As our lil project is growing and growing, Iñaki Gil from Barcelona hit us up and offered us to send over some analogue pictures from his adventures in BCN. Seeing pictures shot in a city which some describe as the "holy grail of street spots" is always a pleasure, and so we felt honored and agreed. But when I saw the shots Iñaki sent us, I was truly overwhelmed, they really seem to give an insight and transport the feeling of riding, chilling and living in Barcelona. The scene over there is really tied together - especially the Haske family - and get down to get some shred regularly. Enjoy an insight in one of the coolest, down-to-earth scenes on the planet, living in one of the best places for riding scooters on the planet.
Black and White
Good friend Joan Margarit organized a barbecue before he left Barcelona to study in the United States, the session started as soon as we spotted this pool.
Barcelona, Sants.
Ruben Rodriguez in Macba.
Javi Trepat, one of the first guys to ride a scooter in Spain.
This photo portrays perfectly how Yago & Sote connect, I can imagine almost imagine the conversation.
Sote King & Dani Cardona.
Jeremy Lanfranchi is living at the Haske House, stoke!!!
Dani Cardona in Paral-lel
Jonas Kjaer will marry his vx.
Dani invited me to his house in Masnou, I stayed 2 days but I've got 20 stories of the weekend haha.
Colour
Dani, Sote & Javi in front of Haske.
Views from the Haske House.
Aleix Aguilar, a rad human being.
I remember we were hungry and lunch seemed to never arrive...
Bossman Gepe with the Haske jacket.
Javi cruising around Masnou.
Pol Aceña.
Pol showing Damia Araujo a photo of Lewis Crampton.
Javi will almost never eat when we go ride, you can figure out Dani's opinion on that.
Haske having dinner in Masnou, when we finished we headed towards the car and the gnarliest storm I have ever witnessed dropped down on us.
All of us except Pol (thanks to Claudia for the picture).
All shots were done on a Leica R4 and are the courtesy of Iñaki Gil. Intro by David Tiefenthaler, descriptions by Iñaki Gil.
The hectic world in which we live seems to never slow down and so do our imagination, in fact it's far less stressful than the first point and it allows you to think in ways you've probably never expected yourself to.
Just to say that lack of new griptape-designs doesn't necessarily mean that we slowed down, we just take our time, enjoying each aspect of the process like true gourmets. Now, what came of it recently is a idea of making a small amount of very limited designs - one of a kind pieces. That doesn't mean that we consider our work somehow superior to others. We just want the grips to be fresh, authentic and each having its own little story behind it.
The molecule man - first one of those made for friend of mine-Adrian
From now on, there will be very new pieces posted on our blog every now and then, hopefully available for international shipping for no more than10bucks. So you'd better stay tuned.
As promised, we are also going to share some thoughts on music here, just because it is so damn important. REAL music and not the stuff that is coming out of the mouth of so-called pop stars. So we would like to keep it real and introduce to you some good artists (if you don't already know 'em). And we are going to start it off with one of my all-time favourite bands: The King Khan & The BBQ Show!
Canadian punk roots
Both, King Khan and BBQ have been around for some time now, playing in various bands to date, but having their roots in the Canadian punk bands Les Sexareenos and Spaceshits. They grew up, playing wild, fast and crazy punk songs, doing acid and touring around. In the mid 2000's, they both started to take different paths different paths, King Khan with his Shrines doing more soulish garage rock and BBQ aka Mark Sultan starting to play as a one-man band. Though they are both crazy good alone, they are even better when playing together.
Rock'n'Roll saviours
It is hard to give their music a name or to put it in a genre, maybe it is a mix of a little bit doo-wop, mixed up with punk and psych, topped with some soul and garage rock. The lyrics vary from genius to complete nonsense and back. I can just tell one thing, their tunes make you wanna go wild. Or jump around. Or shout and sing. Or vomit. Or fuck. It is just a trip from beginning until the end. And that's, what rock'n'roll is originally all about: it should evoke strong and wild feelings, it should make you wanna to go crazy. Call their music whatever you want, but for me these two guys incorporate the spirit of rock'n'roll more than any band out there at the moment. Maybe, rock'n'roll is dead. But if King Khan and BBQ try hard to bring it back to life.
Live and uncensored
If you get the chance to see them live, you should definitely not miss out to witness one of their infamous live performances. Usually, they are going fucking nuts on stage, especially King Khan is ripping the stage, check this. And they wear funny costumes too! I only had the chance to see Mark Sultan solo live, I did not really understand how a person can go so crazy with a guitar and a drum kit, was fun for sure. If you want to see how lunatic they really are, here are some lines from an interview: Interviewer: Do you guys think that you're a psych band? KK: We are psych in our hearts and our sould. We don't need the music to tell us... MS: We grew up doing so much LSD. KK: I eat rice, it's psychedelic, you know what I mean? It doesn't fucking matter to me. MS: No, but we are psychedelic adventurers, since we were teenagers. Every punk band that we played in was all based around LSD, mushrooms, and, uh, and the Mohawk Indians, and.... KK: We were sponsored by microdots before... MS: Microdots, before anybody gave a shit about microdots they sponsored us. I strongly recommend to read the whole thing, it is hilarious. And to finish it off, we got some of their tracks to show you what's up:
The homie Toby shredding to the tune Truth or Dare of the infamous duo from their last LP Invisible Girl:
So yeah, a while back we posted a digital photo on our facebook from a perfect session in Vienna this autumn. Here we go with some more, this time analogue ones:
All the photos were shot on a Minolta x700 and a Nikon FE.
So the Philly Files, they got released a few days back, what seems like ages, considering us living in the internet era. But I wanted this to be the first video we post on the side for various reasons. I think this is one of the best crew full-lengths to date regarding music choice (really appreciated Parrish's song), the riders (full McKeen part, damn son!) and the general feel of the video. The Philly Files is an urban documentary, that shows pretty good in the B-roll footy, which is dope by the way. I could write so much more about this full-length, but let the video speak for itself...
We recently took a little time to shred Bratislava and Vienna on two days after the NYE hangovers. Riding street here in this season can be from pretty hard to nearly impossible, regarding temperature and rain/snow. You might know how frustrating it is to absolutely want to get some shred and then get have to deal with bad weather. Still we managed to have a good time along with the homies Soregi and Moravčik, searching for dry spots and shredding a little indoor place in Bratislava.
Found one dry spot with a freshly painted rail...
...in the Bratislava suburbs. (David Tiefenthaler)
The second indoor spot of today: warm and dry. Until we got kicked and...
...had to check Vienna to find more of these dry streets. (Juraj Klas, BS Overcrook)
Photos by David Tiefenthaler, Juraj Klas and Mr. Moravčik.
