessed around 250 people walking out, including Hollywood star Rock Hudson, who apparently exclaimed, “What is this bullshit?” But within months 85
Equipment
Coated in a molecule-thin film of condensed vapour (PVD – physical vapour deposition), the Khaki BeLOWZERO proves a perfect choice of watch for a Martian explorer.
there were other reports – of people on psychotropic drugs coming just to watch the ending. At a San Francisco theatre, someone ran through the screen screaming, “It’s God!” More than 50 years later, and almost two decades past the film’s dateline, 2001 remains an impressively prescient prediction of the future. This is due in part to Kubrick’s meticulous attention to detail. A perfectionist, the director personally commissioned every aspect of the film’s design, from the first on-screen instance of office cubicles, to the cutlery for the deep-space meals, and the wristwatches the astronauts wore. For the latter, Kubrick sought out watchmaker Hamilton and its in-house designer, John Bergey. The result was the X-01. However, the timepiece is barely visible in the finished film, and prohibitive costs meant a commercial model didn’t see the light of day until 2006, when Hamilton released a commemorative edition – 86
The seconds hand has a morse-code message spelling out ‘Eureka’ limited to 2001 pieces, of course – built from titanium and sapphire crystal glass, with a magnetic wand hidden in the clasp that calibrates the three smaller dials. The watch, like the film, would inspire others to dream of the future. It led Bergey to create the Pulsar Time Computer, the world’s first all-electronic digital watch, in 1972. And for two other science-fiction filmmakers it would again lead to collaborations with Hamilton. British director Ridley Scott is as profound a futurist as Kubrick, although the dystopian vision of 1982’s Blade Runner and the industrial aesthetic of 1979 horror classic Alien are the antithesis of 2001’s clean, pure minimalism.
The Khaki Field Murph Auto was designed specifically for the film Interstellar. The movie’s prop watch was modified so the filmmakers could control the movement of the seconds hand in-camera.
Christopher Nolan’s love of Kubrick’s work is well-documented. Last year, the British writer/ director struck new 70mm prints of 2001 from its original negative so the film could be watched in the same ‘unrestored’ form as on its debut. But there’s no better demonstration of Nolan’s reverence than Interstellar. His 2014 space epic pays homage to 2001 in so many ways – from the themes of outer space and inner self, to robot designs referencing the monolith, to the tripped-out multidimensional ending. But the parallels went one step further when Nolan commissioned Hamilton to create a unique watch for the movie; one that Matthew McConaughey’s character, Cooper, leaves on Earth with his daughter, Murph. Like the X-01, the watch wasn’t commercially available at the time of the film’s debut, but this year Hamilton released the Hamilton Khaki Field Murph Auto, the first 2,555 pieces of which came in a jewel box designed by Interstellar’s production designer, Nathan Crowley, to resemble the ‘tesseract’ from the film’s ending. Also, the seconds hand features a morse-code message spelling out the word ‘Eureka’. It’s a detail Kubrick would doubtless have approved of. hamiltonwatch.com THE RED BULLETIN
DAVID EDWARDS, TIM KENT
But Scott’s 2015 film The Martian hews closer, particularly in its adherence to hard scientific accuracy. For Matt Damon’s stranded astronaut, Mark Watney, a watch capable of surviving the Red Planet’s harsh environment was needed. Hamilton’s Khaki BeLOWZERO, with its black PVDcoated stainless steel case, is corrosion-resistant and capable of withstanding depths of 1,000m – although the latter feature is perhaps less important on Mars.
The Super-LumiNova photoluminescent pigment on the dial is 10 times brighter than previous phosphorescent paints and, no, it isn't radioactive.
SEA
Finding lumo Octon Black Watch Swedish brand Octon donates 10 per cent of all proceeds to Sea Legacy, an environmental charity that works to protect endangered ocean life including the shortfin mako shark. All Octon watches are designed in Stockholm, and this glowing Aurora Green and black model – which comes with a choice of stainless steel bracelet or olivegreen Zulu fabric strap – has hands and indexes coated with black Swiss Super-LumiNova, which glows 60 per cent longer than standard lume. octonwatches.com THE RED BULLETIN
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Equipment
LAND
Dust buster Shinola Runwell Sport Chrono Black Blizzard
The Detroit-based Shinola company takes its name from the famous and nowdefunct American shoe-polish brand.
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Built from strong, lightweight titanium, this durable chronograph is a homage to the tough people who survived the harsh Dust Bowl era of 1930s America, its name a reference to the ravaging storms of this dark era. The timepiece also comes with a leatherbound book filled with newspaper clippings and photos detailing brutal events of the day. shinola.co.uk THE RED BULLETIN
Equipment
LAND
Trailblazer TAG Heuer Monaco Fourth Limited Edition (1999-2009) Made famous by Steve McQueen in the 1971 car-racing movie Le Mans, the Monaco celebrates its 50th birthday this year. The watchmaker has really pulled out all the stops for this golden anniversary, creating five special versions of the iconic square-shaped timepiece, each one inspired by a different decade, starting from 1969. Behold then, the newly released fourth instalment of this chaptered tribute: a handsome black iteration with arresting red and orange accents inspired by the early 2000s. The stainless steel watch is presented on a perforated black calfskin strap that has been designed to resemble a vintage steering wheel and is punctuated with crisp white stitching – a little detail that watch geeks will surely appreciate, since they complement the batons on the watch face. The caseback is engraved with the Monaco Heuer logo as well as the inscriptions ‘1999-2009 Special Edition’ and ‘One of 169’. Inside the case, the sense of history is kept alive thanks to TAG Heuer’s famous Calibre 11, a modern version of the automatic-winding chronograph movement that made its debut in the original 1969 Monaco. tagheuer.com
McQueen's Monaco gets a whopping 15 minutes of screen time in Le Mans. His Heuerlogoed racesuit was a copy of one originally worn by his stunt driver, real-life racer Jo Siffert. THE RED BULLETIN
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SKY
Battle ready Hamilton Khaki Pilot Pioneer Mechanical
In a further homage to the ’70s (when its predecessor the Hamilton W10 was produced), the black dial is textured to recall camera or binocular cases of the time.
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You may be surprised to learn that Hamilton, the famous American watchmaker, supplied timepieces to the British Armed Forces in the 1970s. The most popular was the Hamilton W10 from 1973, which is today reborn in the hand-wound Khaki Pilot Pioneer Mechanical with 80-hour power reserve. The military redux watch – which comes with a brown leather or grey NATO strap – stays faithful to its forerunner with a curved tonneau case, faded black dial with beige accents, and cool mismatched hands: swordshaped for hours, pencil-shaped for minutes. hamiltonwatch.com THE RED BULLETIN
Equipment
MATERIAL GAIN New kit for peak performance
WEAR
Working class Filson CCF Work Vest A lot of rugged workwear is designed to look good; Filson’s gear is built for honest-to-God manual labour – it just looks good because it’s the real deal. The Seattle-based company’s CCF Workwear range is built for construction workers, loggers and farmers – folks who aren’t afraid to get their hands and clothes dirty. This vest is made from heavy, tightly woven duck canvas, triple-stitched and reinforced with rivets at the stress points. filson.com THE RED BULLETIN
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Equipment
GROOM
Immaculate concepts Compact toiletries
HOIST
Harnessing power Arcade Guide Slim belt
Never underestimate the importance of a good belt: when engaging in high-impact sports such as skateboarding, snowboarding and climbing, it can mean the difference between a great session and a bad spill. Arcade makes belts reimagined for action sports – they’re water-resistant, heavy-duty, and designed specifically for snow pants, hiking and hybrid climbing trousers. Keep your kecks and your head held high. arcadebelts.eu
Stay fresh on the fly. Shower in a Can (shower-in-a-can. co.uk) packs 20 body washes into a flightfriendly 100ml bottle, absorbing dirt and grease in a foam that requires no towel. Solid Cologne (solidcologne.co.uk) is a wax aftershave that comes in eight fragrances and was conceived by the Ancient Egyptians (minus the tin). The Matador Pocket Blanket (matadorup. com) can be carried on your person and folds out to seat up to four people.
HIKE
Wild style Adidas Terrex Free Hiker GTX A high-end technical off-road shoe with style that’s made for the streets. Featuring an insanely grippy sole for all terrains and weather conditions, an energy-returning insole, a snug sock-like interior and abrasion-resistant exterior reinforcements, this lightweight boot can take on the toughest of trails and the slickest of cities. adidas.co.uk/terrex 92
THE RED BULLETIN
WEAR
Strong look Saint Unbreakable Stretch Jeans As a motorcycle clothing brand, Saint has its priorities right: protection is uppermost, but, damn, it had better look good, too. The company’s ‘Unbreakable Stretch Jeans’ are stitched from the world’s strongest fibre, Dyneema, a high-molecular-weight material that’s 500 per cent tougher than regular denim and 15 times more abrasion resistant than carbon steel; the military has even used it to armour helicopters and stop bullets. Spinning this scientific sorcery into its denim fabric, Saint has created the world’s first single-layer bike-wear protection that’s also stretchy and light, and looks pretty good on a pair of legs. saint.cc THE RED BULLETIN
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Equipment
SPORT
Jersey scores Nike League of Legends kit
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Esports is growing in recognition as a legitimate sport by the day, and there’s perhaps no greater measure of this than the world's biggest sports brand creating the kits for one of its major leagues. The shirts you see here are Nike x LPL team uniforms – bespoke jerseys created for the 16 clubs in China's League
of Legends Pro League. Each has a chevron motif on the chest referencing the most common map in the game: Summoner’s Rift. But within that chevron and throughout each shirt are details specific to each team and their ingame skins, from dragon scales on the black-and-gold Royal Never Give Up kit to the Cyber Formula
thruster patterns on the sleeves of Edward Gaming’s dark red jersey. And, just like on a pro football kit, there’s also a small gold star above the team badge on Invictus Gaming’s white shirt, signifying their victory in 2018’s League of Legends World Championship. All the kits will feature in the 2020 LoL season. nike.com
THE RED BULLETIN
PROTECT
A bit off the top Closca Helmet Loop If you want to stay protected, wearing a bike helmet is just a smart idea, and this collapsible concept makes the decision smarter. Spanish studio Closca’s Helmet Loop is made from three concentric components that fold into each other in a second, reducing its size by 45 per cent for easy stowing. It’s aerodynamic, light and durable when expanded, and the gap between the parts delivers air flow when riding and dissipates shock via micro-movements on impact. But perhaps the most amazing fact about this ingenious helmet is that its design is based on the architecture of the Guggenheim Museum in New York. closca.com
CARRY
Best of both bags Dakine Wndr Cinch Pack 21L Ever imagined what a hybrid of a backpack and tote bag would look like? No need, you’re looking at it. The Wndr Cinch Pack features all the practical functionality of the former – including side pockets and a laptop compartment – with the top-loading accessibility of the latter. Next stop: breeding one that also has the features of a suitcase. dakine.com THE RED BULLETIN
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GLOBAL TEAM THE RED BULLETIN WORLDWIDE
The Red Bulletin is published in seven countries. This is the cover of November’s US edition, featuring Atlanta rapper/singer Yung Baby Tate… For more stories beyond the ordinary, go to: redbulletin.com
The Red Bulletin UK. ABC certified distribution 154,346 (Jan-Dec 2018)
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Editor-in-Chief Alexander Macheck Deputy Editors-in-Chief Andreas Rottenschlager, Nina Treml Creative Director Erik Turek Art Directors Kasimir Reimann (deputy CD), Miles English, Tara Thompson Head of Photo Eva Kerschbaum Deputy Head of Photo Marion Batty Photo Director Rudi Übelhör Production Editor Marion Lukas-Wildmann Managing Editor Ulrich Corazza Copy Chief Andreas Wollinger Editors Jakob Hübner, Werner Jessner, Alex Lisetz, Stefan Wagner Design Marion Bernert-Thomann, Martina de CarvalhoHutter, Kevin Goll, Carita Najewitz Photo Editors Susie Forman, Ellen Haas, Tahira Mirza Head of Commercial & Publishing Management Stefan Ebner Publishing Management Sara Varming (manager), Ivona Glibusic, Bernhard Schmied, Melissa Stutz, Mia Wienerberger B2B Marketing & Communication Katrin Sigl (manager), Agnes Hager, Teresa Kronreif Head of Creative Markus Kietreiber Co-Publishing Susanne Degn-Pfleger & Elisabeth Staber (manager), Mathias Blaha, Vanessa Elwitschger, Raffael Fritz, Marlene Hinterleitner, Valentina Pierer, Mariella Reithoffer, Verena Schörkhuber, Julia Zmek, Edith Zöchling-Marchart Commercial Design Peter Knehtl (manager), Sasha Bunch, Simone Fischer, Martina Maier, Florian Solly Advertising Placement Manuela Brandstätter, Monika Spitaler Head of Production Veronika Felder Production Walter O. Sádaba, Friedrich Indich, Sabine Wessig Repro Clemens Ragotzky (manager), Claudia Heis, Nenad Isailovi c,̀ Sandra Maiko Krutz, Josef Mühlbacher Operations Michael Thaler (MIT), Alexander Peham, Yvonne Tremmel (Office Management) 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 Tel: +43 1 90221 28800, Fax: +43 1 90221 28809 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
THE RED BULLETIN United Kingdom, ISSN 2308-5894 Acting Editor Tom Guise Associate Editor Lou Boyd Music Editor Florian Obkircher Chief Sub-Editor Davydd Chong Sub-Editor Nick Mee Publishing Manager Ollie Stretton Editor (on leave) Ruth Morgan Advertising Sales Mark Bishop, mark.bishop@redbull.com Fabienne Peters, fabienne.peters@redbull.com Printed by Prinovis GmbH & Co KG, Printing Company Nuremberg, 90471 Nuremberg, Germany UK Office Seven Dials Warehouse, 42-56 Earlham Street, London WC2H 9LA Tel: +44 (0) 20 3117 2000 Subscribe getredbulletin.com Enquiries or orders to: subs@uk. redbulletin.com. Back issues available to purchase at: getredbulletin.com. Basic subscription rate is £20.00 per year. International rates are available. The Red Bulletin is published 10 times a year. Please allow a maximum of four weeks for delivery of the first issue Customer Service +44 (0)1227 277248, subs@uk.redbulletin.com
THE RED BULLETIN Austria, ISSN 1995-8838 Editor Christian Eberle-Abasolo Proofreaders Hans Fleißner (manager), Petra Hannert, Monika Hasleder, Billy Kirnbauer-Walek Publishing Management Bernhard Schmied Sales Management Alfred Vrej Minassian (manager), Thomas Hutterer, Stefanie Krallinger anzeigen@at.redbulletin.com
THE RED BULLETIN France, ISSN 2225-4722 Editor Pierre-Henri Camy Country Coordinator Christine Vitel Country Project M anagement Alessandra Ballabeni Contributors, Translators and Proofreaders Étienne Bonamy, Frédéric & Susanne Fortas, Suzanne Kříženecký, Claire Schieffer, Jean-Pascal Vachon, Gwendolyn de Vries
THE RED BULLETIN Germany, ISSN 2079-4258 Editor David Mayer Proofreaders Hans Fleißner (manager), Petra Hannert, Monika Hasleder, Billy Kirnbauer-Walek Country Project Management Natascha Djodat Advertising Sales Matej Anusic, matej.anusic@redbull.com Thomas Keihl, thomas.keihl@redbull.com
THE RED BULLETIN Mexico, ISSN 2308-5924 Editor Luis Alejandro Serrano Associate Editor Marco Payán Proofreader Alma Rosa Guerrero Country Project Management Giovana Mollona Advertising Sales Alfredo Quinones, alfredo.quinones@redbull.com
THE RED BULLETIN Switzerland, ISSN 2308-5886 Editor Nina Treml Proofreaders Hans Fleißner (manager), Petra Hannert, Monika Hasleder, Billy Kirnbauer-Walek Country Project Management Meike Koch Advertising Sales Marcel Bannwart (D-CH), marcel.bannwart@redbull.com Christian Bürgi (W-CH), christian.buergi@redbull.com
THE RED BULLETIN USA, ISSN 2308-586X Editor-in-Chief Peter Flax Deputy Editor Nora O’Donnell Copy Chief David Caplan Director of Publishing Cheryl Angelheart Country Project Management Laureen O’Brien Advertising Sales Todd Peters, todd.peters@redbull.com Dave Szych, dave.szych@redbull.com Tanya Foster, tanya.foster@redbull.com
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BEYOND THE ORDINARY The next issue is out on Tuesday 8th October with London Evening Standard. Also available across the UK at airports, gyms, hotels, universities and selected retail stores. Read more at theredbulletin.com LITTLE SHAO / RED BULL CONTENT POOL
Action highlight
Freerider Kilian Bron feels totally at home in the French mountain-bike/ski resort of La Clusaz. It was here on ‘The Trace’, the trail he helped to create, that Bron shot the film Follow Me with fellow Frenchman and drone pilot Tomz FPV. Here, the rider pulls off a beautiful road gap, captured by photographer Dom Daher. Instagram: @redbullfrance
The next issue of THE RED BULLETIN is out on November 12 98
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