The Red Bulletin_1209_NZL

Flying Lotus / Grizzly Bear / Thomas Herzig / Graeme Obree / Torey Pudwill / Kristen Stewart / Vampire Weekend

a beyond the ordinary magazine

September 2012

hell on high water

On New Zealand‘s boat in the Volvo Ocean Race ger Hartmann

The man who makes champions stronger

Future M u s ic

music grind e New YorkLockha it inJessethBoykins to mingakNickeHook, How (featur rt) and Tiombe

NZD 6.95 September 2012

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xc v i d e lu s i v e o s on F r e e ou r Tabl e t Ap p

THE WORLD OF RED BULL

September HOMEMADE FOR SPEED ‘Flying Scotsman’ Graeme Obree is using both pedal and brain power to set new bike records

COVER PHOTOGRAPHY: MIKO LIM. PHOTOGRAPHY: PAUL CALVER, GETTY IMAGES, GIAN PAUL LOZZA, PALANI MOHAN

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KRISTEN STEWART Inside the mind of the Twilight star, Hollywood’s Holl best-paid actress

WELCOME From the heights of kites in Bali to the depths of Galway Bay, via Team New Zealand’s racing yacht in the world’s most gruelling regatta, The Red Bulletin ranges far and wide this month. There’s music from Flying Lotus, Mathew Halsall, Grizzly Bear and John Cale – but so there should be. Those guys are pros. What about the rookies trying to break New York City’s music scene?

Three fledgling stars reveal how far you can get on self-belief and tips. Also doing things his own way is Graeme Obree, builder of bicycles that could make him the fastest man on two (pedalled) wheels. Speaking of fast, how can you travel 28 metres in three seconds? By taking part in the Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series. We’ve got the science behind the spectacle. Enjoy the issue.

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RED BULL STRATOS An update on the mission to dive from the edge of space, by man-in-the-suit, Felix Baumgartner

“ We built a kite

that needed 75 people to fly it.

It was too big ”

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SPIRITS IN THE WIND The Bali Kite festival is among the world’s most spectacular displays of craft and tradition, and the scene of great battles between rival kite gangs

THE WORLD OF RED BULL

September 58

54 86

HEALING HANDS He’s the ‘go-to guy’ for athletes teetering on career breakdown: physio-guru-magician Gerard ‘Ger’ Hartmann

TOUGH BREAKS Californian street skater Torey Pudwill on how to recover after a double-hard inury

52 TEAM NEW ZEALAND FOCUS

The Volvo Ocean Race left Tony Rae with two broken ribs, but he still can’t wait to embark on NZ’s America’s Cup campaign

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“ It’s like you’re in a washing machine while a madman hits it with a hammer ”

THE CRUEL SEA: VOLVO OCEAN RACE The most arduous route, the most expensive equipment, the best crews: welcome to the most challenging regatta in the world

10 Gallery: the images of the month 16 Bullevard: sport and culture on the quick 20 Hero: Matthew Halsall, man of jazz 22 Kit Evolution: mountain bikes 26 Lucky Numbers: Ryder Cup

PHOTOGRAPHY: MIKO LIM, PATRICK BOLGER, ATIBA JEFFERSON/RED BULL CONTENT POOL, CHRIS CAMERON, VOLVO OCEAN RACE

EMPIRE STATE OF MIND How to crack the New York music scene, from those who know how tough it can be, including Azealia Banks’s producer

THE WORLD OF RED BULL

September “ I want

people to listen to my music in their cars ”

82 LOST IN MUSIC IN NEW ORLEANS

Local DJ Brice Nice gives the low-down on where to go in the Crescent City for hip-hop, cabaret, drag bingo and naked karaoke

Flying Lotus

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MASTER OF INVENTION He has been likened to Miles Davis and Jimi Hendrix, but the LA beatmaker Flying Lotus likens himself to Bugs Bunny.What’s up with that?

66 MAXIMUM AIRPLAY

Thomas Herzig is the Pneumatic Architect, building castles full of sky – his trademark inflatable ‘pneumocell’ creations fuse Gothic master building techinques with modern construction technology

Body & Mind 84

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GROWING PAINS

Large-living Auckland hip-hop crew Home Brew have a number one album to their name, with musical and personal development next on their list. That’s not easy, though, when ‘self-destruction is easier’

GET THE GEAR

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TOP SPOTS

Roland Trettl, executive chef at Salzburg’s Ikarus restaurant, talks us through his kitchen

Worldly goings-on

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BAND WATCH

Auckland quartet Collapsing Cities are back with an impressive album

90 NIGHTLIFE

96

SAVE THE DATE

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KAINRATH

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MIND’S EYE

Events for the diary Our cartoonist

Columnist Russell Brown uncorks the redemptive power of a dancefloor

A glamorous club, an exotic cocktail, a midnight snack, the best in music and much more – we’ve got everything you need to get you through the night

PHOTOGRAPHY: THOMAS BUTLER, GETTY IMAGES, DANIEL GEBHART DE KOEKKOEK, KRISTIAN FRIRES

more

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G R A N D C H E RO K E E S R T 8

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RED BULL STRATOS

“Now we need to keep cool”

Felix Baumgartner explains what happened on his final test jump – and what happens next for the real thing

could fail while we’re up there or, worse still, a short circuit could send the capsule up in flames.

Of course a break of just two or three weeks between the penultimate and final jumps would have been ideal, because we were all at the top of our game. But now we have to stick with the same professional attitude which has already taken us to the edge of space twice. Once the capsule is repaired, we’ll check it over in the pressure chamber and if it’s all systems go, we’ll take it straight to Roswell and then the real jump will take place in the first two weeks of October. We’re professionals, and we do our job properly and calmly. I’ve succeeded in all my prior projects with this attitude. Yes, I feel like a caged tiger right now, but we won’t jeopardise all the hard work of the last five years at the last minute. If I don’t complete this mission, it might be another 60 years before someone else gambles on a project of this scale.

Hopefully, we’ll see each other again in October. Keep your fingers crossed for me!

“You can’t buy the spare parts for my capsule in the supermarket”

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Rough landing The capsule’s built-in crush pads absorbed the impact as designed on an early jump. But in the final test there was a hard landing, which has resulted in a delay. “When we took the capsule off the truck, everyone could see we had a problem,” says Baumgartner.

“It looked like it had been in a traffic accident with an alien.”

PHOTOGRAPHY: JOERG MITTER/RED BULL STRATOS, BALAZS GARDI/RED BULL STRATOS

T

he second test jump went well, even if the days and nights leading up to it were exhausting. It seemed like an eternity before the capsule door opened at 29,610m and I could jump. I had no control over my position for the first 16 seconds I was in free fall, but everything was under control within six seconds of the first test jump.

Yet now we can say we’ve shown twice that we can do this, which is also why I couldn’t believe it when I found out that something had happened to the capsule. A crew member who went to salvage the capsule once it landed told me what happened. At first I didn’t think the message was all that important. During the first manned flight, the capsule landed hard in the desert, but our technicians built crush pads onto the underside of the capsule for things like this, which should have softened any impact. Sadly, our project leader Art Thompson confirmed the bad news and when we took the capsule off the truck, everyone could see we had a problem. It looked like it had been in a traffic accident with an alien.

The results of the investigation back at the factory: we have to change a lot of the lifesupport system, even though my survival cell remained intact. As with an F1 car that’s crashed into a barrier, you can’t go back to the grid without undergoing thorough checks first. And you can’t buy spare parts for my capsule at the supermarket. They have to be space-approved and come from specialist firms that also supply NASA, for example. You have to wait weeks for many of these parts. We can’t and won’t allow ourselves to lift off with equipment that might be faulty.

To explain, let’s use our batteries as an example: if the inner structure is damaged, the electricity

Felix Baumgartner

TU R PAN , C H I NA

REMOTE CONTROL

After a three-hour hike through the Gobi Desert, American mountain biker Cameron Zink enjoys a welldeserved adrenalin payoff. He was filming for new bike doc Where The Trail Ends, released later this month, a project with one central aim: to push the boundaries of big-mountain freeriding in some of the most remote places on Earth. “This is what mountain biking is to us,” says Zink, “and the future of what it will be to the world.”

Get up on the downhill: www.wherethetrailends.com Photography: John Wellburn/Red Bull Content Pool

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L AN G J Ö KU LL , I C E L AN D

NOW YOU SEE IT

The ice caves in Langjökull, Iceland, are ephemeral beauties. Made of frozen snowmelt, they usually only last a year. “It’s extremely rare for caves of this size to form,” says photographer Tyler Stableford, who accompanied travel journalist Mark Jenkins to Langjökull (Icelandic for long glacier) to view these amazing feats of nature. Stableford’s portfolio is precious: all that’s left from this image is the man and his climbing gear. The rest is meltwater.

Mark Jenkins’s travel diary: www.thehardway.com Photography: Tyler Stableford

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WHITE NILE RIVER, UGANDA

A GOOD SOAK

“We feel more humble than proud,” said professional kayaker Steve Fisher after becoming one of the first people to cross the Inga Falls near the Congolese city of Matadi. Almost 71,000 cubic metres of water per second rush through the Congo River here, placing it among the world’s most fierce and rapid estuaries.

To prepare for the expedition, the crew trained on the White Nile River in Uganda you can see in this picture. The greatest risk Fisher and his three colleagues faced was whirlpools appearing out of nowhere. A documentary showcasing the expedition’s highs and lows, The Grand Inga Project, has just been released.

Movie trailer here: www.ingaproject.com Photography: Greg Von Doersten/Red Bull Content Pool

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Epic moments from the world’s best clubs and festivals: Strobelight Anthems on rbmaradio.com

Bullevard Sports and culture on the quick

Ball Four For the firsit time in 23 years, Clint Eastwood is acting in a film he hasn’t directed: in Trouble With The Curve (out Nov), he plays a baseball scout whose career is fading.

A great ball movie like these?

THE PRIDE OF THE YANKEES 1942 Just 13 months after Lou Gehrig died, Gary Cooper starred as Lou; Babe Ruth played himself.

BANG THE DRUM SLOWLY 1973 Another disease-on-the-diamond flick (see above), it contains Robert De Niro’s break-out role.

IN YOUR FACE

The colourful and highly profitable world of Takashi Murakami

Andy Warhol might well have invented Pop Art, but Takashi Murakami has perfected it. His style – in his paintings, sculptures, films and animations – screams out and captures your attention whether you want it captured or not. Garish flowers with grinning faces, cartoonish characters (Western and Japanese definition) and cute little animals, all depicted in bright, glossy colours. The 50-year-old from Japan is as controversial as he is lauded, not least for his overt blurring of the boundary between art and commerce. He has designed bags for Louis Vuitton and album covers for Kanye West, and his merchandising brings him almost as much money as his auction sales. A new book, Ego, documents his recent, and largest, solo exhibition, in Doha, Qatar, a highlight of which was a 91m-long painting of Buddhist monks in apocalyptic Manga style.

Murakami and two key motifs, cute animals and flowers

www.rizzoliusa.com

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BULL DURHAM 1988 Kevin Costner, Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon: who knew baseball was funny and sexy?

PICTURES OF THE MONTH

SUGAR 2008 A teenage Dominicano heads to the US to play in the Majors.

Little-seen, but big surprises.

Taken a picture with a Red Bull flavour?

Email it to us: phototicker@redbulletin.com Every month we print a selection, and our favourite pic is awarded a limited-edition Sigg bottle. Tough, functional and well-suited to sport, it features The Red Bulletin logo.

EVERY SHOT ON TARGET San Francisco Before the Laguna Seca MotoGP, Germany’s Stefan Bradl practises in the city.

Cameron Baird

Soled!

First-rate sporting footwear

WORDS: FLORIAN OBKIRCHER. PHOTOGRAPHY: PICTUREDESK.COM (3), GETTY IMAGES (2), KOBAL COLLECTION (2), SHAWN BRACKBILL, RAY DEMSKI/RED BULL CONTENT POOL, NIKE, GEOX, ADIDAS

NIKE HYPERKO Boxing Manny Pacquiao’s boots have kept his orthodox stance steady: he’s the only man to win belts at eight weights.

Lilou, one of three co-headliners of six-part B-Boy doc Break’n’ Reality

365 days and nights of breaking it down Omar O Delgado, Ali Ramdani and Fabiano Carvalho Lopes are better known, to an increasingly large audience, as Roxrite, Lilou and Neguin. Their status as three of the greatest talents on the breakdancing and B-Boy scene is unquestioned, but what goes on in their heads when they’re not spinning on them? The result of the trio being trailed for a year by a camera team is Break ’n’ Reality, a candid and fascinating six-part web documentary produced

by Red Bull Media House and available now on iTunes, PlayStation Network and Xbox Live. The series’ highpoint comes when the three men meet at the World Championships in Moscow for a grand showdown that tests both their abilities and friendship. www.redbull.com/breaknreality

GEOX F1 RED BULL Motor racing Fireproof, lightweight, and comfortable.

Sebastian Vettel puts his foot down wearing these.

KEEP IT FRESH

At 70, John Cale has a new album and wish-list collaborator: Snoop He’s had a greater impact on rock history than almost any other musician, as the Velvet Underground’s songwriter alongside Lou Reed. He also discovered artists such as Patti Smith and Iggy Pop. As a solo artist, 70-year-old multi-instrumentalist John Cale switches from poetic pop to avant-garde and, as evidenced by his new album the elements of hip-hop.

On the new album, you use Auto-Tune software, aka the Cher effect. It’s all the rage in hip-hop.

You can only use the effect in small doses. It gets annoying pretty quickly. I do listen to rap, but I used AutoTune on the song Mothra to recreate a robotic voice.

Who do you like in hip-hop?

I’d like to work with Snoop Dogg, or Kokane, a guy from his crew with three voices: a high Marvin Gaye voice, a sweet middle-of-the-road voice and then that growl.

He sometimes uses all three in a single song.

One of your lines goes, ‘Say hello to the future, and goodbye to the past.’

Is that a sort of motto?

I don’t want to repeat myself.

Or write something that’s already been written, because then I’d have to scrap a song that I really invested emotion in. I don’t listen to a lot of radio. I take care with my hearing habits.

Shifty Adventures In Nookie Wood is released on October 1: www.john-cale.com

John Cale: 50-year musical visionary keeps his radio turned off

ADIDAS ADIZERO Discus, hammer Flat design and an extra-polished front end add a few kphs to the rotational speed one needs when throwing stuff across the infield.

WE HAVE A WINNER!

Madrid At the Plaza de Toros, 25,000 fans get behind Red Bull X-Fighters.

Jörg Mitter

Agra British freerunner Ryan Doyle unearths the impossible: a new way to see the Taj Mahal.

Sebastian Marko

Dallas A full-on finals day for Red Bull Game Breakers, a 7-on-7 version of American football.

Garth Milan 17

B U L L E VA R D

Pis re volluptatia parum et, esciet aut The movie will be screened at Event Cinemas in Auckland

Blue movie Jack McCoy has been making movies for more than 30 years, but the Hawaiian premiere of A Deeper Shade of Blue was one of the highlights of his career. “The movie was my gift to Hawaii and to watch it with the locals was pretty special,” says the US director. The movie explores the roots of surfing and celebrates the people who have made a unique contribution to the sport.

“You can watch Shipsterns all day long on the internet,” says McCoy, “but to be in a cinema full of surfers watching a movie that was made for the big screen is a totally different experience.”

Auckland screenings: www.garageentertainment.com.au

Hogan’s new collection is very Upstate New York

FASHION PASSION

Meghan Geliza with one of the Burmese children

Artist abroad Artist Meghan Geliza usually makes psychedelic wood panels in her Auckland studio. But last Christmas she spent two weeks at a rubbish dump in Burma painting the alphabet on a wall. Geliza was one of 10 international artists on the Little Lotus Project that worked with schools on the Thai/Burma border. “Many of the kids had been rescued from trafficking or were orphans,” says Geliza. “They worked at a dump, but despite everything they choose to be happy. Each moment was golden.” Her work will feature at a fundraiser exhibition in Wellington next month. www.littlelotusproject.org

Lyme Regis English wakeboarding: Dominik Hernler at Red Bull Harbour Reach.

Ben Dean 18

Juliette Hogan started making clothes aged 12, but at university she preferred interior design.

Then she won a scholarship to Parsons The New School For Design in New York. “That was massive for my confidence,” says Hogan. “I didn’t expect to win because I didn’t come from a fashion background.” She set up her NZ-based label in 2004 and opened her first shop three years later. Now she is gearing up for her seventh NZ Fashion Week.

What’s so special about New Zealand Fashion Week?

You get to express what your brand is about without others interpreting it for you. I decide

Denai Alam At Red Bull Under My Wing, fledgling Malaysian biking talent is nurtured.

Victor Fraile

on everything: hair, make-up, music, lighting and styling.

What’s the inspiration for this year’s collection?

It’s vaguely based on a girl standing at a train station in Upstate New York in autumn.

Is NZ Fashion Week as glamorous as it looks?

Before my show I’m out the back in Chucks and jeans crawling around on the floor, getting the clothes and models ready. It’s incredibly exhausting but it’s such an adrenalin rush. By the end of the week you’re like, ‘Thank God it’s over for another year.’ www.juliettehogan.com

Salzburg A flock of rare sculptures aluminium

austrianicus takes off at the airport’s Hangar-7.

Helge Kirchberger

WORDS: ROBERT TIGHE. PHOTOGRAPHY: TIM MKENNA, PAT SHEPHERD, MICHAEL NG

This month sees Auckland designer Juliette Hogan make her seventh appearance at NZ Fashion Week

B U L L E VA R D

WHERE’S YOUR HEAD AT?

KRISTEN STEWART Aged 22, she’s Hollywood’s highest-earning actress and, as Bella in Twilight, the star of teenage dreams for girls and boys the world over. How did it ever come to this?

COM PAN Y TOW N GIRL

GR EY PR ID E

Born in Los Angeles on April 9, 1990, to a script supervisor mom and a stage manager/producer daddy, Kristen Jaymes Stewart grew up inside the entertainment industries. She auditioned from a young age, but was no precious princess.

“Look at a picture of me before I was 15,” she told Vanity Fair, of her nongirlie ways. “I am a boy.”

This year’s blockbuster boo k Fifty Shades Of Grey, has its roots in the Twilight universe. Author EL James originally wrote a story in which Bella and Edward did more that just look moodi ly into each other’s eyes. Posted online, the story’s character names were cha nged, it was extended to book length, then bought by millions. Guess which actors are being mooted for the movie.

K-STEW AND R-PATZ

Stewart and Pattinson’s on-screen romance continued into real life, where the going rate for a paparazzi shot of them together off-set hit US $100k – close to Stewart’s daily income as Hollywood’s highest-earning actress ($34.5m, from May 2011-May 2012, says Forbes magazine). In July, Stewart was spotted canoodling with the director of her Snow White movie: for she apologised, Pattinson fumed. PR the next Twilight film or love in turmoil?

LADY LOOKS LIKE A DUDE

The boyish thing worked in Stewart’s favour: in 2001, her first speaking role in the movies was a rebellious little tomboy in The Safety Of Objects.

The following year, she played Jodie Foster’s diabetic daughter in Panic Room. On both occasions, she sported the sort of floppy hairdo reminiscent of a young River Phoenix.

LIFE AFTER TW ILIG HT

Before her split with Pattinson, Stewart is said to have declared a desire to start a family with him.

Any offspring will almost certainly be a regular human child, unlike the half-vampire, half-human – or ‘dhampir’ – child their Twilight characters brought into the world.

And for her first role post-Bella, Stewart has chosen Cali, a gritty action film involving fake snuff films and revenge. Revenge!

WORDS: PAUL WILSON. ILLUSTRATION: LIE-INS AND TIGERS

T INTO TH E TW ILI GH

teen years, so did her As Stewart grew into her errated Undertow rep as an actress. In the und Jamie Bell: with nes sce red (2004), she sha 10th movie after Her .

When Bella Met Billy (Elliot) the critics: by ed otic re-n her Panic Room got Wild. Penn The Into , Sean Penn’s 2007 drama ine her Cat r cto dire to t war suggested Ste y novel tas fan n tee a Hardwicke, then prepping light.

Twi is , say y the as t, res adaptation. The

BELLA RINGIN G; TILLS TOO

A teen movie based on a best-selling novel about a girl who falls in love with a vampire is being cast in early 2008. Kristen Stewart is playing Bella. At the director’s house, some English kid from the Harry Potter films turns up to test for the vampire part. Stewart and this Robert Pattinson fellow kiss. All three present feel the fizz.

Twilight makes 10 times its budget at the box office. A film franchise is born.

THE ROAD TO SUCCE SS

VAMPIRES SUCK A sign of success in today’s Hollywood is a parody of your film made by Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer. The two have written and or directed several, including Scary Movie, Meet The Spartans and Twilight take-off Vampires Suck. Instead of Kristen Stewart as Bella Swan, there’s Jenn Proske as Becca Crane. To do Bella, Proske says she lowers her voice and has to “smile a lot. Kristen Stewart doesn’t.”

Since embarking on The Twilight Saga Stewart has made six other films. The final Twilight film comes out in November, but before that she can be seen in an adaptation of the Jack Kerouac novel On The Road. “I like pushing myself,” she said, of the film’s sex scenes. “We admire Kristen’s career choices,” millions of teenage boys online are paraphrased as saying.

On The Road is released worldwide in September and October: www.ontheroad-themovie.com

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B U L L E VA R D

SYNCHOPATOR INNOVATOR

MATTHEW HALSALL

At the tender age of 14 he toured the world.

Now he’s taking jazz into the 21st century, with his trumpet, record bag and record label

Born September 11, 1983, Warrington, UK First contact Aged six, at a jazz big-band gig he attended with his parents, he pointed at the trumpet. They bought him a cornet instead – he was too small to play a trumpet.

Second wind In his mid-20s he started to focus on his own production. “I felt I needed to play music for my generation”, he says, “to make my own version of jazz music.”

Musician, DJ and label owner in one, Halsall loves multi-tasking

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It’s nothing new for Matthew Halsall to see an enraptured audience follow his every move when he’s playing trumpet. Halsall, 29, was just 14 years old when his audition for the Wigan Youth Jazz Orchestra left its leader lost for words. He was hired on the spot, becoming the youngest member (by five years) of one of the world’s best youth big bands. Having never left his hometown of Manchester, Halsall’s first tour with the band took him to Malaysia.

“That was exciting,” he says.

Halsall is a trumpeting genius, but that doesn’t stop him working hard to improve, constantly tweaking his technique and honing his playing style.

“As a musician you’re always going somewhere,” he says, referring to both his own musical development and the itinerant life led by someone with muchdemanded talents. He has, after all, visited continents in the same way he has visited many musical styles. He has played in classical ensembles and funk, soul and reggae bands, before returning to the jazz fold a few years ago.

Halsall has developed his own original jazz language: slowed-down, gentle, soulful, melodic, full-bodied, intense and completely modern.

“Matthew really only plays what needs to be played,” says saxophonist

Always on top: Matthew Halsall in his trademark worker cap

Nat Birchall. “None of his notes are played just for the sake of playing them, everything has meaning.”

Another fan is music guru Gilles Peterson, who chose Halsall’s 2011 release, On The Go, as his jazz album of the year. “If I could watch any jazz band in the UK, any, I would choose Matthew Halsall’s band,” said Peterson, at his annual Worlwide Awards. “It’s always high-level, spiritual jazz music.”

This month, Halsall releases his fourth album, Fletcher Moss Park, on Gondwana Records, the label he founded in 2007 to launch his acclaimed debut, Sending My Love, and currently runs from an office at home in Manchester. Although Halsall’s heart is devoted to the trumpet, he flits from concert hall to club, swapping his instrument for DJ decks. “It keeps your ears fresh,” says Halsall, who also keeps his head warm with a trademark cloth worker cap.

Halsall was a hit at festivals across Europe over the summer, both front of stage playing trumpet with his band and behind the decks with his bag of records. His “dream goal” is to produce “an album that has solo piano tunes, orchestra tunes and jazz tunes. I want to really take my time and put my heart and soul in to it.”

Don’t bet against him realising his vision.

“My dream goal is to do an album that has solo piano tunes, orchestra tunes and jazz tunes.

I want to take my time and put my heart and soul in to it”

Music, tour dates and more: www. matthewhalsall.com

WORDS: OLIVER PICKUP. PHOTOGRAPHY: SIMON HUNT, RICHARD KABY

Name Matthew Halsall

B U L L E VA R D

HARD & FAST

Mike Whiddett is hoping to win his Red Bull Drift Shifters in his RX7 car

Top performers and winning ways from around the globe

New Zealand rider Brook MacDonald (centre) claimed his first downhill MTB World Cup victory in Val d’Isere, France.

Whiddett lives up to his ‘Mad’ nickname

Honda World Superbike rider Jonathan Rea made history when he became the first Briton to win the prestigious Suzuka 8 Hours race in Japan.

Australian surfer Julian Wilson was dubbed ‘The Comeback kid’ after a late run of wins brought him a first-time victory at the US Open of Surfing.

WORDS: ROBERT TIGHE. PHOTOGRAPHY: LARRY CHEN (2), SVEN MARTIN, HONDA, C BAHN/USOS, JOERG MITTER/RED BULL CONTENT POOL. ILUSTRATION: DIETMAR KAINRATH

PINBALL WHIDDETT

Not only is ‘Mad’ Mike Whiddett aiming to become the best drifter in the world, he’s also hoping to revolutionise the sport

Top NZ driver Mike Whiddett is the brains behind an exciting new form of drift racing. Red Bull Drift Shifters will take place on the streets of Auckland around Victoria Park on a track that resembles a giant pinball machine. Drivers will slide their car around various obstacles, scoring points based on the degree of difficulty of their run. Obstacles will be fitted with proximity sensors to reward drivers for their precision drifting skills.

“One complaint people have about drifting is how much of it is down to the judges,” says Whiddett, who will be competing in the event on November 4. “This event will be all about the drivers and how well they can manoeuvre their car around the track.”

After winning this year’s World Powerslide Championships in Norway, Whiddett will be fancied to come out on top in his own event. He’s also got his sights set on a return to the Formula Drift series in the US next year, where he impressed on his debut in 2010.

“I’ve had a few offers from different teams but I don’t want to do it just for the sake of it,” says Whiddett. “I want to compete in a championship-winning car. That’s the dream.”

At the Red Bull X-Fighters World Tour stop in Madrid, Levi Sherwood (NZL, centre) beat local hero and 2011 overall champ Dany Torres (right).

www.redbull.co.nz

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B U L L E VA R D

KIT EVOLUTION

Wheel Progress Two decades of tweaks and weight loss separate a rare treasure of mountain-biking from a spearhead of cycling technology

LONG, SLIM, LOW

In the 1990s, a more elongated sitting position was considered sportier. Pressure on the front and aerodynamic, but poor control off-road

RIGID FORK

When the suspension fork was introduced in 1990, many cross-country riders rejected it, believing that it squandered power

GEARS

Shimano Deore XT: then state-of-the-art, seven gears at the back, three sprockets at the front.

Made light work of any hill

1992

MARONÉ KAMPFMASCHINE

The Red Bull Maroné team, with racers Gerhard Zadrobilek, Ekkehard Dörschlag and Manfred Kornelson, cleaned up at the MTB World Cup, and other major races such as Red Bull Dolomitenmann, on bikes made in Peter Maroné’s prestigious Salzburg workshop. Raised chain stays, a sporty seat position and an aura of victory make this a silver dream machine for enthusiasts.

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Ultra-taut square chain stays made from aluminium.

Total bike weight: 13.44kg

Weight reduction over 20 years: 41 per cent

EASIER RIDE

The rider sits much more comfortably on the bike.

Wider handlebars and shorter stem make for more responsive handling

GEARS

Ten sprockets in the back, two chain wheels in the front: the SRAM XX has one less gear than a 3x7 formation and weighs much less

SUSPENSION FORK

WORDS: WERNER JESSNER. PHOTOGRAPHY: KURT KEINRATH

The DT Swiss XRC 100 has 10cm displacement and is locked using the handlebars. At 1.27kg it weighs the same as the rigid fork

2012

SCOTT SCALE SL

Weight reduction plus more functionality equals more speed. The frame, suspension fork, handlebars, stem, seat, seat post, crank and rims are all made from carbon, each part optimised for functional perfection. (Disc brakes and suspension fork are standard cross-country MTB components.) With a more comfortable seat position, this bike is much faster than the Maroné, uphill and downhill. www.redbulldolomitenmann.com

At 899g, the Scale SL’s frame is mountain-biking’s lightest. Total bike weight: 7.91kg

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B U L L E VA R D

WINNING FORMULA

SPLASH DOWN

The success of a nine-storey, foot-first cliff dive is dependent on movements of millimetres during descent. A cliff diver and a scientist explain why

LEAP OF FAITH “I train to correct my diving from a height of 15m,” says Czech plunger Michal Navratil, securer of third place on the Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series 2011, and sixth overall after four rounds of the 2012 competition. “I jump a double somersault with a half twist, try to determine my position in the air and move my legs to the place where I want to land.” Navratil begins the mental preparations for dives, which he and his peers make from around 27m, on the night before in his hotel bed; “I try to relax and let the dive run through my head in slow motion, until all the movements have sunk in. This process works best just before you go to sleep. Once you’re on the platform, you have no more time to ponder. There you have to know what you’re doing.”

WORDS: APOLIN MARTIN. ILLUSTRATION: MANDY FISCHER. PHOTOGRAPHY: V. CURUTCHET/RED BULL CONTENT POOL

Heels over head: Czech cliff diver Michal Navratil takes the plunge feet first (much safer from 27m) on the first stop of the Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series 2012 in Corsica

JUST THE FACTS “The Red Bull Cliff Divers jump from heights equivalent to a nine-storey building,” says Dr Martin Apolin, a physicist and sports scientist who works at the Physics Faculty of the University of Vienna. “How fast would you hit the water from that height? The speed is calculated – disregarding wind resistance – with the formula, v = √2gh where g is the gravitational acceleration, 9.81m/s², and h the dive height in metres, here 28m. In our case, this results in a hefty 23.4m/s (84.2kph). This high velocity is the reason why cliff divers always dive feet first – head first would be too dangerous.

“During the final phase of a dive, a diver endeavours to hit the water in a position as close to vertical as possible – to score highly with the judges and to minimise both splash and pain.

Angular momentum, L, comes into play here; it is the product of the moment of inertia, J, and angular velocity, ω, thus L = Jω.

“The moment of inertia, J, is an object’s (here the diver’s) resistance to any change in rotation. When the diver is in the outstretched position, J is about three times larger than in a crouched position. Therefore, in the case of a crouching dive, the end of the dive can be slowed by a factor of 3, to produce L = Jω = Jω/3. If the diver is 1.80m tall, the time, t, he takes to dive is about 0.08s, so t = s/v, which here is 1.8m, 23.4 ≈ 0.08s. During this time, the diver hardly turns to any perceptible degree. To avoid under- or overturning, however, the opening of the position must be perfectly timed.

“To ensure as little splash as possible, the diver must transfer as little energy as possible to the water until complete submersion.

This energy, E, equates to force, F, times path, s. The path is the (unalterable and constant) height of the diver, therefore energy is proportional to force (E~F). Here the force is the water resistance, which equates to FW = 0,5ρcW Av². The water density, ρ, is constant; velocity of impact, v, is dependent on height. But if we take a simplified example, whereby the velocity remains constant throughout the dive, the transferred energy equates to E ~ cW A: the more streamlined the dive, the lower the flow resistance coefficient, cW . Airflow surface, A, must also be kept to a minimum. Both values are to a certain extent interdependent – if the diver’s arms aren’t held close to his body or if he overturns, this increases as well as and the splash is even bigger.” www.redbullcliffdiving.com; www.michalnavratil.com

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B U L L E VA R D

LUCKY NUMBERS

RYDER CUP

For American and European golfing stars, honour trumps prize money at the sport’s most prestigious team event, to be held this year at the Medinah Country Club, about 40km from downtown Chicago

1,000

Tony Jacklin

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Billy Casper of the USA went unbeaten in his eight appearances at the Ryder Cup between 1961 and 1975 (7 victories, 1 draw) and also won as captain in 1979. His points total of 23½ remains the US record. (Despite such a superb record, and three Majors, the 100kg Buffalo Bill has always remained in the shadow of golf’s Big Three: Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer and Gary Player.) Englishman Nick Faldo is Mr Ryder Cup, with overall records for appearances (11), matches played (46) and points scored (25).

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192

The Ryder Cup

With 26 titles – 25 wins and one draw which, according to the regulations, meant the title was successfully defended – the USA is the winningest team, their opponents managing only 12 titles, including one draw. From 1935 to 1985, the trophy stayed in the US with the exception of 1957. British captain Henry Cotton suffered the greatest humiliation in 1947 against a high-quality US team. Sam King beat Herman Keiser in the final round of single matches to prevent a clean sweep, but an 11-1 scoreline is the Cup’s greatest debacle.

8

Jack Nicklaus

At the 1969 Ryder Cup, golf witnessed an ultimate sporting moment. America’s icon Jack Nicklaus sank a birdie putt at the 18th during his singles match, the last round of a gamesmanshiptinged contest, against Tony Jacklin. The Englishman was left with a 60cm putt to halve the round and tie the match overall, but Nicklaus conceded the putt, as the rules allowed him to do, and the final match score was 16:16. “I don’t think you would have missed that putt, but in these circumstances, I would never give you the opportunity,” Nicklaus whispered to Jacklin, with whom a close friendship subsequently developed.

Bernhard Langer

Samuel Ryder

At Kiawah Island in 1991, Bernhard Langer, a known perfectionist, is said to have asked his four-ball partner Colin Montgomerie how far away a sprinkler, measuring 15cm, was from the flag on the green. The Scot attests that he replied, “192 yards”. Langer’s retort: “From the front or the back of the sprinkler head?”

Despite his thoroughness, Langer came up short, missing a subsequent putt to draw the match, which would have meant the European team making a rare title defence on US soil.

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Billy Casper

Walton family

The 1995 Ryder Cup at the Oak Hill Country Club marked the high point in the career of the relatively unknown Philip Walton; his most notable result before then (and since, it turned out) was a 13th-place finish at the 1989 Open Championship. At his one and only Ryder Cup, the Irishman and partner Ian Woosnam lost their morning foursome, but on the final green of the penultimate singles match, he scored Europe’s winning point. “Maybe the Americans know me now,” he said after the win. “Tell ’em I’m related to all those Waltons on that TV show.”

39th Ryder Cup, September 27-30, Medinah, Illinois, USA: www.rydercup.com/2012

WORDS: ULRICH CORAZZA. PHOTOGRAPHY: SHUTTERSTOCK (2), CORBIS, GETTY IMAGES (5)

The first biennial golfing match between the USA and Great Britain and Ireland was held in 1927; since 1979 the Americans have played against all Europe. Home advantage alternates each time, with the 2001 match postponed a year due to 9/11. The competition was founded by Samuel Ryder, an English seed merchant, who donated its 43cm, solid gold trophy. The cup is topped by a figure of Abe Mitchell, whom Ryder employed as coach on an annual salary of £1,000.

Mitchell missed the first Ryder Cup due to appendicitis, but took part in 1929, 1931 and 1933.

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ACTION

Spirits in the Wind

The Bali Kite festival is among the world’s most spectacular displays of craft and tradition.

Far from nostaligic, it’s modern, relevant and a source of kudos for rival kite gangs Words: Jeremy Torr Photography: Palani Mohan

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ACTION

“These kites are a very important part of our culture”

In

Bali, when the trade winds kick in, the weather changes. Around May, the wet season slows to a stop as strong, dry, clean winds blow from the south. The skies clear, the rain disappears and the paddy fields turn parched and barren under your feet.

Look up and it’s the opposite.

Everything springs to life in the sky. White fluffy clouds pop up to make postcard views. Birds flit and swoop like dogfighting pilots, and tall clumps of bamboo whisper quietly. But despite this feeling of well-being, rice farmers know they will have to irrigate. If they don’t, they won’t get a good rice crop. The farmers don’t just irrigate. They invoke the spirits of the skies to help the rice grow.

Flying Spirits

“I started making and flying kites before I was 10,” says Si Nyoman Adnyana, a respected village elder and local historian. “I’m 77 now, so that’s a lot of kites,” he laughs.

Si Nyoman is one of the founders of the Bali Kite Festival and competition, held each year at Pantai Padang Galak on the south side of Bali. It is, he admits, much more than a festival. It’s a homage to the wind, the seasons, the earth, and the balance of nature that gives a good harvest. “It’s not just about the flying, although that is good in itself, but it’s about what the kites mean to us,” he explains.

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“The kites in Bali are a very important part of our culture.”

Most Balinese kites are black, red and white – either in stripes, patterns or chequers. These colours represent Hindu deities, and legend says the Hindu god Shiva loved kite flying – so the colours honour his sport. Built to traditional designs, the kites are also rigged with bamboo bows, strung with rattan strips that make a hypnotic humming,

The benefits of blessing kites

Religious rituals are a vital part of the kite flying, with priests blessing each one and the team members.

Each kite can take up to a few months to complete, and moving them causes traffic tailbacks for miles

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Take-off routine

Getting the kites into the air demands a uniquely Balinese kind of chaotic teamwork

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“Last year we built a really big one.

It needed 75 people to fly it.

It was too big”

warbling noise as they fly. The Balinese people say the sounds bring a sense of harmony and fertility to the fields below. So flying the kites over rice fields is much more than just a sport, it’s a celebration of renewal. And it is very popular. The 50,000 people who flock to the Bali Kite Festival each year from all round the island underline just how popular it is.

“The kite-flying festival is really a big thing for our village community,” says Kadek Suprapta, organiser for the black-clad Danginpeken Banjar team. “If somebody joins a banjar [Balinese community] and then finds out they don’t have a kite team, the chances are they will leave and join another. There’s that much prestige that goes with kite flying.”

This might seem a bit of an over-reaction until you see your first kite. Then you realise why they are such a big deal. These are not kites like we usually see in the park. They’re monsters.

“It takes us months to get one of the big janggan kites ready,” says Kadek. It can weigh up to 300kg, span about 3-4m and be about 10m long. Add the 200m-long, 2m-wide tail and the overall weight can top 400kg. It takes about 10 team members just to carry it to launch.

These kites are so big that when the banjar transports one to the flying field, traffic stops.

Admittedly that’s because there can be up to 70-80 more banjar members following the kite, banging on gongs, waving banners and flags, carrying smaller kites and offerings, and just being part of the procession. “Last year we built a really big one but it was too much,” admits Kadek.

“It needed nearly 75 people to fly it. It was too big.”

Now take the Danginpeken team, multiply it by hundreds of other teams, each with several kites, add a few tens of thousands of spectators and cram it all into a 1km square windswept patch of rice paddies by the beach and you start to get some idea of the scale of the Bali Kite Festival.

It’s gob-smacking.

“It’s a celebration as well as our offering to the gods and part of our Hindu beliefs,” says 33

People power

The sheer size of the kites means a team of 40 or more people are needed to carry, launch and fly each one. And there are 1,200 at the festival...

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have good experience to make the kite fly and make a good sound.”

Danginpeken must be doing it right as their kite designer, Made Lumbun, is 61 and still using the same design as his grandfather.

So far he has built kites for 25 festivals and his banjar has won its class 15 times since 1956. “It’s the mask. It brings us power,” says Kadek seriously. “The mask and the artistry of our kite is our tradition.” That, and of course the teamwork of the kite crew.

More than a crew

Si Nyoman. Each janggaan (dragon-style) kite is adorned with a unique mask, often complete with a solid gold crown, that is blessed by a priest and given ritual offerings before it can be allowed to take to the air.

Every year the mask is fitted to a new kite, and helps bring the allimportant balance to each one.

“Balance is very important,” explains Kadek. “The kite builders should be happily married, and

Every team is a super-cool looking group of very fit young guys between about 14 and 27 years old. They have to be fit to carry, launch and fly their huge kites.

They’re all tagged out in signature T-shirts, matching udeng (headdresses), and aviator shades. Many wear cowboy-style facekerchiefs, even full black balaclavas. They might be mistaken for a street posse were it not for the reverence they show for the kite and the rest of the team.

Sure, they’re not shy of parading their toughness, but it’s based on traditional pride, not on pushing back against society.

“Some people might say they are aggressive, but they’re not,” says Kadek. “It’s pride in the banjar they are showing.”

Being part of the community is being part of the culture, the tribal belonging that drives the teams to build ever bigger, more impressive, better looking and more harmonious kites. But kites that never forget they’re a homage

(WO)MEN ONLY

The tradition in all the banjars is that making and flying kites is a menonly business. But that doesn’t mean no women take part. The women are the only ones allowed to make the special satab, tiny plaited flowers made of bamboo slivers that are tied to all the kites to bring harmony. And only women may prepare the offerings used by the priest when he blesses the kite at the temple. The kite needs male and female aspects, each doing their bit to bring a positive result.

KITE GUIDE

The Bali Kite Festival has classes for three traditional and one modern class of kite. The traditional are the bebean (fish-shaped), pecukan (leaf-shaped) and janggan (dragon-shaped). The new class is creasi, in which anything goes: from flying turtles to motorbikes to lions or waitresses – all monster size, of course.

The bebean are the most traditional and the pecukan symbolise positive and negative, the grandest and most important are the jenggan.

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ACTION

In Bali, street cool doesn’t come from having an iPhone

Eyes on the skies

When more than 20 of the monster janggan kites take to the air at once, it’s a truly gob-smacking sight

to the wind and the seasons and the importance of the harvest.

“I’m 22, and I’ve been in the Segara Manik team for about four years,” says Ketut Tara, smoking clove cigarettes as we talk, the muscles in his sinewy arms flexing. He doesn’t look a traditional type. He has a plug in his ear lobe, tattoos, and a street-tough attitude. But, he emphasises, his loyalty to the banjar is what brings him to the kite team. “We’re not gangsters, but we have to be strong because we do this to win. Even if we don’t win it’s good, too. We’re just happy to be here,” he grins.

In Bali, street cool doesn’t come from having an iPhone, designer gear, a racing moped or pulling tricks on a skatey. In Bali it comes from being part of a traditional festival. Sure, the cool is there, but so is tradition, says Kadek. “Technology should bring us progress, but should also help us develop our culture,” he explains. “In this case that means bigger, better, winning kites.”

Old-time kiter Si Nyoman agrees.

“One obvious thing about the Kite Festival is that it’s growing bigger every year,” he says. “And the best thing is it’s the young men who are making it happen.”

And make it happen they do.

The tension mounts as the line pullers stretch out their 400m of line across dry rice paddies, weaving between other teams, over canals, between food stalls, past hundreds of spectators – even across the sea wall. The launchers gather like coiled springs under the kite, waiting for the signal from the team leader. It’s not easy choosing the right time; there could be other kite lines in the way, a cross gust of wind or even someone standing on the tail. The team’s gamelan gong orchestra ups the beat to a frenzy, the commentator 37

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“When we gather to make the kite, we know we belong”

shouts encouragement and the kite is hurled into the air, often catching just a small breeze and falling sideways until the line stretches, snaps, and then hauls the huge structure into the air.

A great cheer goes up, and the kite climbs majestically, the team whooping with joy.

Old and new

JUDGMENT WAY

Balinese kites are judged, among other things, on their appearance, build, ability to fly, stability, speed and sound. The winner in each class is chosen by a committee of judges after a couple of days’ deliberation. Several kites will often fly at once, with lines coated in glass, which cut through other kites, sending them crashing to the ground.

Some of these ‘fighting kites’ also use tiny hooks sewn into the lines to cripple other lines or sails.

WHEN

The Bali Kite Festival is organised by the Bali Kite association and held at Pantai Padang Galak in Sanur every year at the start of the dry, windy season, usually at the end of July.

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Unlike Western-style designs, these kites are alive. The bamboo struts flex with the wind, changing shape and profile. The joints between struts use natural cords, wrapped and knotted so the pressure of the wind can make them move. The hummers buzz loud and soft and the tails flap as the teams strain on the line to get more height than the next team.

Occasionally a kite will snag another’s line and plunge to the ground, which can be dangerous.

But it’s a festival that, in Kadek’s words, is part of the umbrella of his people’s culture: “When we gather to make the kite, we talk, we work together and we use our traditional skills – we know we belong.”

Tradition and the beliefs that go with it run strong in Bali. But they don’t rule the team’s life.

As one team member put it: “I go to the temple every day to pray.

But I also go to the nightclubs every weekend to have a good time.” It seems in Bali they have mastered the art of balance, of harmony, of purusha and prakriti.

Here’s to a good harvest. www.balikitefestival.com www.redbull.com/balikitefestival

Party time

A successful launch, flight and landing result in a huge cheers and manic celebrations

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ACTION

GROWING

PAINS

Large-living Auckland hip-hop crew Home Brew have a number one album to their name, with musical and personal development next on their list.

That’s not easy, though, when ‘self-destruction is easier’ Words: Robert Tighe Photography: Kristian Frires

W

hen the record companies came courting the three members of the Home Brew crew two years ago, Tom Scott, Haz Beats and Lui Silk drank the free beer and ate the free pizza they were plied with, and then remembered what they learned listening to A Tribe Called Quest. “‘Industry rule number four thousand and eighty, record company people are shady,’” says Scott, rapping a line from the ATCQ track, Check The Rhime.

“Growing up with hip-hop, you’re aware the record industry is dodge. In other genres, signing a record deal is glamorised. In hip-hop you’re warned against it. You never hear a folk song that goes [Scott strums air guitar and sings], ‘Aw, my record company is f–––––g me.’”

If Scott didn’t have hip-hop in his bones, he could make a living as a standup comedian or a life coach, albeit the sort of dysfunctional life coach you would most likely encounter in a Hollywood movie. His conversation, like his lyrics, is peppered with witty one-liners, as well as musings on motivation and the meaning of success. There might also be a future, in a parallel universe, in employment law: the ‘gentleman’s agreement’ Home Brew signed with their PR people is pure gold.

“It was scribbled on the back of a piece of paper,” says Scott. “It said, ‘One: Home Brew retain 100 per cent creative control. Two: Don’t be a dick. Three: Shit f–––s up.’ That’s all you need. If someone tries to take 80 per cent of our money, I can point to clause two.”

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That said, 80 per cent of Home Brew’s money wouldn’t add up to much.

Their self-released, eponymous album debuted at number one in the New Zealand album charts in May, but they’re still doing things the hard way.

“Nothing has changed,” says Haz Beats. “[A number one album] didn’t get me a new car or a new house. I’m still living in my missus’s flat and it’s still the same munters up the front when we play live.”

What is different is Home Brew’s fanbase away from the gigs. Their songs about life on the margins of society have been embraced by middle-class New Zealand.

“The listeners are mainly white kids,” says Scott. “People have been

job, but to the crowd it’s the biggest night of the week. Everyone’s partying like it’s New Year’s and you’ve got to fight that temptation every night.”

Still, the gimmick has helped Home Brew get where they are.

“I always knew getting wasted was something that appealed to a lot of people,” says Scott. “I knew people loved escapism, and we promote that, in a way. We put our flaws and our problems out there, and that makes it easier for people to relate to us.”

Home Brew have also been marked down as a self-destructive unit, and that could not be further from the band’s intentions.

“Self-destruction is a lot easier than whatever the opposite is,” says Scott.

Self-actualization?

“That’s it. I’m striving for that, but sometimes it’s too hard. Sometimes being self-destructive is easier.”

Scott and Home Brew are closer to self-actualization than they probably realise.

“At the moment, we’re not making music that’s good enough to be heard internationally,” says Scott. “I ask myself, ‘Why is my music not being heard overseas?’ and the answer is I mustn’t be working hard enough. I want to lock myself in a room for three months and see what happens. We’ve still got a lot of potential.

We’re still in the growing phase.”

“We put our flaws and our problems out there, and that makes it easier for people to relate to us” rapping about life in New Zealand since forever, but it’s easy for white kids to relate to me because of my skin colour. I’m the Great White Hope!”

Scott swings from high to deep and back again in a couple of sentences. Some of his lyrics, and Home Brew’s videos, celebrate a hedonistic drink ’n’ drugs lifestyle, but it’s a reputation that takes its toll.

“Our gimmick is we drink a lot of alcohol, and I’m not proud of that,” says Scott. “I’m trying to stop, but as a musician there’s drink and drugs every night. You turn up at a show to do your

Home Brew play the Rhythm & Vines Soundcheck at Vector Arena on October 5, with Nero, Rusko and Labrinth: www.homebrewcrew.co.nz

Brewing up a storm (from left): Haz Beats, Lui Silk and Tom Scott

THE CRUEL SE A The toughest route, the most expensive equipment, the best crews: the Volvo Ocean Race has as much in common with regular sailing as survival has with death. Those who know it best welcome you to the world’s most challenging regatta WORDS: ALEXANDER MACHECK

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PHOTOGRAPHY: YANN RIOU/VOLVO OCEAN RACE

The fastest yacht in the Volvo Ocean Race 2011/12 was the French team Groupama. Here competitors Martin Strรถmberg and Thomas Coville battle the elements on the fourth leg from China to New Zealand

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of that together, long enough at a high enough level, maybe you have a chance at sailing in the Volvo Ocean Race.” –

he principle of the Volvo Ocean Race is simple: take one racing yacht valued at R90m, put the world’s best sailors on it, and send the whole lot off on a 72,000km marathon, once around the globe. In 2011/12 the route went from Spain via South Africa, the United Arab Emirates, China, New Zealand, Brazil, the USA, Portugal and France, in legs of up to 22 days and nights on its way to the finish line in Ireland. It thus passed through every ocean, hitting the coast of every continent, experiencing every climate.

The boats with their crews (each with 10 sailors and a media man reporting live on board) are met in each harbour by service teams who nurse the oceanbattered boats back to health. The Volvo Ocean Race isn’t just extreme from a sporting perspective: giving one single team any chance of overall victory chews up about R500m. So the team members of the 2011/12 race are employees of major companies: Puma Ocean Racing powered by Berg; Groupama Sailing Team; Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing; Team Sanya; Team Telefónica and Camper with Emirates Team New Zealand.

+ WHO IS THE RIGHT TYPE OF SAILOR FOR A VOLVO OCEAN RACE YACHT? “There are very few sailors who can get that kind of yacht moving in racing conditions. It’s as limited as the number of people who can drive a Formula One car,” says two-time Olympian and skipper in the 2008/09 Volvo Ocean Race Andreas Hanakamp. “You have to train your whole life. You need the instincts to work around the dangers out there, as a sailor but also in confronting nature. It helps to have an additional qualification – sailmaker, for example, boat builder, plastics engineer, electrical engineer, doctor. If you do all

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1ST LEG STA R T: N OV E M B E R 5 , 2 0 1 1 A L I C A N T E ( S PA I N ) – C A P E TO W N ( S O U T H A F R I C A )

Cr a s h t e s t i n t h e A t l a n t i c From Spain to South Africa via Brazil in 21 days, a distance of 12,000km.

Storms. Waves as tall as houses. At Abu Dhabi the mast breaks. Sanya collides with flotsam and springs a leak. “We were lucky,” says Sanya skipper Mike Sanderson. If the main bulkhead, the partition in the hull, hadn’t held, the yacht would have sunk. + WHO SAVES YOU IF THE BOAT SINKS? “When you’re 3,000km from the coast, no one can help,” explains Sanderson.

“Helicopters don’t have the reach and escort motorboats can’t keep up with yachts in these kinds of waves. It’s like mountain climbing. Above 7,000m,

Tactics are decided in the belly of the boat: navigator Tom Addis (left) and helmsman Tony Mutter (Team Puma) analyse the weather data and the positions of competing boats

no one can save you there either. You’re on your own. Only other Ocean Racers can save you. The rules ensure that you get time compensated if you save a competitor.

In 2005/06 that’s what happened.

Movistar sank and ABN AMRO 2 rescued the team from the water.” –

Of the six boats, only three (first Telefónica, second Camper, third Groupama) finish the first leg under their own power.

Puma, Sanya and Abu Dhabi are severely mangled and are shipped to Cape Town aboard a cargo ship. The drop-out rate of 50 per cent leads to discussions: some say the rules inspire reckless solutions, or that the yachts have become too sophisticated. + WHY AREN’T THE BOATS MORE ROBUST? “That’s part of the game. More robust means more weight,” says Sanderson.

“More weight means slower. Lighter, on the other hand, means you need a lot of service personnel and a lot of equipment to patch the boat up after each leg. And a lot of money: 400kg less weight costs you an additional R40 million or so in service expenses. The big teams juggle 30-head service crews and 12 huge workshop containers from harbour to harbour.” –

PHOTOGRAPHY: AMORY ROSS/VOLVO OCEAN RACE, IAN ROMAN(/VOLVO OCEAN RACE

T

Given all those criteria, the list of skippers in the Volvo Ocean Race 2011/12 is a Who’s Who of the sailing elite: they include Olympic champions such as Iker Martínez (Spain); world champions and America’s Cup competitors such as Ken Read (USA), world record holders such as Franck Cammas (France) and the type of old seadog who takes a quick break from the Volvo Ocean Race to meet up with the love of his life at the altar. Memorably, New Zealander Mike ‘The Moose’ Sanderson did just that in the 2005/06 race. Plus he was zippy enough to still go on and win the regatta afterwards.

VO70-type boats are 21.5m long, a maximum of 5.7m wide, weigh 14.5 tonnes and reach a maximum speed in excess of 75kph. From a construction point of view, a VO70 is a racing yawl on steroids. At the lowest point of the seven-tonne steel keel, 4.5m under the waterline, is a keel bulb weighing several tonnes. The keel can be swivelled up to 40 degrees laterally to follow the wind direction. This action forces the boat to position itself against the wind pressure and so present as much sail surface as possible. It’s a brutally simple concept, and thus typical for the Volvo Ocean Race: if the wind blows the sail at maximum force, it presses the foot of the 31m-high carbon mast with the force of 50 tonnes in the hull.

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Cape Town Harbour. All the boats have arrived and are handed over to the service teams. The sailors get 14 days’ shore leave. + HOW DO BOATS AND CREWS GET BACK IN SHAPE? “The boats are cleaned up and completely dismantled,” explains Sanderson. Each part is checked over and, if necessary, replaced.

This happens in a U-shaped yard formed of containers. The space between the containers is covered and serves as a sailmaking workshop. The boats also have to be completely disinfected. When you have 11 guys toiling like madmen and living together for 22 days and nights in a tight space, you have to do more than just give it a bit of a clean. Shore leave of 14 days may sound generous, but only at first glance: the lads are completely worn out. They look years older than they did when they first went on board.” –

2ND L EG D EC E M B E R 1 1 , 2 0 1 1 C A P E TOW N ( S O U T H A F R I C A ) – ABU DHABI (UAE)

Piggy-backing past the pirates From South Africa through the Seychelles to the United Arab Emirates in 22 days and 10,000km. As prevention against possible attack from Somali pirates, the race organisers secretly change the course.

The teams make an interim stop with interim results in Malé in the Maldives, where they’re loaded onto an armed cargo ship and transported to the Gulf of Oman. There they carry out the rest of the second leg. Telefónica wins ahead of Camper and Puma.

3R D L EG JA NUA RY 13, 201 2 ABU DHABI (UAE) – S A N YA ( C H I N A )

Sleepless through the slalom From the United Arab Emirates via India, Singapore, Vietnam and Cambodia to China it’s 22 days and 8,500km. The pirate danger in the Arabian Sea requires the same strategy as the third leg, except Danger can strike round the clock, in any weather conditions and in a variety of ways: crews learn that the shortest route isn’t always going to be the fastest (pictured: the Abu Dhabi team)

The Volvo Ocean Race 2011/12 circumnavigates the whole globe, hitting everywhere from the Hainan Province of China to the US state of Florida

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Groupama in heavy seas on the way to France. The bow plunges into a wave and, for a brief moment, turns the boat into a submarine

in reverse. A sprint through the Gulf of Oman, on a freighter to Malé, starting again on 22 January 2012. Through storms in the Bay of Bengal, then through the Strait of Malacca, a 900km passage between Malaysia and Indonesia.

Slaloming between freighters, tankers and unlit fishing boats: here you have to be doubly attentive. Inside the boats the temperature is over 40°C, with extreme air humidity. + WHAT’S WORSE: COLD AND WET OR HOT AND WET? “In the tropics there comes a moment when the crew wishes they were back in the icier parts of the regatta,” says Sanderson. “You can control cold and wet with good clothing and high calorie consumption, but when you’re hot and wet there’s nothing you can do, except strip off.

The computers on board make it hotter, but not enough to make the air drier.” –

The fleet reaches the South China Sea and sets course for Sanya. The boats get a stiff wind right on the nose.

For seven days, 24 hours a day, the waves hit the carbon hulls, sledgehammer style, and wear the crews down until they’re running on empty. Sleep?

That’s reserved for the specialists.

PHOTOGRAPHY: PAUL TODD/VOLVO OCEAN RACE

+ GOODNIGHT AT FULL SPEED “A Volvo Ocean Race crew works in a fouron-four-off rhythm: four hours’ sailing, four hours’ free time, and this pattern carries on 24/7,” says Sanderson. “In the berth you feel as if you are lying in a roaring, gurgling washing machine while a madman bashes the outside with a hammer every 10 seconds. Even when you’re tired enough to slip from a doze into sleep, you experience a rollercoaster ride and hit the hull or the edge of your berth with your head and suddenly you’re wide awake again. Somehow you manage to recover. Skippers and navigators don’t have a rhythm; their on-off phases are determined by the weather, the competition and self-exploitation.” –

Telefónica manages to leap out of the South China slalom ahead of everyone else and sail as victors into the harbour of resort city Sanya. Since the beginning of the race in Spain the Ocean Racers have covered 30,000km. They’ve been at sea for 65 days and have had 23 days’ free time. Three of the six boats were so badly damaged that they had to forfeit a leg. Spanish team Telefónica has won all previous legs and so leads in the overall placings, ahead of Camper, Groupama, Puma, Abu Dhabi and Sanya.

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4 T H L EG F E B R U A R Y 1 9, 2 0 1 2 S A N YA ( C H I N A ) – AUCKLAND (NEW ZEALAND)

A clo ud a s b ig a s Te x a s From China to New Zealand via the Fiji Islands in 19 days and 9,700km. Before the start of the race a typhoon rages north of Taiwan. As the Volvo Ocean Race sets out, the worst of the wind has passed, but it leaves behind a hysterically churned-up sea. “We drop like stones off the backs of these steep waves,” reports Nick Dana from Abu Dhabi. If a sail tears, it has to be repaired with a sewing machine below deck. Many repairs have to be carried out manually, with sail set and at full speed.

And if that isn’t enough, one of the men has to climb the mast.

Puma skipper Ken Read reports a strange observation: “It was night. We were going fast and then a green spot the size of Texas appeared on the radar.” A huge rain cloud over the ocean. A lot of water, no wind, no hope of avoiding it.

Puma sits for six hours in the sea as the rest of the field speeds ahead. Groupama is in the lead. Shortly before the finish line of the leg, the bow starts to subside.

Leak. The beating of the waves causes the shell of the hull to come away. + WHY SHIPS PEEL “The technical term is ‘delamination’.

The shell splinters from the enormous forces at work against the material,” says Sanderson. “You have to build thousands of horsepower into the boat so that it sails the same way under engine and sail. So you have a lot of mass times speed, huge

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amounts of energy, a lot of momentum…

Hit the water with an open hand with full force and multiply that many times. Then you have some idea what goes on out there.” –

Despite a hole in the boat, Groupama wins the fourth leg and so sails past Camper to take second place overall.

5 TH LEG MARCH 18, 2012 AUCKLAND (NEW ZEALAND) – I TA J A I ( B R A Z I L )

T h e R oa r i ng Fo r t i e s From New Zealand via the Pacific to the icy Southern Ocean, round Cape Horn and on to Brazil in 19 days and 13,000km. + MADNESS IN THE SOUTHERN OCEAN “Most people have constructed an image of the world for themselves, in which Europe, America and Asia are in the middle, separated by the big oceans – Atlantic, Pacific and Indian” says Sanderson.

“They all empty into an ocean in the south, which we don’t know a whole lot about and which doesn’t really have much significance for most people. Volvo Ocean Racers see it differently: this vast ocean around Antarctica is the centre of their world. It begins at 35 degrees south and if you go right round the globe it is only interrupted by one piece of land: the southern tip of South America, the famous Cape Horn. To get to the Southern Ocean with the Volvo Ocean Race you have to sail the marginal seas, but they’re just the feeder lines to the serious sailing. At 40 degrees south

As the Volvo Ocean Racers set off, they are met by a storm with winds of 120kph off New Zealand. Abu Dhabi’s bulkhead breaks. The rest of the regatta struggles on in the direction of Antarctica.

On March 20, Puma reports two serious injuries. Thomas Johanson (Olympic gold medallist in 49er sailing) has dislocated his right shoulder. Casey Smith has a suspected slipped disc.

On March 22 both patients are doing better, reports skipper Ken Read: “Thomas looks like a real person again!

He was getting instructions on how to put his shoulder back over the radio from our doctor. You should have seen his face!

At first agony, then wide-eyed and then an expression of speechless surprise as the pain suddenly subsided. Casey, on the other hand, carried out a set of exercises to determine whether it wasn’t in fact just a muscle injury. The experts explained that you can tell straight away: if it’s a slipped disc he’ll roar with pain. Casey didn’t roar.”

On March 26, the field reaches the pack ice limit. Wind gusts remain at 120kph and the waves are 10m high.

PHOTOGRAPHY: YANN RIOU/VOLVO OCEAN RACE

The sleep of the spent: as if business as usual wasn’t hard enough, Groupama’s mast breaks off near Argentina (right)

the Roaring Forties begin, and then come the Screaming Fifties. They’re called that because of the noise that the wind makes from here on in. And then you dive into the peculiar grey of the ocean, the endless expanses that are ruled by the largest birds in the world, albatrosses.

The weather systems are unbridled in their force. Take a storm depression over the Atlantic as comparison. It moves across the ocean, retires after a couple of days and dies out over Europe. A Southern Ocean depression races at breakneck speed three times round the planet, easily.

This is the region where in the old days, the days of the great sailing ships, you’d sail from the Atlantic to Australia. On the other hand, these unchecked weather systems create gigantic waves, liquid Himalayas, which you can just keep surfing with the ship. I know two types of sailors: those who are drawn back here again and again, and those who don’t want to go back under any circumstances.” –

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Helmsman, trimmer, sailmaker: Phil Harmer of Groupama has a perfect combination of talents for a crew member

+ WHY WOULD YOU DO IT TO YOURSELF? “Why do people climb Mount Everest? The Volvo Ocean Race is the best sailing you can get,” says Sanderson. “You can go flatout for months with the best sailors on the best boats. And the places you sail through are fantastic! The exertion, the danger, you know all that as soon as you step on board.

The only stress we have is the race.” –

On March 31, the crews of Groupama and Puma smoke their Cape Horn cigars.

This is the traditional custom among sailors to celebrate rounding the most famous of all landmarks.

On April 5, a shocked Franck Cammas reports by radio from leader Groupama: “We’ve just lost our rig!” Broken mast.

Groupama motors 100km to the harbour of Punta del Este on the Argentinian coast and erects an emergency mast.

On April 7, after a slog of 19 days, 18 hours, 9 minutes and 50 seconds, 13,000 monstrous kilometres through the Southern Ocean and around Cape Horn, Puma is just 12 minutes ahead of Telefónica over the finish line in the

Brazilian port of Itajai. The crew is happy, but hungry: provisions ran out one and a half days before the end. + THE TRUTH ABOUT SHIP’S GRUB “Yes, it’s true that the Volvo Ocean Race is unbelievably demanding and that every sailor loses weight and muscle mass during the race,” says Sanderson. “But it’s not true that the catering on board is terrible. There are dishes that are more for British tastes, like shepherd’s pie, chopped so fine as to be unrecognisable and mixed into a pulp, but for central Europeans it’s salvageable with a lot of Tabasco and pepper. The Brits (and the Kiwis, Aussies and Yanks) on the other hand seem to find risotto with spring vegetables boring. What helps? Correct: Tabasco and pepper. The typical menu on a Volvo Ocean Race yacht? Muesli or semolina for breakfast with tea or coffee and a handful of supplements (vitamins, minerals, etc). Lunch and dinner are main meals, freeze-dried and prepared with hot water. Between meals you have bars (protein, carbohydrates) and supplements. Liquid fibre once a day

to keep the bowels working. After each shift on deck you have a shake to recharge the muscles. You desalinate sea water and stir in powder to make a hypotonic drink.” –

Groupama reaches the finish line four days after Puma. Abu Dhabi and Sanya have given up, in fact Sanya is so broken up that they have to duck out of the sixth leg as well.

6TH LEG APRIL 22, 2012 I TA J A I ( B R A Z I L ) – MIAMI (USA)

Wa r o f n e r v e s i n p a r a d i s e From Brazil through the Caribbean and on to the USA in 17 days, 8,900km.

Friendly weather, holiday mood. But a walk in the park soon turns into a war of nerves. The culprit is the accordion effect.

Puma skipper Ken Read pulls ahead of the field in the wind, hits the doldrums and although still in the lead, on the night before the finish he can only watch helplessly as Camper catches up mile for 49

ACTION Team Puma cuts through the sea. The fastest yachts can cover more than 1,000km in 24 hours

– and arrive in one piece. Telefónica is ahead, followed closely by Groupama, but suddenly the Spaniards’ rudder breaks. They fall back, catch up again, but then the rudder breaks once more.

Telefónica manages to slink towards the finish line. At the end of this leg, the Spaniards fall back to fourth place in the overall placings. Their dream of overall victory is over.

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7 T H L EG M AY 2 0, 2 0 1 2 MIAMI (USA) – LISBON (PORTUGAL)

Tail st o r m From the USA over the Atlantic to Portugal in 12 days, 6,500km. To begin with there’s a hurricane. ‘Alberto’ is moving with gusts of 100kph towards the East Coast of the US. The Volvo fleet heads north quickly in the Gulf Stream, right into the storm. Groupama is the first to reach the hurricane’s theatre of operations and so races ahead of the rest of the field – and later slips into a parking spot in the Atlantic as Alberto loses its breath. + WHY THE SHORTEST ROUTE ISN’T ALWAYS THE FASTEST “The Volvo Ocean Race is like a game of chess on water,” says Sanderson. “The chess board covers all the oceans and the number of possible moves is almost endless. The prerequisites for the game are the predictability of the boat’s performance and the weather. The former is within your control, but the latter leaves

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a lot of room for speculation. Two men on board try to manoeuvre the boat through this jungle of uncertainty, the skipper and the navigator. At least one of the two stays in the depths of the yacht, far from daylight, staring at computers to predict future developments from an avalanche of weather data, with help from satellite images and live data. They are based on global weather models calculated every six hours by mainframe computers and sent to the fleet. In extreme cases a boat starts tearing off in the opposite direction and still finishes first.” –

The top group of the overall placings has been through some changes in the seventh leg: Groupama leads ahead of Telefónica and Puma.

8TH LEG J U N E 1 0, 2 0 1 2 LISBON (PORTUGAL) – LO R I E N T ( F R A N C E )

T h e dr e a m s h a t t e r s in the Atlantic From Portugal via a wide arc in the Atlantic to France in five days, 3,600km. It’s neck and neck, all the teams are close together. The sea is raw and churned up. Winds of 80kph, waves 7m high. A tactical battle, because going fast isn’t enough now. If you want to sail you have to avoid making mistakes

J U LY 1 , 2 0 1 2 LO R I E N T ( F R A N C E ) – G A LWAY ( I R E L A N D )

Wi n n e r s d o n ’ t n e e d running water One and a half days, 900km; for Ocean Racers it’s a stone’s throw from France to Ireland. Groupama could cruise into fourth place and still secure overall victory. However, the Frenchmen grapple with leading team Camper right up to the finish line, ending this leg in second place, but ahead of the final Harbour Race they’re unreachable in the overall placings. After 248 days and 78,000km, the winner of the Volvo Ocean Race 2011/12 is Groupama, ahead of Camper, Puma, Telefónica, Abu Dhabi and Sanya.

And of all people, it was a Volvo Ocean Race rookie who led Groupama to victory. Skipper Franck Cammas, 40, is also an extreme cyclist, skier, swimmer and mountain climber. Up to now he has scored his greatest successes on multihull boats, breaking long-distance records (including a Jules Verne Trophy victory in 2010 for the fastest circumnavigation of the globe in under 50 days), and has won more than 30 high seas regattas.

And Cammas has managed to achieve all these nautical accolades, even though he grew up in Aix-en-Provence, more than 30km away from the open sea, in a house without running water. www.redbull.com/volvooceanrace

PHOTOGRAPHY: YANN RIOU/VOLVO OCEAN RACE, IAN ROMAN/VOLVO OCEAN RACE

mile – to then find it is calm again.

Nothing has changed in the overall placings: after six legs Telefónica is ahead of Groupama, Camper, Puma, Abu Dhabi and Sanya.

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FIRST LOVE (SURF) Attack of la nina (SKI) A DEEPER SHADE OF BLUE (SURF) EL MAR, MI ALMA (SURF) strength in numbers (MTB) where the trail ends (MTB) this time tomorrow (SURF) white silk road (SNOW) the art of flight 3d (SNOW) RAW THE MOVIE (SURF) bending colours (SURF) congo (KAYAK)

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TO N Y R A E

“I BROKE TWO RIBS DURING THE RACE – AND I WA S T H E M E D I C ” Tony Rae is the oldest sailor in the Volvo Ocean Race and the only crew member on the NZ-based Camper boat to be involved in Team New Zealand’s America’s Cup campaign Words: Robert Tighe

Name Tony Rae Born June 26, 1961, Auckland Occupation Sailmaker, professional sailor Guitar man As part of Team New Zealand’s in-house band he’s performed with Neil Finn, Dave Dobbyn and Hootie And The Blowfish.

Unlikely Lookalikey In 2007, The New Zealand Herald noted Rae’s “uncanny resemblance” to then Prime Minister Helen Clarke. “I’d forgotten all about that,” says Rae. “She was probably more unhappy about it than I was.”

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  : How long have you been sailing?  : My Dad sailed at the Olympics in 1960 and I got my first dinghy when I was seven. I went through the different classes and then I did my sailmaking apprenticeship. There are some sailmakers that do more sailing than sailmaking; I was one of those.

Your first round-the-world race was in 1984. How has the race changed?

The boats now are like wild animals, compared to what I used to sail. They’re twice as intense and twice as fast. The biggest challenge is keeping all the crew on board. When you head into a wave at 40 knots, there’s a serious amount of water hitting you. I spent a lot of time standing behind Nicho [Chris Nicholson, Camper’s skipper] when he was driving. I was like a lock in a rugby scrum. I had to lean into Nicho to brace him against the wave.

You’re 51-years-old. Were there times during the race when you felt your age?

I got some abuse for being the oldest in the race, but the number doesn’t worry me. As long as you’re fit enough and injury-free, and you can physically do your job, then age is irrelevant.

Still, there were plenty of times I thought, ‘What am I doing out here?’

One time must have been after you broke two ribs during the race…

I was grinding when we hit a big wave.

It took both of my feet from under me and I smashed my ribs into the aft pedestal. I just told myself it was nothing major, but I didn’t like the feel of it.

I padded them up to help when I coughed or laughed, but I wasn’t that keen on any jokes on the boat around that time. I was the onboard medic, so I was able to give myself some pain relief, but that’s about all you can do with broken ribs.

What’s the worst injury you’ve had to deal with at sea?

Below: five of the 11 sailing team members (left to right) Roberto ‘Chuny’ Bermúdez (driver), Tony Rae (pit/ trimmer), Will Oxley (navigator), Stuart Bannatyne (driver/ trimmer) and Chris Nicholson (skipper and watch captain)

PHOTOGRAPHY: CHRIS CAMERON (2), PAUL TODD/VOLVO OCEAN RACE

Camper With Team New Zealand, in rough weather on the approach to the final of leg eight

A big cut can look bad but it’s not lifethreatening. With really bad stomach cramps or a whack on the head, you don’t know what’s going on and that can be scary. On this race, Mike Pammenter [Camper’s bowman] smashed his face up, split his lip and knocked out his two front teeth. He also banged his head and I was more concerned about the bang on the head than the blood.

Is the Volvo Ocean Race the toughest sailing race in the world?

I think it is. It takes a lot out of you.

In one way you think, ‘Thank God that’s over and we all came back in one piece,’ but you do miss it. I enjoy the hardness of this kind of sailing.

I enjoy getting bashed around a bit.

Camper finished second in the Volvo.

Were you happy with the result?

We won the last leg into Galway, and that was a huge lift for the team because we went through some tough times. We were pretty happy with the overall result because we finished behind a boat that was obviously quite a bit faster than ours.

How does the America’s Cup compare to the Volvo Ocean Race?

The Volvo is like a lot of endurance races tagged onto each other. The America’s Cup will be very intense and full-on, but the races only last an hour or so.

What’s your role on the America’s Cup team?

Grant Dalton [Team New Zealand boss] is on the crew, so I’ll be backing up

his role as a utility grinder. I’ve got to be ready to step up at any time.

Is the excitement starting to build for the America’s Cup? The day I got back to New Zealand after the Volvo, I had my first look at the boat and I was like, ‘Jesus!’ It’s such a beast and way bigger than I imagined. Boats have changed before in the America’s Cup, but not this much. This is more like going to the moon. When everyone starts to wear helmets and padding, you know the speed and the dangers are getting up there, but speed is what people want to see. They want to see boats tipping over and sailors hanging off the back. It’s what we want, too. It keeps things exciting. www.etnzblog.com

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Healing Hands

He’s the ‘go-to guy’ for athletes who fear injury might end their careers: physio-guru-magician Gerard ‘Ger’ Hartmann Words: Declan Quigley Photography: Patrick Bolger

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or a man whose worldwide reputation is the product of endless hours of arduous manual labour, Gerard Hartmann’s hands are surprisingly soft. The firm grip is expected from a man at the very top of his field, but the hand that makes it could easily belong to a teenager just striking out into the workplace rather than a 51-year-old about to reflect on a physically demanding career.

Countless world-class athletes in myriad sports from more than 20 nations have been kneaded back into life by Hartmann, whose reputation as a miracle worker spans the globe.

The secret to youthful hands, it transpires, is a healthy alcohol-free diet, a positive outlook and the endless gallons of tiger balm soaked into his tenacious digits over two decades of teasing finely tuned musculoskeletal systems back into balance.

Boundless energy may also be a factor.

Just a few minutes in the company of the Limerick native is exhausting, as he powers through topic after topic with 54

three different people, all the while pummelling away at the body of this morning’s star client. Incredibly, Hartmann claims that a recent stomach condition has reduced his famous powerstation energy levels – which begs the question, what was he like before?

“My vitality is probably a level seven as opposed to level 10,” he booms in his broad Munster accent. “The Duracell is definitely down a few beats. I am very careful with the clients I take as I just don’t have the ability at the moment to go and give, give, give all day.”

Rock stars and other non-sportspeople also have Hartmann as their ‘go-to back guy’, but any inclination to see the gregarious former champion triathlete as merely a guru to the celebrities would be a folly.

The walls of his impeccably presented private clinic are covered with framed photos, jerseys, singlets and truly touching letters of gratitude from oncevulnerable athletes made strong again by the force of his will, often in the face of medical advice to the contrary. He has an extraordinary collection of medals and trophies from grateful athletes, many of which are stored in the Hartmann Collection, a museum at the University

of Limerick. Among his proudest possessions is one he keeps at home: the 1988 marathon silver medal given to him by Douglas Wakiihuri.

Hartmann’s renown is, as a result, at least as strong in the remotest parts of the Kenyan Rift Valley as it is in his native Limerick, which helps explain the presence of Vivian Cheruiyot on a massage plinth in the treatment rooms alongside his spacious rural Limerick home.

A niggling ankle injury needs remedial attention and the reigning world 5,000 and 10,000m champion has dashed straight from victory in a Diamond League meet in Rome to Limerick for a series of sessions with Hartmann.

Nothing can be left to chance. Cheruiyot, 28, has worked with Hartmann for years and the many times track and crosscountry world champion wouldn’t settle for anything less than the best.

That Hartmann is the best is undisputed among his clients, but just what it is that makes him so special seems difficult to articulate. Is it a particular technique in his treatment, perhaps? Or the psychological benefits of a seemingly unshakeable confidence in his own ability? Or is it simply just that he is the fashionable ‘go-to guy’ for famous people?

It’s most probably a combination of all three, but the latter ingredient seems unlikely to have any value in isolation given his enduring success over 22 years. He’s no snake oil salesman.

Vital ingredients: Ger Hartmann possesses a combination of confidence and the ability to treat both mind and body

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The gold medal won by Cork’s Marcus O’Sullivan in the 1,500m in 1989 is in Hartmann’s collection

Fact File Name: Gerard Hartmann Age: 51 From: Limerick Sporting Career Irish National Triathlon Champion seven times between 1984 and 1991 Third place, Japan International Triathlon Sixth place, European Triathlon Championships 14th place, World Triathlon Championships 24th place, Hawaii Ironman Physical Therapy Gerard has treated 47 World Champions including World Record holders in 100m, 110m hurdles, 1,500m, 1 mile, 3,000m, 3,000m steeplechase, 5,000m, 10,000m, 10-mile road, half marathon and marathon Success He has treated and prepared athletes who have won the following marathons: World Championships IAAF World Cup Marathon New York City Marathon Boston Marathon Rotterdam Marathon Paris Marathon Dublin Marathon Chicago Marathon

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xactly what constitutes the alchemy that has made him so successful is yet to be fully defined. For her part Cheruiyot contents herself with a smile and an oft-repeated phrase: “He has blessed hands,” as she works her way through the chicken salad prepared by Hartmann after their session.

“Vivian Cheruiyot says I have ‘blessed hands’ and that’s her view. If they feel that, and she’s willing to come here. I just sometimes have to ask myself, ‘Jeez, what have I got?’ What is it? So it’s an enigma.

And when someone is an enigma, you can’t really understand [what they’re about].

“Look, the perception is, the person on the table, if they believe in Ger Hartmann, they’re going to get better, ’cause they already have the belief.”

If Cheruiyot seems a passive victim, Hartmann doesn’t hesitate when asked who his most demanding client has been to date. “If I have any grey hairs, it’s because of Paula Radcliffe. As a clinician, it was very hard work,” he says.

“Paula can spend five hours on the table. And I can finish a treatment and feel I’ve done a 10 out of 10 job – and just as I’m wrapping up, she’ll ask me to work her neck, which I had intended to do tomorrow, but she’ll want it done today.

And you’re just, ‘Oh my god, I’m drained.’

And, I mean, in a good way, she has sucked more out of herself than the ability.

“Paula and I share one thing in common,” he continues. “We are both perfectionists, we need to tick off all the boxes to ensure no stone is left unturned in our quest for success.”

Hartmann admits that he’s a bit of a risk taker, which has also fed his reputation and helped make him a patron saint of hopeless cases. “I go where other people don’t go. I would say the manual therapy is far more aggressive and far more invasive. I get in deep.”

But Hartmann’s gold-plated client list didn’t come about solely through his manual graft. The confidence to delve further, for longer, into the physical structure of his clients also manifests itself in the unrelenting positivity he brings to all aspects of his relationship with athletes. In endorsing his memoir Born to Perform, Sonia O’Sullivan described him as “the most positive, energising person I know”.

It comes as a shock, then, to hear him admit that he has moments of uncertainty: “Of course small doubts always creep in,” he says. “Most of these are insecurities, sometimes to do with myself and not with the athletes. Will I serve her well? Have I enough tools in my box to ensure she goes to the start healthy in body, mind and spirit?”

It’s a shuddering thought to imagine Hartmann with doubt because he’s the therapist who will take the jobs others will baulk at. One such was chronic injury victim Kelly Holmes, perceived as a lost cause by UK Athletics, which refused to

Grateful clients: Hartmann has treated many top athletes including Kelly Holmes (above)

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pay her medical expenses just a few months before she proved them wrong by winning bronze in the 800m in Sydney, thanks in part to her work with Hartmann.

In the ensuing four years she spent almost more time in Limerick than Britain as she honed her body for double gold medal success in Athens.

It’s not just track and field athletes who can thank Hartmann for their physical redemption. Munster and Ireland rugby outhalf Ronan O’Gara was about to undergo season-ending surgery on a medial and cruciate ligament injury when he changed his mind and headed to Hartmann for a last-ditch attempt to make the 2005 Lions Tour. He was man of the match in the Celtic League final for Munster before taking the plane to New Zealand.

Cork’s famous dual GAA star Seán Óg Ó’Hailpín was almost forced to draw a line under his sporting career after a horrific car crash, but recovered enough strength and movement in his shattered right leg to taste All Ireland hurling success in 2004.

Perhaps the best known of Hartmann’s ‘local’ clients is ‘King’ Henry Shefflin who seemed set to miss Kilkenny’s bid for a historic five-in-a-row hurling crowns in 2010 with his second cruciate injury.

Defying the odds he took to the field only to damage cartilage in the affected knee after just 11 minutes. Was it a risk too far?

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artmann’s life has been played out in two parts: the first as a talented athlete-turned-champion-triathlete; the second as a physical therapist who brought all the obsessive need for perfection that had fuelled his own sporting endeavours to bear on his physical therapy work.

A somewhat restless tearaway who was expelled from his first school, Hartmann discovered running almost by accident and

“I go where other people don’t go.

I get in deep”

found it was the perfect tap for his sky-high energy levels. He followed the well-worn path to a US University Sports scholarship before inevitably his abused body cried ‘enough’, by which time he had already dabbled in the nascent world of triathlon.

Here was a sport that required three times the effort, a concept that Hartmann grasped with unnatural enthusiasm.

He would become a pioneering star of the sport in Ireland, winning national title after title in the ’80s.

But after a total of seven Irish titles and an impressive 14th place finish in the 1986 world triathlon championships in Nice, his world turned upside down one day in 1991 when he hit an unyielding armadillo during a flat-out bike training interval on a North Florida road.

It sounds like a joke, but the punch line was a heavy impact with the asphalt from which he was lucky to survive and even more fortunate to keep his right leg.

His wasted limb was filled with metal and abruptly, at age 30, his professional sporting career was at an end.

By then he had already started to develop an exit strategy, having somehow found time to train as a physical therapist.

As a sports injury specialist he blossomed immediately. His own injury history, which was extensive, lent the weight of personal experience to his qualifications and, within a year, he was an integral part of the US Athletics set-up and could count stars like Calvin Smith, Carl Lewis, Mark McCoy and Scotland’s Liz McColgan among his early clients.

A shy young student from Cork called Sonia O’Sullivan struck up a conversation with him one day in 1991 and thus began a 20-year association for Hartmann with Ireland’s greatest-ever athlete – a competitor with a complex blend of mental frailty and steely determination that made the

Former world marathon record holder Khalid Khannouchi has benefited from Hartmann’s touch

Limerick man such a vital camp member.

He was part of the US backroom team at Barcelona in 1992, with the Irish team at Atlanta four years later and an integral part of the Great Britain physical therapy support in 2000, 2004 and 2008. This year he returns to the Irish fold in London, but one senses that, financially secure and with two toddler children to rear with wife Diane, he is ready to slow the relentless pace of his career.

His partner in Hartmann International Sports Injury Clinic, Ger Keane, looks set to take on more of the day-to-day work as he focuses on fewer clients. “I look and I say, hold on, I’m looking at the next 10 years and getting much more specific and working with key individuals and giving them much more of myself. People ringing up looking for appointments… I’m not there for those anymore. I’m there to work with a select group of people and to have the energy and the vitality to enjoy it.

“It’s like an ageing athlete: an athlete who is getting older can still win the city marathons, but they have to be careful that they don’t over-race.” www.hartmann-international.com

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Nick Hook (left), his bandmate in Cubic Zirconia, Tiombe Lockhart, and electro-soul singer Jesse Boykins

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C I T Y OF DR EAM S birthed and dashed New York, that fickle mistress, has can make it thousands of music careers. But if you es from the concrete there... well, you know the rest. Tal Nick Hook, singer jungle with Azealia Banks producer ger Jesse Boykins Tiombe Lockhart and electro-soul sin aphy: Miko Lim Words: Cortney Harding Photogr

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olling up to a sandwich joint in the Brooklyn neighbourhood of Greenpoint, Nick Hook jumps off his bike and starts talking a mile a minute. Powered by coffee from Ninth Street Espresso in the East Village, and a session at Sixth Street Pilates, as well as his daily threemile run, the red-haired Hook bubbles over with energy and enthusiasm. He has every reason to be: Azealia Banks, with whom he worked when she was just a young unknown from Harlem, is one of the hottest indie rappers around, and Hook is in the process of extending his studio so he can create more hits. He’s also doing production work on a number of other people’s tracks and working on his solo album – later in the afternoon, he’ll take to Twitter to ask for title suggestions.

After grabbing a salad and sparkling water, Hook heads to his studio, which he warns is “still a work in progress”.

A large, light-filled room on the fifth floor of a converted industrial building, the studio is filled with synthesisers, mixing boards and computers – ground zero for what could be the next indie sensation. Hook settles in, first playing a handful of tracks he’s heard about from various sources, then getting down to work on the production for a track by Villa, an upbeat indie dance number that sounds like it could be a cut from the latest Passion Pit album.

A few hours later, Hook takes a break and heads up to the studio’s roof, settling 60

in under the scorching-hot sun and gazing out of over a panoramic view of Manhattan. “I don’t think I could be anywhere else,” he says. “I was just in LA and I felt like I wasn’t getting anything done. Part of it was that I was with Azealia and she was hanging out and having fun, and part of it was that it takes so long to get anywhere. I can just jump on my bike or the train and be almost anywhere in New York in 20 minutes.”

A city of superlatives in many respects, New York happens to be one of the best cities in the world for music at the moment, sending forth an army of DJs, rappers, singer-songwriters, and indie rockers to the wider world and the sales charts. There are hundreds of live-music venues, from the iconic Hammerstein Ballroom and Madison Square Garden to 285 Kent Ave, a ramshackle space that hosts indie rock and noise bands and makes up in charm what it lacks in air conditioning.

If you need a drummer, or a singer, or a collaborator, New York is full of them, and if you want a record label, all four major labels and hundreds of indies are here waiting. An artist doing press can swing by Rolling Stone’s office in midtown, or Billboard’s in the East Village, and still have time to grab a drink with some bloggers in Bushwick before making it home for dinner.

But there’s a lot of competition here.

When you live in a city where investment bankers complain about feeling poor, it can be tough for a working musician to pay the bills. “I love the weight of New York,” says Tiombe Lockhart, Hook’s

Hook (left) has been plugging away in NYC for years, working at a sake bar while producing beats and music, including Azealia Banks’s breakout track, 212. Lockhart (centre) says the struggle is part of the allure

“I LOVE the weight of New York. I like that everything is so dense. It propels me to work harder and dig deeper”

partner in the band Cubic Zirconia, who also performs as a solo artist. “I like the idea of hustling and the fact that everything is so dense. It propels me to work harder and dig deeper. And it’s not just New York; the internet also makes it possible for anyone to create and upload music or videos. But I don’t think I could make the type of music I make anywhere else. I get so much just living in the city.

I live in a Dominican neighborhood and I hear things just walking around that I wouldn’t hear if I lived in another place.”

Lockhart started singing after her mother noticed her talents, performing

in churches as a kid and eventually attending a performing arts high school after moving, from Atlanta, to Los Angeles as a teenager. She then studied jazz at the New School in NYC, and was signed to Elektra Records shortly after graduation – only to be dropped from the label a few months later.

“I was ready to give up, but my mom kept pushing me,” she says.

“I met a producer who asked me to do some vocals and sent me a track and a cheque – I didn’t want to be unethical so I did the work, and wound up working with a group 61

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called Platinum Pied Pipers. Then I went back to doing the solo thing, and was even on the cover of [music magazine] XLR8R, but nothing felt right.”

One night, she went to a sake bar with a mutual friend of Hook’s. She met Hook, who was working as a waiter there and was eager to have her join his band. The two bonded over booze and DJ Quik, and Lockhart credits her work with Cubic Zirconia for revitalising her interest in music, though she came close to going down another path. “I worked for two years as a secretary at an investment firm,” she says. “At one point, someone told me I would make a great banker.”

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ew York, like the stock market, is fantastic but fickle – bands fall from the scene just as quickly as they rise through it.

Hook’s New York experience has had its fair share of ups and downs – starting with his journey to the city.

As a high school student in St Louis, Missouri, he played guitar but found himself in “shitty” bands; a chance encounter with a friend of a friend led him to learn early digital music production programmes like Fruityloops.

Yet he never thought of music as an actual career, and took a job at an ad agency after college, working with funeral homes, among other uplifting clients.

Eventually he got a call from Todd Weinstock, leader of the post-punk band Glassjaw, and headed to New York to spend 10 days recording with him.

Together they formed a band, Men,

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“YOU CAN’T BE LAZY IN NEW YORK. You always have to be on your toes, always creating” Women & Children, and inked a deal with Warner Bros. They scored opening slots for groups like Panic At The Disco and Metric, but things never quite gelled; album sales were slow, and after a few years, he found himself in debt and without a label.

He took the job at the sake bar to pay the bills. “I’ve been living a meager existence for sure,” he says. “For a long time my focus was just surviving.”

Still, he kept at it, working with Lockhart and on his production career.

His output was good enough to secure a spot in the Red Bull Music Academy last year. “I describe it to people and they think it sounds like Burning Man,” says Hook of the month-long schedule of workshops and nightly gigs. “It’s like summer camp with music and alcohol. But you meet all these amazing people from all over the world and work with legends. I got to write a song with Bootsy Collins.”

Applicants to the Red Bull Music Academy span the globe, and upon completion of the programme,

Boykins first moved to the city to study jazz, but altered his sound to a more moody R&B vibe

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Nick Hook’s forthcoming solo project will be released in September. It sounds like “my ADD little brain”, he says

participants become mentors to the next. Hook has secured DJ gigs in Tokyo and New Zealand from the contacts he made at Red Bull Music Academy. One of his classmates, Andrea Balency, guests on his forthcoming album.

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usic, art, and culture chops aside, New York can also lay claim to another title – the city with the most visually intriguing people. The version of New York from TV’s Law And Order, where the bartender recalls what time the guy in the red shirt left, and what he had to drink? Fantasy. Everyone stands out here.

So it says something about Jesse Boykins that his look stands out, especially in the hipster-saturated neighbourhood of Williamsburg. His hair makes Angela Davis’s legendary Afro look like a military crew cut. He wears bright shirts and platform shoes, and long sleeves in sweltering weather.

Boykins (who has released an album and two EPs and is planning on releasing another album in October) moved from his hometown of Miami, Florida, to New York to attend college at the New School and never looked back. “I was always working when I was there.

I sang back-up in a couple of groups and taught music to elementary school students, and worked as the night clerk at a hostel on the Lower East Side.”

Luckily for Boykins, he’s been able to support himself with music since finishing college, although he’s had to rely on the kindness of others to make it happen. “I slept on my friend’s couch for a year,” he says. “He’s my best friend and totally believed in me; he designed my logo before I even started performing solo.”

The Boykins sound is best described as moody electro-soul, part of a new indie R&B movement spawning stars like Frank Ocean and bringing life to a genre that before seemed like it was in terminal decline. He’s a crooner and a charmer, with an almost academic approach to figuring out how to seduce ladies. As well as a new album, he’s also working on a documentary about women, asking questions like “Short-term lust or

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“I SWEAR half of my job is being a shrink.

You have to learn how to get good stuff out of people without being critical”

long-term love?” and “What is your favourite thing about being a woman?”

Hook tells the story of the first time he and Boykins hung out, at the Red Bull Music Academy last year in Madrid.

“Jesse and I were at a sushi bar, and he got up on the table and sang Happy Birthday,” he explains. “By the end of the song, all the women in the bar were making it rain for him.”

When he’s not working out how to probe the female mind, Boykins spends his days working out of his home studio in Secaucus, New Jersey. Living in a gritty industrial town isn’t the New York rock ’n’ roll dream, but Boykins doesn’t seem to mind. After all, he’s only in town one week a month. (He toured Europe in July, and there are dates scheduled for Tokyo and South Africa.)

“It’s impossible for me to budget here,” he says. “I like to experience things;

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not anything fancy, but I like to go to museums and shows, and it all adds up.”

Still, he wouldn’t live anywhere else.

“You can’t be lazy in New York,” he says.

“You always have to be on your toes, always creating, always moving.”

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ack in his studio, Hook is hard at work creating, or at least altering someone else’s creation. Although he has no formal training in production (he picked it up while playing in bands and helping out around studios), he’s become particularly accomplished, including in the more emotional areas of the job. “I swear, half my job is being a shrink,” he says. “You have to learn how to get good stuff out of people while not being critical. People get really attached to their tracks and freak out when you change things.”

While production pays the bills, one of Hook’s biggest gigs thus far started out as a favour to a friend. “A buddy hooked me up with Azealia and I really liked her, so I helped her out,” he says.

One of the tracks they worked on, Jumanji, became a viral sensation, and Banks ended up signing with Interscope.

Hook says he spends most of his afternoons in his studio; at night, he’ll spin at clubs throughout the city, including Le Bain at the Standard Hotel.

His own musical projects have been varied. Cubic Zirconia, which was signed to A-Trak’s Fool’s Gold label, was described by Lockhart as “ethnic disco”, an experiment they undertook because they both felt boxed in by the genres they usually record in. He also performs with the DJ collective Drop The Lime and this month releases a solo project that he describes as “sounding like my ADD little brain”, featuring guest appearances from El-P, Daryl Palumbo, and Zebrakatz.

After leaving the studio, he heads home for a nap and a bite before hitting the club to play music into the wee hours. His night is eventful; one of the promoters has a seizure at the club before Hook goes on (luckily, he makes it through OK), and Hook doesn’t get to bed until the sun is coming up. The next day, he’s right back at work in the studio.

www.redbullmusicacademy.com

Red Bull Music Academy graduates Hook, Boykins and Lockhart say their time with the programme was invaluable

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Austrian architect Thomas Herzig builds castles in the air, continuing a tradition that brings together Gothic master builders and high-tech wizards Words: Alexander Macheck  Photography: Daniel Gebhart de Koekkoek

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Airplay T Solid air: architect Thomas Herzig with one of his unique pneumatic structures, a pavilion made almost entirely of air

here might be a UFO sitting in a remote glade west of the Austrian capital: a seethrough bubble the size of a small cottage.

A cuckoo shrieks and an electric pump whirrs into action, blowing air into this strange form. “It’s a pneumocell dome,” explains Thomas Herzig, owner of this hidden patch of land and inventor of the structure: an air-filled, honeycomb-shaped plastic cell that can be put together with others to make structures of any shape or size. Transparent or opaque, as required, but heat-insulated and stable, even though they’re made mostly from a whole lot of nothing – just air.

A pupil of Austrian architect Gustav Peichl, Herzig’s work mainly focuses on making special exhibition pavilions for motor industry events. He has also been heavily involved with Vienna’s Life Ball, Europe’s biggest charity event raising money for people with HIV and AIDS. Herzig has designed a series of futuristic roof structures for Life Ball, with artists like Hans Kupelwieser, Wolfgang Semmelrock and Peter Sandbichler enlisting his skills for special inflatable commissions, making him an expert in a new domain: pneumatic design.

Or, as he puts it, pneumatic formfinding: “I can cut a piece of wood 67

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Another bubble in the wall: Herzig calls his design process “pneumatic form-finding”. Cells can be put together with other materials to make anything from furniture to walls and windows

be-finished ‘Skybase’ project – a house that will be positioned high up among rocks and trees – Herzig will study the design and shape of birds’ nests.

This observational approach makes him party to a glorious tradition. When Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí was designing Barcelona’s Sagrada Família cathedral, for example, he hung weights with ropes on a board to imitate gravity and create tension, so arches, vaults and columns could form with no critical compressive force acting on them. This upside-down model helped him envisage how his intricate creation would turn out.

“The amazing thing about design solutions based on the laws of nature is that nature uses minimum materials to maximum effect,” explains Herzig. “So in our case that means ideal structural engineering using minimum resources.”

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“The amazing thing about design solutions based on the laws of nature is that they use minimum materials to maximum effect” 68

however I like and make crazy, completely useless things out of it.

But air always seeks out its own form.”

Herzig has to think about exactly how the air is going to interact with the membrane depending on how he shapes it. “You need a lot more background knowledge at the designing stage,” he explains. “And humility.”

That means he doesn’t try to force the form he imagines on nature, but instead racks his brains to work out what the right form will be for the function that the object is supposed to fulfil.

The first thing Herzig does is open his eyes and look around. He examines organic cells, bunches of grapes and drops of water. For things like the yet-to-

ut as Herzig is keen to point out, no part of this design process is down to chance. It is a principle and ideal which all solutions strive towards in their development.

Even man hasn’t been able to elude it.

On the contrary. “When we started building, we laid one stone on top of another,” says Herzig. “Gothic-era architects began to think about how they could cut down on materials.

That’s how we ended up with fourcentred arches and cross-shaped vaults.”

Back then it was to save money. Now, on top of that, we have environmental considerations such as reducing raw material use and decreasing transport weight and emissions. But in keeping with the tradition of the old master builders, what counts for any developer is the allure of the universal trend towards dematerialisation which is particularly radical in the high-tech world and, therefore, particularly visible.

Herzig explains: “The first computers were the size of our living rooms, but now we can stick our iPhones in our pockets even though they have much greater capacity. We’re replacing material with information. The idea remains, but the material disappears.”

Learn more at: www.pneumocell.com

iPhone is a trademark of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries. App Store is a service mark of Apple Inc. Android is a trademark of Google Inc.

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home made for speed In his pursuit for the world speed record for human-powered vehicles, ‘Flying Scotsman’ Graeme Obree may finally have found an endeavour that combines his athletic and engineering gifts Words: Declan Quigley Photography: Paul Calver 70

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altcoats has its best suit on the day The Red Bulletin visits Graeme Obree, but it’s a little threadbare and is clearly hanging on old bones. Glorious morning sunshine adorns the seaside town that was a popular tourist destination for Glaswegians in the 20th century before cheap air travel diverted the holidaymakers elsewhere.

Nowadays, Saltcoats is better known as a recession-hit centre of unemployment and social unrest.

It’s against this slightly grim backdrop that Obree, the twice world track pursuit champion and former holder of the blue riband hour record, a man once dubbed “Mad, Brilliant and Human” by l’Equipe newspaper, is planning another world record assault. Except this time, and for the first time in his sporting career, he doesn’t care if he gets the record.

As far as Graeme Obree is concerned, success in his bid for the world land speed record aboard his self-designed and built HPV (human-powered vehicle) in Nevada this September is about enjoying the journey and making sure he retains his carefully nurtured health along the way.

“You get to a certain point where you can’t put yourself right, clinically you’re actually depressed. And a lot of people are. But I’m not, at the moment, so I don’t want to lay the groundwork, the path that will allow me to get to

that. And one of the pathways to that would be‚ ‘I would rather die than not break that record’. If I said that, I should be instantly stopped from doing it.”

A quick Google search reveals plenty who view Saltcoats as somewhere to escape from, but for Obree, who has lived in various parts of surrounding Ayrshire for most of his life, the town has been a refuge from the torment that has stalked him in the years since he stopped competing.

“I haven’t exactly been mister reliable in the last 12 years,” he admits at one point, delivering the line with a sheepish grin as if apology was somehow necessary for the hermit-like existence that followed when his glittering track racing career came to an end. The crippling depression which has afflicted him throughout a life punctuated by at least three suicide attempts and countless stultifying lows had only been staved off intermittently by the highs of competition and those two world hour records and double world championship successes of the ’90s.

“At that time, my actual survival as a human being, emotionally, depended on my next result. Seriously depended on it.

I was as good as my next result.”

Without the distraction of racing, which had brought with it added pressures to go with occasional, fleeting euphoria, the demons had to be finally faced head on, and a long personal voyage of therapy and examination has only recently resulted in a return to the public eye.

Now, at 46, it looks as if Obree has finally found a way to express his twin talents for engineering innovation and world-class athleticism in a package that won’t put undue pressure on his health.

Canadian Sam Whittingham has held the world land speed record for HPVs on and off since 1998 and, after a series of improvements in vehicles designed by Bulgarian-born Georgi Georgiev, left the current mark at 82.819mph over a measured 200yd at Battle Mountain, Nevada in 2009.

Early this year Obree announced that he would pitch for the world record at the IHPVA World Championships in Battle Kitchen design: arm rests are made from an old saucepan (above left); the table acts as a work bench (left)

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“In the 1990s, my survival depended on my next result”

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Mountain this September and, perhaps a little impulsively, declared that his design should theoretically be capable of 100mph.

For Obree, a man whose developments in riding position and bicycle design pitched him into a series of unwanted battles with UCI officials in the more conventional and hidebound cycling arena back in the 1990s, it’s like coming home.

“I was in this in the ’90s,” he announces in his thick, rapid-fire brogue. “I became a bit cynical about the sport with the drug taking and all that and the rule changes and the restrictions. You couldn’t innovate any more, and it’s all tied down.

“I thought about getting into this HPV business, because there are no rules apart from the laws of physics. There’s no real man-made rules apart from, you’ve got to have a flat road and the conditions of it.

So, I thought, that is my thing.”

Frontal assault: by lying on his front Obree has improved the bike’s aerodynamics

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t the time he became involved in a project led

by Formula One engineers to create a record-setting HPV, but made his excuses early when he became convinced the vehicle wasn’t up to it.

That vehicle, like Whittingham’s Varna Diablo and most HPVs, was a reclining recumbent where the rider lies with his feet pedalling out front. Obree’s approach is typically subversive.

“I thought, I would actually go and lie on my front and minimise the frontal area.”

The idea was born from fleeting experience of a ‘prone’ commuter bike he rode in the 1990s which was more stable and offered the potential for a reduced frontal area, the holy grail of aerodynamics.

Indeed Obree has calculated that his machine, affectionately dubbed ‘The Beastie’, has a frontal area only two-thirds of that of Whittingham’s. By his logic, with at least the same athletic ability propelling the machine, which he surely has, then the sky is the limit for his record bid.

As well as a prone riding position, which has been tried by a handful of IHPVA record challengers in the past but has long since fallen out of favour, Obree has opted for a ‘push-pull’ drive system where long steel rods are driven back and forth by his legs to turn the cranks on a giant single freewheel gear of 320in. “I’m pushing back and forth like an old-fashioned steam train! See! The Flying Scotsman!”

If he can get his legs to pump the pistons enough so that the cranks turn at 100rpm, then the vehicle will be going 100mph. It’s a big if, but one that intrigues and challenges him, without compromising his current inner peace.

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Obree’s creations are almost always born of a Heath Robinson adaptation of available resources in the most unusual of applications. “I’m useless in almost everything, but what I’m really, really, really good at is the concept. Designing bikes, building bikes, riding bikes. So this encapsulates all three of those things.”

His ‘Old Faithful’ bike that carried him to glory when he beat Francesco Moser’s Hour Record in Norway in 1993 featured revolutionary geometry to support his intuitions, since proven, about cycling ergonomics. It also featured bearings culled from an old washing machine, a fact without which it appears no article about Obree is complete and which he has regretted revealing ever since.

This time around, his vehicle, built with only the laws of physics and the depth of his pockets to constrain him, is a radical approach utilising various cycling bric-abrac he had lying around and, for quick referencing by the popular media, arm rests fashioned from an old saucepan. It’s not surprising that so many household utensils are donors for his bikes given much of the construction is done in the kitchen, where a bench vice is bolted to

“The thing is, I don’t know how fast I’m going to go on this bike” a table on which place settings vie for space with a clutter of old bike parts.

The blueprint for the design, which has rattled around in his fertile mind for at least 15 years, was sketched out 1:1 scale on sheets of wallpaper in his living room.

Choosing steel as his frame material was a no-brainer and he’s confident he can effect repairs “on the hoof” in Nevada if necessary, something that would be much less practical with carbon fibre. It also helped that he had a small quantity of unused Reynolds 653 chrome molybdenum steel tubing lying around from his days as a frame builder and bike shop owner that could be fashioned into a functional chassis.

Throughout the build he has had just one assistant, his 18-year-old son, Jamie,

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increasing obsession for a man whose autobiography Flying Scotsman received rave reviews and spawned a feature film, produced a training manual for cyclists that has been hailed as a commonsense approach to a sport increasingly swamped with advice and information on the science of physiology.

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who will also be his back-up rider in Nevada.

The carbon-fibre and Kevlar fairing or ‘skin’, as he likes to call it, is the one element of the project that has been outsourced, being produced to his requirements by students at Glasgow School of Art. In Battle Mountain he will face opposition not just from Whittingham, but also, among others, a team from Delft University of Technology and the VU University Amsterdam that has recruited a former speed-skating champion, Jan Bos, to conduct their more conventionally conceived but expensively engineered recumbent machine. It’s a delicious contest, an echo of the “A-Team-style innovation versus corporate resources” contest that developed between Obree and fellow Briton Chris Boardman for world hour records and world championship pursuit titles in 1990s.

“This is a lot different from the hour record. Because this isn’t life or death, this is a challenge. This is the whole process of it. I mean, people can’t be driven by the fear of failure, because you’d never start. The thing about this, I don’t know how fast I’m going to go on this bike. I might go out and, with the

first go, and say, ‘Oh my God, I’ve got this so wrong, it’s useless.’ That could happen. I don’t think it’ll happen.

Theoretically, and thinking about it, it should work great. But I could be wrong.

There’s no surety. I’m OK about that. I’ll go, ‘Guys I’ve got it all wrong.’”

The curse of Obree’s twin talents is that one tends to overshadow the other.

In all the chat about how unique and interesting his new vehicle is, it’s easy to overlook the fact that he is one of Britain’s greatest-ever cyclists.

At 46, the assumption might be that his prodigious engine is starting to lose power, but Obree is confident that he still retains enough strength to do justice to his machine. And when Obree is confident, only a fool would bet against him.

For a man who spent his childhood almost consumed by fear and crippling shyness, who was bullied incessantly because of his father’s occupation as the local policeman, Obree is not easily swayed when he fixes on an idea, however unconventional. Or perhaps it was the loneliness of his childhood that has helped reinforce his own self belief.

His most recent foray into writing, an

he paradox of Obree is that for a man so excited by technology and innovation, he regularly opts for instinct over scientific method and his training regimen is no exception.

“I like to go out [cycling] every day.

Not hammering it every day, because I generally go back and forth and visit my boys and stuff like that on my bike because I don’t own a car.

“If my body thinks, well I feel quite fresh let’s give it a lash, then I go give it a lash on the hills. But if I go, oh God, I feel a bit jaded and stuff like that, then I go and just tap along. The whole thing is seat of the pants. It’s like my intuition says, this is how you need to do this.

My intuition says, that push-pull arrangement is going to be so powerful.”

Through all the turmoil he has emerged with a fragile balance in his existence and a renewed vigour to conduct life beyond the boundaries of Saltcoats. At the same time he’s quick to offer this latest in a long line of convention-challenging projects as an inspiration to the youth of Saltcoats.

“There’s a lot of deprivation and alcohol and drug problems and stuff like that. I go to speak to kids at schools and tell them whatever you want to do in life, you can do it, because there’s no other positivity around about. So, part of this remit is a vehicle that’s going to deliver a message to young people, saying you know what, if you get an idea of what you want to do just go for it. Doesn’t matter if you get it or not, just go for it.”

Graeme Obree has travelled too far in his life to get excited about how fast he can travel 200yd, but the trip to that dash to the line is proving to be increasingly enjoyable.

“Let me put it this way, build a bogie in the kitchen, ramble up the road in America, and have a gas with your friends and family. If you break the record, you can go and have a party, if you don’t you go, ‘Oh well, I gave it my best shot and I still went bloody fast.’ I don’t know how fast I’m going to go, but I’m pretty sure I’m going to go bloody fast.” www.obree.com

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MASTER

OF INVENTION

Flying Lotus has been likened to Miles Davis and Jimi Hendrix, but when he’s making records – some of the most innovative and fresh-sounding music you will hear – he thinks of himself as Bugs Bunny. What’s up with that?

Words: Florian Obkircher Photography: Thomas Butler

“I WANT PEOPLE TO LISTEN TO MY MUSIC IN THEIR CARS, NOT JUST WHEN THEY’RE PARTYING”

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  : How do you come up with such unique electronic beats?  : I have no idea, I swear.

There is no button that I push, but I think it has to do with me messing around with stuff in my studio that aren’t really instruments. I’ll pick up my cup of pens and just record them falling on the table, and in the sound that it makes you find some weird and interesting rhythms.

That brings to mind a quote from Miles Davis: “Do not fear mistakes.

There are none.”

That’s true. A big part of my process is just experimentation and then I find the right pieces within it, I see myself as some kind of assembly man. I have all these pieces and then I’m like, “Well, these pieces go together and these pieces go together” and then you’ve got a track.

How do you keep working like that?

My guiding principle is: there aren’t any rules. I remember that when a piece I’m working on is too conventional. Then I try to think of myself as a cartoon character, because everything’s possible in cartoons.

That helps blow up the limitations of your imagination. I am Bugs Bunny and I can pull beats or whatever out my pockets.

Listening to your new album, Until The Quiet Comes, doesn’t bring to mind cartoons. It sounds more like the

ADDITIONAL PHOTOGRAPHY: LANDERPHOTO/RED BULL CONTENT POOL

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guy from Los Angeles packs his bags and flies to Melbourne to take part in the Red Bull Music Academy 2006. There he spends two weeks jamming with other rookies, all taking instruction from giants of the music industry, and makes the track Tea Leaf Dancers, the first to draw attention to its maker, Flying Lotus, and a precursor to the album Los Angeles, which would take the electronic music world by storm two years later.

Critics compared Flying Lotus, aka Steven Ellison, to Miles Davis and Jimi Hendrix, because he does with his laptop what they did with their instruments: breaking down barriers and combining elements that weren’t thought to go together, gathering plaudits and inspiring other musicians in the process.

On Los Angeles, Flying Lotus built a universe of sounds with samples of old jazz records, shimmering snatches of synth and hip-hop beats that could have come from Kraftwerk-style robots high on weed and experimentation.

His second album, Cosmogramma (2010), was even more inventive and highly praised. Flying Lotus’s new album, Until The Quiet Comes, out next month, is a record from the future: electronic, psychedelic jazz and again those beats, which sound as if Ellison is sticking out a leg to trip up his drum machine.

“SLIPPING INTO THE ROLE OF A CARTOON CHARACTER BLOWS UP THE LIMITS OF MY IMAGINATION” soundtrack to a noir movie set in space.

I like banging club music, but at home I listen to other stuff, like Portishead and Radiohead. Or fusion jazz by people such as Return To Forever and Weather Report.

By the time I started working on this record, I was listening to my aunt Alice’s stuff a lot [Alice Coltrane, jazz pianist and wife of legendary sax John Coltrane].

At some point I started wondering, “Why are these the songs that I hold onto?”

Why do you hold on to them?

I want to be the person that makes the music you love forever. I want to be the person you listen to when you’re in the car on in your bedroom, not just on Saturday night. That was a pivotal decision for me at that time.

Your album Los Angeles was extremely influential. Thousands copied your style. Were you flattered?

I was in the beginning, but then it got annoying and suddenly the sound had a name – wonky – and I felt like I needed to separate myself from that scene. I had to move on, even if that’s risky from a career point of view.

Is it a reflection of musical ambition today that nobody is willing to risk doing something really new?

That’s not how I see things. MySpace turned the scene on its head in 2004.

Suddenly, everyone could make his music available to the whole world. You could hear a tune in a club in LA which was produced by some guy in Argentina the night before. That sort of speed used to be unheard of in the music industry. The scene changed so fast because there were all these different players coming forward and everyone was inspired. Everyone was trying to take it to the next level.

Yet music also lost value because of the immediacy of digital availability and the prevalence of illegal downloads.

We have to come to terms with the new

ACTION

situation. I don’t make a shit-ton of money selling records, so giving away music isn’t weird to me. But I’d rather give things to people who support [music]. So for this record, and the previous one, people who pay for it get something for that – extras. I think if people buy my music today, they’re doing it to support me, not because they haven’t worked out how to download it illegally.

I like to buy stuff too, especially from new artists. Every week I go on iTunes and buy a bunch of new tracks. Even if I just listen to them once, I pay for them because I feel like I’m helping a little bit.

Does it make sense releasing a whole album under these circumstances?

I think about that all the time. It’s changing so fast, and as much as I’m an album format type of person, in an oldschool sense, I have to accept that a lot of people who listen to my stuff don’t listen to it the way that I intended it to be listened. Some people might just buy a single track because Erykah Badu is on it, but that’s just what it is, man. That’s cool. The past year, I put a lot of things online just because I thought they would never have a home, so why not? But not my albums. I feel like it’s definitely a special thing for me, because I put a lot of thought into the flow of everything.

Are you afraid that an album of yours will show up on a file-sharing site even before it’s been released?

Ideally I’d have just liked to release Until The Quiet Comes without really announcing it – “Surprise! It’s the new Flying Lotus album!” – like Radiohead did with their last album. But then I changed my mind, because I spend so much energy doing this shit that I want as many people as possible to know about it. Plus, I’m not Radiohead. I’m not going to sell a million records just like that in a week.

As was the case with a track on your second album, Radiohead’s Thom Yorke sings on the new record. How did that come about this time?

By chance. I sent him a couple of tracks to ask him what he thought of them.

He got back to me straightaway: “Amazing. I’ve already got ideas for vocals for one song.” Thom is fantastic.

He knows what he wants, and what he doesn’t. That decisiveness makes him really nice to work with.

Erykah Badu also guests on the album; last year you made a video for her.

I actually started out studying film, but 78

to be honest I’m really bored of music videos at the moment. Music videos these days concentrate mostly on one thing: clicks. And cute kittens. “How many cute kittens can I squeeze into a three-minute video to crack the onemillion visitor mark?” As for cinematic and narrative ideas, there aren’t any.

On the other hand, I understand that there’s no budget for music videos any more. Things were different in the 1990s.

The videos made by Chris Cunningham [cult director of videos for Björk, Aphex Twin and others] cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, but they were masterpieces. I’d like to do something like that, not just music videos. Real movies!

“IF PEOPLE BUY YOUR MUSIC TODAY, THEY’RE DOING IT TO SUPPORT YOU, NOT BECAUSE THEY HAVEN’T WORKED OUT HOW TO DOWNLOAD IT ILLEGALLY”

Is that why you were at the Cannes Film Festival in the spring?

I played a couple of DJ gigs, but I was pretty disappointed with the Cannes experience because it’s not about movies at all. It’s about who’s wearing what on the red carpet. The choice of movies wasn’t particularly exciting either. OK, so there was the premiere of the new Wes Anderson movie [Moonrise Kingdom], but I could have watched that back home in Los Angeles a couple of days later.

And many of the screenings I’d have liked to attend were black tie. So now I have to wear a tuxedo to go to the movies? What’s that all about?

Next year you’ll be lecturing at the Red Bull Music Academy in New York. Six years ago in Melbourne, you were a participant yourself.

What did those two weeks back then give you and your music?

It was just before my debut album, 1983, came out. It was perfect timing.

I made a lot of contacts, met musicians like Mark Pritchard and Kode9, who were people I looked up to, and we’re still in touch. I also produced the track Tea Leaf Dancers with Andreya Triana [a singer-songwriter and Academy participant from London], which is still one of my biggest hits.

When your music is talked about, you often hear the word ‘futuristic’. How do you see the music of the future?

I feel like the future of music is that it becomes more and more personal.

There is something really beautiful about comedians, because they are always so aware of the now. They are aware of what’s making society tick, and I think musicians are embracing that more and more. There was this idea that music had to have a universal appeal to the masses, and everyone should be able to relate to these stories. Today young artists like Drake and Frank Ocean are making these very personal songs. They are like, “You might not understand my story, but I’m going to tell you anyway and you might not like it.” People are embracing that and I really like it, too.

[Drake and Frank Ocean] are really big because people are like, “Wow, no one’s even really said that type of shit on a record before, people are not really talking about that on records”.

Flying Lotus’s album, Until the Quiet Comes (Warp), is out on October 1: www.flying-lotus.com

THDE N I T E L L R E BU ES G !

A M P I G AP EYE-CATCHING MOVIN E X T R AO

RIES O T S Y R R D I NA

OTOS H P E V I E XC LUS

E E R F DOWNLOAD

www.redbulletin.com Find a list of all compatible Android devices at www.redbulletin.com

Contents 82 TRAVEL Lost in music in New Orleans 84 GET THE GEAR A top chef and his kitchen equipment 86 TRAINING Tips from US skater Torey Pudwill

90 NIGHTLIFE Everything you need to get you through til dawn 94 WORLD IN ACTION 96 SAVE THE DATE 97 KAINRATH 98 MIND’S EYE

CREDITS: PHOTOGRAPHY: KIRSTEN SCHOLTZ/GETTY IMAGES

88 BAND WATCH Auckland quartet Collapsing Cities

CREDITS:

US surfer Kelly Slater is aiming for a third victory in a row at the Hurley Pro off the coast of California.

Success would cement his place as one of the sport’s all-time greats. Find his date with destiny, and other events of the month, on page 94

GET INTO THE GROOVE THIS MONTH’S TRAVEL TIPS

All that jazz… And everything else New Orleans’ world-famous jazz scene is rightly celebrated, but the city’s vibrant musical offerings go far beyond what can be found in tourist guidebooks.

Local DJ Brice Nice gives the low-down on where to go to for hip-hop, cabaret, drag bingo and naked karaoke VOODOO MUSIC FESTIVAL

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Lurking on the outskirts of the French Quarter are enough music venues to serve the wide-ranging interests of Voodoo Music Festival attendees

“It goes without saying that New Orleans is a town where people like to party, usually hitting up several spots in a night,” says Brice Nice, a DJ at local radio station WWOZ (www.wwoz.org).

“No closing time means that most folks don’t go out until 11pm, peak hour is somewhere around 2am and it’s not uncommon to walk out of a club into

daylight. Voodoo – headlined

by Green Day, Neil Young & Crazy Horse, Jack White and Skrillex – ups the ante with night shows and special events in unique spaces.”

Here, then, is Nice work: his dozen of the Crescent City’s best bets for the most vibrant rock, dance, electronic and hip-hop events.

Voodoo Music Festival October 26-28, www.thevoodooexperience.com

WORDS: DJ BRICE NICE. PHOTOGRAPHY: ANDREW GOETZ, GETTY IMAGES (4), CORBIS, SIBERIA, AMPERSAND

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hosted by Slangston Hughes, happens on the last Friday of the month and Truth Universal’s Grassroots on the first Saturday of each month keeps Dragon’s Den on the cutting edge. www.facebook.com/thedragonsden 10 Republic Known for weekly college dance parties on Friday and Saturday; monthly electronic events from Winter Circle Productions’ Bassik party with guests like Datsik and Doctor P; and its bounce monthly events featuring New Orleans’ own ass-shaking club music with regular guests Big Freedia, Sissy Nobby and Katey Red. www.republicnola.com Republic

8 Ampersand Ampersand is notable for the best sound system in the city and an unfailing dedication to electronic dance music. Open only on Fridays and Saturdays unless there is a special event – and more Euro-flavoured than you’ll usually find in the city – it has featured afterparty sets by Diplo, MSTRKRFT, Skrillex, and massive regular parties by the young lions of the New Orleans EDM scene, Electronic Takeover. www.clubampersand.com

Ampersand

Treme Brass Band play dba regularly

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7 dba A must-visit venue, dba is a purveyor of great live music and offers an unparalleled beer selection. With performances from Glen David Andrews every Monday, Walter ‘Wolfman’ Washington every Wednesday and regular sets by Treme Brass Band, Little Freddie King, John Boutte, Monk Boudreaux and other titans of New Orleans music, dba guarantees reliable roots music is live every night. www.dbabars.com/dbano

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6 Maison Positioning itself as the go-to spot on Frenchmen Street, Maison moves through jazz, jam funk, hip-hop, brass bands, swing dance classes and club DJs every week over multiple stages.

A monthly party by bounce pioneer DJ Jubilee, semi-regular events with super producer Mannie Fresh and touring acts like Dan Deacon and Hood Internet will take place in October.

Entry is free most nights, and a full dinner menu is on offer before 10pm. www.maisonfrenchmen.com

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Three bars on the corner of Marigny Street and St Claude Avenue, each with a distinct flavour. The Stooges Brass Band recently took over the Hi-Ho and their Thursday night residency is one of the best brass band gigs in the city. Wandering Buddha serves vegan Korean food in the back. All-Ways Lounge is, true to its name, a cabaret amalgamation

LOUIS ARMSTRONG PARK

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3 4 5 Hi-Ho Lounge, All-Ways Lounge, Siberia

of burlesque, theatre, live music, dance nights and naked karaoke in a former gay cowboy bar. Siberia features metal and punk and has hosted OFF!, Eyehategod, and a Gibby Haynes DJ set this year. Kukhnya serves Slavic soul food in the back. www.hiholounge.net, www.theallways lounge.net, www.siberianola.com

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2 The Saint The Saint has gone from rocker dive bar to a sweaty, twisted mess of a dancefloor where regular folks, hipsters, metal heads and the occasional celebrity mix without drama or paparazzi. Saturday night’s Obsession dance party is the baby of DJ Musa Alves where you’ll hear the freshest new music mixed with a little Magnolia Shorty, Lil Boosie and the occasional ’90s house tune. DJs and live music fill the rest of the week, including country night with Pasta on Sundays, tiki-themed karaoke on Tuesdays and occasionally drag bingo – which is exactly what you hope it is. www.thesaintneworleans.com

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Frenchmen Street is the hub of traditional New Orleans music, but other genres can be found further afield 1 Mimi’s in the Marigny Anchored musically by DJ Soul Sister’s Hustle party every Saturday night, where a diverse group keeps the dancefloor sweaty and jumping to strictly funky disco jams from the mid-’70s to the early-’80s. Dance party Alligator Chomp Chomp holds down every other Friday with south Louisiana sounds, and there’s a variety of live music during the week, usually jazz or roots acts.

The kitchen serves Spanish-style tapas until 2am daily and 4am on Fridays and Saturdays. www.mimisinthemarigny.net

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9 Dragon’s Den Jungle and drum ’n’ bass have their New Orleans home at the Den with Bassbin Safari on Thursdays and occasional parties by Below C Level crew. Other draws include dancehall classics with T-Roy on Wednesdays and Sunday’s weekly dubstep show Church with Unicorn Fukr. Monthly underground hip-hop event Uniquity,

11 Hookah The only real music venue in the city with a hookah selection, Hookah also features a beautiful dancefloor and is the only venue for underground dance music in the heart of the French Quarter. Popular hip-hop weeklies on Friday and Saturday have long lines and a dress code, so plan accordingly. EDM music by Head Set on Thursdays start the weekend off, and Tipping Point with DJ RQAway and the Room Service Band on Sundays are a soulful way to finish up. www.hookah-club.com 12 One-Eyed Jacks The go-to rock ’n’ roll venue in the French Quarter, OEJ’s features a hugely popular ’80s night on Thursdays packed to the gills with 20-somethings enjoying the velvetpainting ambience. The rest of the week you might find bands like Black Lips, Guided By Voices, Wild Flag, Quintron and Miss Pussycat. www.oneeyedjacks.net

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If you can’t stand the heat… Ikarus’s head chef Roland Trettl with his trusty blowtorch

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GET THE GEAR ESSENTIAL PRO KIT

Stir-crazy cooking

Is it a laboratory? A doctor’s surgery?

A spaceship? No, it’s a kitchen.

Roland Trettl, executive chef at Salzburg’s high-end Ikarus restaurant, talks us through his workspace 1. Vitamix TNC 5200 The blender’s blade can be set to spin at anything from 1,000 to 24,000rpm, which means purées, mayonnaise and mousses all come out perfectly.

At high speeds, it’s also perfect for chopping herbs without affecting colour or taste.

2. Bunsen burner This butane blowtorch can reach a top temperature of 1,750ºC, which I need to glaze things like crème brûlée.

3. Liquid nitrogen An important part of molecular cooking. In its liquid state, nitrogen has a boiling point of -196ºC and is used to freeze foods and liquids.

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WORDS: ULRICH CORAZZA. PHOTOGRAPHY: PHILIPP FORSTNER

4. Syringes The contents of the syringes (which can be filled with any flavour of juice or jelly) drip into oil or nitrogen to make aromatic jelly-like frozen gems. You can squeeze several syringes at once by turning the handle.

5. Julabo heating thermostat With the thermostat you can set temperatures of up to 90ºC exactly and maintain them.

I like using it most for lowtemperature cooking to get a nice texture in fish and meat.

6. Big Green Egg XL Air comes into this ceramic glazed charcoal grill from below. The heated gas then escapes out the top. The thermometer, which allows for precise temperatures up to 400ºC, gives you perfect results when you’re barbecuing, frying, smoking or heating.

7. Green Star juicer This will extract the juice from anything: fruit, vegetables and even herbs like basil or parsley. It works using two adjacent stainless steel press rolls, rotating at just 110rpm, so there’s no damage to the food from the speed. Even the delicate vitamins and enzymes in the pips – of strawberries or kiwis, for example – survive.

8. Plaster I use plaster of Paris – with a strength of at least 6N/mm2 – to shape active moulds. They set in 20 minutes. Here we have a truffle mould for a new take on the Délice de ris de veau Rumohr recipe.

9. Shera Duosil H silicone Negative forms from the plaster moulds can be made out of this soft elastic duplicating silicone.

10. Turning Slicer Practical help for slicing fruit and vegetables. Simply put in an apple, turn the handle and the whole thing comes out the other end finely sliced.

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Chop chop: Japanese turning slicer www.hangar-7.com/ikarus

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WORK OUT TRAINING WITH THE PROS

Tough Breaks TOREY PUDWILL The Californian street skater is rehabbing two broken bones

Before Torey Pudwill broke his ankle at the end of 2011 – and his hand in early 2012 – he would train like any other skater: get up, head to the park and skate. But when the Torey Pudwill 22-year-old started rehab for his injury, he learned a jarring fact: to reach the top of his sport, skating alone wasn’t enough. “Taking supplements, eating right… this is all stuff I’ve learned since I’ve gotten hurt,” Pudwill says.

“It’s like taking a class on how to be an athlete and even how to benefit myself to live longer.”

Pudwill’s trainer, Dr David Sales of the South Coast Spine Center in Capistrano Beach, California, says that his dedication to being healthy is what sets him apart.

“Torey’s got that desire and that drive – and you don’t see that in a lot of [skate] athletes,” Sales says. “Most of them wake up in the morning and have a cigarette and a coffee and that’s their idea of a warm-up.”

Keep on truckin' For Pudwill, just getting to Sales’ office requires a two-hour drive from his home in the San Fernando Valley down the coast to Orange County. And then the fun begins.

Monday-Friday: He lies on an intersegmental traction table, which vibrates and has a roller that goes up and down the spine to increase range of motion.

At the same time, Pudwill is hooked up to muscle stimulation on any part of his body that’s feeling any tightness. In addition, injured body parts receive cold laser treatment to increase metabolic activity, speed up healing and reduce inflammation – as well as cryotherapy: good old ice.

Next, Pudwill gets ultrasound treatment to warm and loosen up the tissue before

Sales gives him a chiropractic adjustment. He does active release therapy to make sure that all his tendons, ligaments and muscles are in the right position.

“It’s painful, but it’s really important,” Pudwill says.

“But if all those are working together – the results are pretty much instant.”

After some mild stretching, Pudwill will then go on the power plate to work on flexibility and strength conditioning. Once that’s over, then Pudwill uses a wobble board or BOSU ball and Sales throws weighted balls at him, which he has to catch with one hand. To end the session, Pudwill practises his balance by standing on the wobble board with his eyes closed.

Saturday and Sunday: Skate. Skate. Skate some more.

Follow Pudwill on Twitter: @ToreyPudwill1 www.redbull.com/toreypudwill

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WORDS: ANN DONAHUE. PHOTOGRAPHY: ATIBA JEFFERSON/RED BULL CONTENT POOL

Everything from chiropractic adjustments to cold lasers is used to get Pudwill back on the board

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“We’ve tried to be tight and professional, but usually we’re a bit shambolic”

ACTS TO WATCH IN 2012 #9

Collapsing Cities from left: Steve Mathieson, Stephen Parry, James Brennan and Tim van Dammen

Alive and rocking

COLLAPSING CITIES Four years after the release of their debut album, the Auckland indie rockers are back with an impressive follow-up

The Auckland outfit’s second album, Strangers Again, was released in July of this year

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“Good evening,” says Steve Mathieson as he and his band Collapsing Cities take to the stage at The Kings Arms to celebrate the release of their long overdue second album. “Thanks for coming out. It’s been a while.”

It certainly has been a while.

Most of the songs on the new album Strangers Again are three or four years old. The album was originally due to be released in 2010, but the songs “got analysed to oblivion,” says Mathieson during a break in rehearsal before their

Auckland Kings Arms gig. Some songs were tweaked; others were torn apart and put back together again. It took time but none of the band forced the pace because they were all doing different things.

Frontman Mathieson spent two years working on a country album “that ended in tears”. Bassist Stephen Parry finished his law degree, while guitarist James Brennan started his doctorate in psychology. During the lengthy hiatus, the band’s drummer Tim van Dammen became the go-to

guy for NZ bands looking to make a video. His company, Blur And Sharpen, has made more than 100 videos in the past few years for people like Shihad, Anika Moa, Kids of 88 and The Checks.

So was the band ever officially on a break? “I think sometimes people make the mistake of thinking we’re serious musicians and our lives are defined by this band,” says Brennan. “It’s something we do for fun.”

So it’s a hobby band then?

“It’s a bit more serious than

WORDS: ROBERT TIGHE. PHOTOGRAPHY: NIC STAVELEY

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a hobby band,” says van Dammen.

“It’s not like we play bad covers.”

Hobby bands don’t get to support Pixies at Vector Arena, and they don’t rock The Kings Arms like Collapsing Cities did at their album launch in July. Justin Bieber was in town the same night and when the band took to the stage it looked like some of his Beliebers had turned up to the wrong gig. Their hand-painted sign read WE ♥ JB and their screams were directed at Brennan. The Beliebers were actually Brennan’s uni mates, but that didn’t stop Mathieson making the most of the moment.

“Justin Bieber eat your heart out,” he laughed at a red-faced Brennan.

When Mathieson wasn’t mocking his mate he spent most of the first half of the gig wrestling with the lead on his guitar and repeatedly tuning up.

“He always does that,” explained Van Dammen afterwards.

“I think it’s an obsessive thing.”

Meanwhile, van Dammen ended the gig drumming with a bra on his head. Through it all Parry smiled at the shenanigans of his bandmates.

“We’ve tried to be tight and professional with varying degrees of success,” say Parry. “We’re usually a bit shambolic.”

Shambolic they may be but Collapsing Cities have got a sound, a chemistry that few bands have. It explains why they were tipped to make it big in the UK after the release of their debut album. They toured for six months in 2008 and had their share of rock’n’ roll moments.

“We got to play the Lovebox Festival instead of Florence And The Machine because she pulled out,” says Mathieson. “We got this ridiculously good slot and no one knew who we were. There was a double decker bus backstage with free alcohol and we got given The Dandy Warhols’ dinner.

They weren’t happy about that.”

The big gigs were few and far between, however, and sharing a double mattress in a miserable flat in East London and gigging in front of a handful of people in some anonymous town soon became tiring. The band came

Bras on heads: the band are known for their wild live shows

home feeling disillusioned.

“We had an experience of doing it full-time and we didn’t react well to it,” says Brennan.

“Our manager in the UK tried to get us to be something we weren’t,” explains Mathieson. “He wanted to dress me up in a white suit and white top hat. He bought me these white pointy shoes.”

“They were awesome,” says van Dammen. “They were like, ‘Italian guy goes to Ibiza.’”

“They were awesome, but you’ve got to be true to yourself and be who you are,” says Mathieson. “We’re not trying to be cool. We’re just four mates trying to write great songs.”

They’ve got a few. Tazers and Regret, the first two singles from Strangers Again show off their ability to craft a catchy pop song with dark, edgy undertones.

Favours For Favours sounds like The Smiths, while The Edge from U2 might have copyright claims to some of the riffs on Sixty Forty. The closing track on the album, This Mess, hints at the potential in the band. It’s potential that may or may not be realised.

“There are no rules,” says Mathieson. “We don’t feel like we have to churn out another album.

We’re just happy that this one has finally seen the light of day.”

“I don’t think we have a fear of not being successful,” says Brennan. Just maybe a fear of being absolute failures.”

Need to know THE LINE-UP Steve Mathieson – vocals, rhythm guitar, keys James Brennan – guitar, vocals Stephen Parry – bass, keyboards Tim van Dammen – drums DISCOGRAPHY Strangers Again (2012) Elixir Always (2008)

The story so far Steve Mathieson and James Brennan first met as teenagers at the Blockhouse Bay Community Centre. A few years later they started bumping into each other at gigs and Mathieson asked Brennan to play in his band, Lunavela.

“We were this angry, loud wannabe band,” he says.

Tim van Dammen, who worked with Mathieson at an Auckland cinema, joined Lunavela towards the end of 2005, but a few months later Mathieson left to form Collapsing Cities.

He wanted to play more mellow music but Brennan and Van Dammen hijacked his new project. “I told Steve I was sweet to play drums in his new band,” says Van Dammen, “but

I only played disco beats.

So we ended up with these mellow songs with depressing lyrics and not so mellow music.” Stephen Parry, a mate of Brennan’s from high school, completed the line-up and the band quickly gained a reputation for their energetic live shows. On the back of their debut album Elixir Always they toured the UK for six months, earning praise from The NME and The Guardian. Reviews didn’t pay the rent, however, and they came home at the end of 2008. Their second album Strangers Again was finally released in July.

“The album was always going to come out,” says Brennan, “but we can be pedantic about things.”

www.collapsingcities.bandcamp.com

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Nightlife Whatever gets you through the night

ACTION

Night safari SO YOU WANT TO VISIT THE ZOO AFTER DARK?

Opened in 1994, the award-winning Singapore Night Safari is the world’s first nocturnal zoo.

HOW BIG IS IT? You can explore the 35-hectare area with its seven themed sections from 7.30pm to midnight on foot or by mini-train.

WHAT ANIMALS CAN YOU MEET? You can get up close to 137 different species and more than 2,500 different nocturnal animals such as large cats, flying squirrels, birds and monkeys.

WHERE ELSE? Chiang Mai Night Safari (Thailand), China Night Safari (Guangzhou, China), Greater Noida Night Safari (Uttar Pradesh, India) and Taiping Zoo (Perak Darul Ridzuan, Malaysia).

OUT NOW

Get out of New York Grizzly Bear frontman Ed Droste on the benefits of recording rurally and gaining a couple of famous fans Grizzly Bear are an indie-rock quartet from New York. Three years ago there was a lot of hype around the band’s third album Veckatimest. It was a washed-out, brittle album full of scratchy raw pop diamonds – an experimental piece of work that usually wouldn’t have got beyond the critics.

Yet Veckatimest shot into the top 10 of the US charts in its first week.

RB: Three years have passed since your last album came out. What was it like when you got together to write again?

Ed Droste: It was like being back at school when you see everyone for the first time after the holidays.

You withdrew to a house north of New York to write the songs. Why was that?

In New York you get distracted easily.

There are birthdays, pets, concerts.

I have to clear my head in order to get the right mindset of writing.

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What’s it like working up there?

There are no neighbours for miles around. Most of the sunlight hours we spent outside. In the mornings we would go out into the forest to get some firewood, and in the afternoon we’d start working.

Beyoncé and Jay-Z are fans of yours. How did that come about?

Beyoncé’s younger sister, Solange Knowles, played them our music and they’ve been supporting us ever since.

It’s cool that mainstream artists today like Rihanna and Beyoncé are into smaller bands like The xx or even us.

Grizzly Bear’s new album, Shields, is out on September 18. grizzly-bear.net

WISE WORDS

“ Always do sober what you said you’d do drunk.

That will teach you to keep your mouth shut ” Ernest Hemingway, writer (1899-1961)

COCKTAIL

Del Rio

CLUB

Hoxton TORONTO

“The Del Rio is a classic his and hers cocktail,” says Josh Harris, an award-winning barman and head of San Francisco cocktail and spirit consulting company, The Bon Vivants.

“If you want a drink that everyone in the place is going to like, mix up this cocktail.”

Harris’s theory is that men like the tequila and women like the elderflower liqueur.

“And then there’s sherry as the wild-card ingredient.” Meaning? “Sherry has depth of taste and gives the cocktail its subtle flavour.”

WORDS: FLORIAN OBKIRCHER. PHOTOGRAPHY: BARBARA ANASTACIO, DDP, THE HOXTON (4), FOTOSTUDIO EISENHUT & MAYER

INGREDIENTS 40ml Ocho Plata tequila 20ml St. Germain elderflower liqueur 20ml Fino sherry 4 dashes Angostura Orange Bitters Glass: Coupe Trimmings: grapefruit peel

METHOD Put ingredients in shaker. Add ice and stir until the drink has become much more diluted. Pour into a cooled Coupe glass and decorate with grapefruit peel.

THE HOXTON 69 Bathurst Street Toronto, ON M5V 1M5, Canada www.thehoxton.ca

CLUB

“You gotta have swag” The trendsetters of Toronto can be found partying at The Hoxton, an arty old printers that plays cracking dance sounds from DJs like Skrillex and Diplo We opened the club because…

There was a need for a better music venue in Toronto, which could cater to a crowd of around 700 that was diverse enough to provide a great space for DJ sets as well as live music and corporate events.

Our basic idea was…

To convert an old factory into a

multifunctional gallery space with a state-of-the-art sound system.

We went for the King West district…

Because it is the heart of what is now deemed the nightclub and entertainment area for Toronto.

From outside the club looks like…

An old warehouse. It was a printing factory that dates back to 1890.

The interior is reminiscent of…

Banksy's 2010 movie Exit Through The Gift Shop.

It all gets going…

At about midnight.

Our regular customers are…

Hipsters and trendsetters.

To get past the bouncer you…

Gotta have swag.

Your craziest night was when…

Skrillex and Diplo had a DJ battle.

The place goes mad when…

The DJ plays Levels by Avicii.

The best late-night spot nearby to soak up all that alcohol is...

The Counter at Thompson Hotel.

Interview with club owners Jesse Girrard and Richard Lambert

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PERSONA I discovered this movie two years ago. It was randomly recommended on Netflix. But I found the premise very exciting.

There are only four actors in the whole film. One of them is deaf and only says 14 words. It's just this incredible minimal film, but it’s just so captivating and otherworldly. And the idea of being able to make something like that with so little, I find it very inspiring.

TAKE 3

“On a Bergman bender” Vampire Weekend They make a unique brand of unbridled indie rock with a hint of Africa, but the band’s bassist Chris Baio says the inspiration for his solo EP came from a few Swedish movies Vampire Weekend turned the music world on its head four years ago when they released their eponymous debut album. It didn’t sound like any other indie-rock music before. Ghanaian highlife with indie-rock guitar; east African rhythms infused with punk drums. A bit like Paul Simon’s Graceland but much fresher and wilder. The band took some time off in 2010 after years of extensive touring, and bass player Chris Baio used it to indulge his second passion: electronic music. His solo record, Sunburn Modern, was released this year, which sees the 27-year-old blending steel drums with slowed down house beats, sweet synths and exotic drums. The tracks bring sunshine to the dancefloor.

“I’m constantly listening to music for inspiration and I can get jaded,” he says. “But I can’t get enough of Ingmar Bergman’s movies. They inspire me – even as a musician I can learn a lot from his work. To find out more about his life I’ve just gone on a complete Bergman bender.” www.vampireweekend.com; www.baiobaio.com

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AUTUMN SONATA A late Bergman masterpiece.

A famous concert pianist visits her daughter and realises that although she’d led a glamorous life, she wasn’t the best mother.

The film’s subject matter really harshed me out because I’m on tour all the time and would like to have children myself one day.

It’s also remarkable and clever the way he subtly uses the autumnal red as a motif throughout the story, as the movie’s title suggests.

NIGHT SNACK

Amsterdam Bitterballen

WINTER LIGHT A great movie. But what’s almost better is the making-of documentary that comes with the DVD. It’s fascinating how he’s thought of everything in advance.

He was already thinking of the next movie during the one he was working on. You can’t do that when you’re in a band because you have to go on tour when an album comes out. It’s easier with electronic music, which is why I’m inspired by his multi-tasking.

These deep-fried meatballs rule the night in the Netherlands WHERE ARE THE BALLS? Bitterballen are sold at street stalls in Amsterdam and old wood-panelled pubs, known as 'brown cafés' (because of the décor) across the Netherlands.

Words: Florian Obkircher, klaus kamolz.

Photography: Rex Features (2), Kobal Collection (2), fotostudio Eisenhut & Mayer (1)

Hardcore Bitterballen Beer and schnapps is one combination northern European revellers like to enjoy. In Amsterdam you’ll get a Jenever, the national juniperbased schnapps, either poured straight into your beer or served with your beer and balls. The all-too-appropriate name for this double whammy is a kopstoot: a head-butt.

WHAT’S IN THEM? The basic ingredients are cold cooked beef or veal and some mature Gouda. It all gets kneaded together with egg, flour, nutmeg, salt and pepper, shaped into balls, rolled in breadcrumbs and fried. They’re usually served with a little mustard.

How many?

About 3cm across, bitterballen are served in portions of six, but you can never eat too many.

What's in the name?

These snacks are not bitter.

The name comes from bittertje, an alcoholic drink they used to be served with.

A bittergarnituur is a selection of savoury bar snacks.

what drink?

Eating bitterballen without an alcoholic beverage is a crime in these parts – they are so fatty that you'll want to wash them down with something. So that nobody forgets to order a beer to go with their balls, many places offer a special meal consisting of six bitterballen and a glass of pilsner. Perfect.

The golden ball Every year, a specialist Dutch drinks brochure awards the Golden Ball for services to preserving the traditional atmosphere in pubs and all that that entails. Café Hoppe (www.cafehoppe.com) are the reigning champs. They're open till 2am and serve eight bitterballen for €5.

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World in Action

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September 2012

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Sport

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13-16.09.2012, CARDIFF, UK

WRC, Wales Rally GB The world’s best rally drivers – headed

by Sébastien Loeb – are set to hurtle their way around the forests near Cardiff in celebration of the British Rally’s 80th birthday. The event is being held two months earlier than usual, but drivers should still expect the treacherous racing conditions of quick gravel tracks and narrow roads through the trees. The fog and rain should have a big influence here: the rain creates deep ruts in the muddy roads, making this the slippiest rally of the year.

1

2

8 9

16-22.09.2012, TRESTLES, CALIFORNIA, USA

4

ASP World Championship Tour As everyone knows, surfing’s soul can be found off the coast of San Clemente. The high breaks at Trestles offer one of the greatest rides in California, making this the ideal location for the Hurley Pro. And it holds a special place in Kelly Slater’s heart: in 2007, the US surfer secured the 34th victory of his career, taking him to the top of the all-time greats list and last year, the home win paved the way for his 11th World Championship title, which also made Slater the oldest ASP Champion at the age of 39.

3

3 Mark Cavendish aims for glory in The Netherlands

Can Vettel dominate in Singapore once again?

15-23.09.2012, LIMBURG, THE NETHERLANDS

23.09.2012, MARINA BAY STREET CIRCUIT

UCI Road World Championships

This year there will be some changes to the UCI Road Championships programme for the first time since 1994 – the team time trial is back and there’s also a new youth competition – but the elite men’s race is still the big highlight. Mark Cavendish faces a tough time defending his rainbow jersey here: the narrow, undulating 265km course through the province of Limburg includes the 1,200m Cauberg ascent, the opposite of what the British sprint specialist prefers. An exciting race awaits.

Singapore Formula One Grand Prix

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The only nighttime race on the Formula One calendar has been held at the 5.073km Marina Bay Street Circuit since 2008. A grand total of 1,485 floodlights light up the course, 70 per cent of which is on public roads. The combination of high-speed straights and the highest number of turns in any Formula One course puts an enormous strain on the gearboxes. Last year Sebastian Vettel was able to celebrate his first victory in the south-east Asian city state, after leading from start to finish.

4

Kelly Slater is out for a third win at the Hurley Pro

MORE BODY & MIND

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8

3

Sculptures will appear on Australia’s Gold Coast 22.09.2012, CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA

EarthDance 14-16.09.2012, CHICAGO, USA

Riot Fest

It’s a sad day for any music fan when his or her favourite band splits up. Riot Fest attempts to heal these wounds by convincing our heroes of old to reform for at least one last hurrah. The Chicago leg of the festival sees The Offspring and The Jesus and Mary Chain give us a trip down memory lane, while more modern bands like AW0LNATI0N and The Gaslight Anthem will be on hand to lap up some new fans.

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7 27.09.2012, WADI SHAB, OMAN

28-29.09.2012 DUBAI, UAE

Red Bull Flying Bach This fast and furious dance show premiered two years ago in Berlin, and the performances have been sold out and greeted with standing ovations all over Europe ever since. Red Bull Flying Bach sees breakdancing World Champions Flying Steps bring the baroque music of Johann Sebastian Bach into the 21st century. They do head-spins to preludes and fugues and show daredevil moves to piano and harpsichord accompaniments. This autumn, the show goes on a huge world tour, taking the team from Dubai to as far as Tokyo. You can find details of the tour at www.redbullflyingbach.com.

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Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series In 2010 it was Gary Hunt, then 2011 Gary Hunt again… Will the Briton make it three World Championship titles in a row this year? We’ll find out at the seventh and final stop on the Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series tour, when the Sultanate of Oman becomes the first Arabic country to host the cliff divers. Hunt and co will dive from a 27m-high platform into one of seven emerald-green pools at the Wadi Shab river valley near the village of Tiwi.

5

PHOTOGRAPHY: GETTY IMAGES (4), DANIEL MICHAUD, REZI KENIA/RED BULL CONTENT POOL

More than 300 locations, 60 countries, and one message. EarthDance is a network of event organisers around the world putting on the largest global dance music festival in support of humanitarian causes. The high point comes with the ‘Prayer for Peace’ when people all over the world simultaneously devote a moment’s thought to peace. One of the biggest and best EarthDance parties is traditionally held in Cape Town where the city’s Red Bull Studio lavishes the stage with DJs and local talent.

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10

Culture

The Gaslight Anthem are set to rock Chicago 14-23.09.2012, CURRUMBIN, AUSTRALIA

Bestival

Swell Sculpture Festival

When Rob Da Bank hosted the first edition of Bestival back in 2004 around 10,000 revellers turned up to catch acts like Basement Jaxx and Fatboy Slim. This time around he will be expecting more than six times as many people to descend on the Isle of Wight’s Robin Hill Country Park to party to the likes of Friendly Fires, The xx, Azealia Banks and Frank Ocean.

On the Sunday there’ll be another massive fancy dress party, with Da Bank and co hoping this year’s theme of ‘wild beasts’ helps the festival set another world record.

You won’t find the best sculptures on Australia’s Gold Coast in a museum. Fittingly for the land of golden sands, they’re on the beach. Fifty international artists set about turning the Pacific Parade in the small town of Currumbin into a fantasy world. There are illuminated bronze sculptures, pipe-work tentacles, stranded glass sharks and huge conches that let you ‘hear the sea’. The beach show draws in around 180,000 art-lovers each year, making it a bit of a squeeze for those who just want to swim.

06-09.09.2012, ISLE OF WIGHT, UK

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Breakdancers elegantly take on JS Bach in Dubai

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Save the Date September & October SEPTEMBER 15

A half day’s fight If you’re a mountain bike masochist, then 12 hours in the saddle at the Day Night Thriller in Taupo is probably your idea of heaven. Riders can either go it alone or compete in teams of four or five over an 8km circuit along the Waikato River. A 10am start requires a good night’s sleep beforehand; the 10pm finishes guarantees one afterwards. www.eventpromotions.co.nz SEPTEMBER 14, 15

Silence is golden Step back in time with a trip to Opotiki’s Silent Film Festival. This year’s highlights include the slapstick genius of Harold Lloyd in The Kid Brother and horror classics The Hunchback Of Notre Dame and The Phantom Of The Opera. Expect tickets for the event, held in the Art Deco Deluxe Theatre, to be harder to come by this year thanks to a rekindling of interest in silent flicks with the recent success of The Artist. www.silentfilmfest.org.nz

Hilare guitar: Half funnyman half rocker Bill Bailey brings his latest show to Wellington, Christchurch and Auckland this month SEPTEMBER 28, 29; OCTOBER 1, 3, 4

Brill Bill Music and comedy are rarely good in combination: notable exceptions include Flight Of The Conchords, of course, and Bill Bailey. The UK comedian and multi-instrumentalist, who peppers his stand-up with musical interludes and hilarious parody songs, is back in NZ with a new show, Qualmpeddler, partly based on recent first-hand experience of China. Best known for his TV work on Black Books and Never Mind The Buzzcocks, Bailey is perhaps the only comic to co-headline a heavy rock festival. Last year at Knebworth in the UK, Friday’s main stage attraction was Metallica; top of the bill on the second stage on Sunday, the man voted seventh best stand-up of all-time by viewers of the UK’s Channel 4 (Billy Connolly topped in the 2010 poll). www.billbailey.co.uk

SEPTEMBER 21

Rufus Wainwright was called “the greatest singer-songwriter on the planet” by Elton John, and there’s a guy who knows a thing or two about crafting a tune. Since 2007, Wainwright has veered from opera and a live Judy Garland tribute album, via a stripped-back LP inspired

by Shakespearean sonnets, to last year’s poppier album Out Of The Game. He has also developed a top live show with a full band, which, for a sole NZ show this month, includes fellow singer-songwriters Krystle Warren and Teddy Thompson. www.the-edge.co.nz Rufus Wainwright plays Auckland’s Civic Theatre

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SEPTEMBER 15

Marathon effort The hills that helped Peter Snell and Murray Halberg become worldbeating middle-distance runners are also home to a world-class marathon.

Now in its eighth year, the Lydiard Legend celebrates the late, great Arthur Lydiard, the Kiwi running coach credited with kick-starting the jogging revolution in the 1960s and ‘70s. The event follows the famous Waiatarua routes in West Auckland’s Waitakere Ranges, where Lydiard trained his prodigies. The punishing hills make this a severe

Arthur Lydiard’s legend lives on in Waiatarua

marathon test, but with 5k, 10k and half-marathon races alongside the main event, runners of all abilities can follow in the footsteps of the greats. www.thelegend.co.nz

WORDS: ROBERT TIGHE. PHOTOGRAPHY: ANDY HOLLINGWORTH, GETTY IMAGES

Back in the game

ILLUSTRATION: DIETMAR KAINRATH

K A I N R AT H

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I

have never been squeamish about birthdays. I prefer to approach them with a run-up, hit the board at optimum pace and see how far out into the sandpit I can fly.

But this time, I’m still shaking the sand out of my shorts. I’m 50. As much as I still sometimes struggle to regard myself as a grown-up, there is no debating that half a century is quite a long time.

It also has a certain resonance in my trade as a media commentator. It means I’m only four years away from being turfed out the end of the last of the important TV advertising demographics: 25-54. After that it’s just the great wasteland of “All Viewers”, where old folks complain about how far behind Coronation Street is and demand to know where Judy Bailey went. Am I still cool enough to write for that aspirational brand magazine I write for?

I will not want for company, of course. I was born in 1962, just behind the baby-boomer bubble that reshaped New Zealand society as it passed through the ages. There is a huge group of New Zealanders just a bit older than I am.

But the boomer train was always leaving the station just as I got to the platform. I had a single year, 1967, of school milk spoiling in the sun. For my first 20 years on the planet, New Zealand’s unemployment rate was around one per cent – it doubled around the time of my first year in the workforce and by the time I was 30 it peaked around 11 per cent and New Zealand was a very different country.

I worry about what that part of their lives will bring for my two boys, who are 18 and 21. It’s much easier to say – as the Prime Minister did recently – that the Global Financial Crisis may take a generation to pass, than it is to really grasp what that means. In an era where joblessness is concentrated to an unprecedented degree among the young, it’s not going to be easy – especially if, as they are, you are different.

But if mortality occasionally grumbles from the corner of the room – and it

Mind’s Eye

Fifty: Not Out Hitting the half-century doesn’t mean it’s game over for Russell Brown does, sometimes quite rudely – there will always be a reason to rise in the morning because there is always something new in the morning. And the day that I’m not interested in the next thing will be a sad day.

It vexes me that so much modern marketing is based on demographic assumptions. You say that there are radio stations tailored to people my age? Please, wait a minute while I annoy everyone – possibly even myself – by putting some dubstep on the stereo.

(I confess that I cannot match my friend Pete in Nelson, who actually presents a dubstep radio show with his teenage son.)

Our family unites around geek culture, which is relatively ageless. One of the highlights of my birthday week was the four of us all going along to see

Joss Whedon’s romping, bloody metahorror The Cabin in the Woods. It’s really not about how old you are: you either get the tropes or you don’t. At the screening we attended, there were people from 17 to 70, laughing, yelping and applauding.

On the other hand, until recently, I made a show for TVNZ 7, a channel that “skewed old”. Indeed, that was the major argument for its existence: commercial television barely tolerates anyone over 50, because that is a demographic for which the advertisers who fund commercial television have no use. It also had the odd effect of making me, as my workmates enjoyed reminding me, a sort of thinking grandmother’s crumpet. It’s nice that I’m a boy to someone.

Our TV show came out of the public events I run, which themselves are modelled on parties. Although there are structural elements of my life at which I am profoundly hopeless – I still can’t really manage keeping a digital diary or working a spreadsheet – I’ve always known how to run a party. It requires a degree of belief and a smidgeon of vision.

If last year’s plan for a mature, dignified, sit-down birthday dinner party didn’t quite work out – you know how it is, things just got out of hand – this year’s party was always meant to be big, loud and late. We laid on food, put a tent on the deck and strung up a mirror ball in the porch. The last of my friends, bless them, had to be invited to go home not all that long before dawn.

So we ate, we drank, we talked and, for hours, we danced. I dropped a remix of Donna Summer’s I Feel Love – specially obtained via an immensely satisfying internet exchange from the legendary DJ Bobby Busnach – and the place went nuts. It makes me think that for so long as long as we can all recognise the redemptive power of a crowded dancefloor, I will never really grow up.

Russell Brown is a media commentator and blogger and lives in Auckland

THE RED BULLETIN New Zealand, ISSN 2079-4274: The Red Bulletin is published by Red Bull Media House GmbH Editor-in-Chief Robert Sperl Deputy Editor-in-Chief Alexander Macheck General Management Print Alexander Koppel Publisher Franz Renkin Executive Editor Anthony Rowlinson Associate Editor Paul Wilson Contributing Editors Andreas Tzortzis, Stefan Wagner Chief Sub-editor Nancy James Deputy Chief Sub-editor Joe Curran Production Editor Marion Wildmann Chief Photo Editor Fritz Schuster Creative Photo Director Susie Forman Deputy Photo Editors Ellen Haas, Catherine Shaw, Rudolf Übelhör Creative Director Erik Turek Art Editor Kasimir Reimann Design Martina de Carvalho-Hutter, Silvia Druml, Miles English, Kevin Goll, Carita Najewitz, Esther Straganz Staff Writers Ulrich Corazza, Werner Jessner, Ruth Morgan, Florian Obkircher, Arkadiusz Piatek, Andreas Rottenschlager, Robert Tighe Corporate Publishing Boro Petric (head), Christoph Rietner, Nadja Zele (chief-editors); Dominik Uhl (art director); Markus Kucera (photo director); Lisa Blazek (editor); Christian Graf-Simpson, Daniel Kudernatsch (iPad) Head of Production Michael Bergmeister Production Wolfgang Stecher (mgr), Walter Sádaba Repro Managers Clemens Ragotzky (head), Karsten Lehmann, Josef Mühlbacher Finance Siegmar Hofstetter, Simone Mihalits Marketing & Country Management Barbara Kaiser (head), Stefan Ebner, Elisabeth Salcher, Lukas Scharmbacher, Peter Schiffer, Julia Schweikhardt. The Red Bulletin is published in Austria, France, Germany, Ireland, A product of the Kuwait, Mexico, New Zealand, South Africa, Switzerland, the UK and the USA. Website www.redbulletin.com. Head office: Red Bull Media House GmbH, Oberst-LepperdingerStrasse 11-15, A-5071 Wals bei Salzburg, FN 297115i, Landesgericht Salzburg, ATU63611700. Austrian office: Heinrich-Collin-Strasse 1, A-1140 Vienna, +43 (1) 90221 28800.

Printed by PMP Print, 30 Birmingham Drive, Riccarton, 8024 Christchurch. For all advertising enquiries, contact Sales Manager Brad Morgan or email brad.morgan@apn.co.nz or adsales@redbulletin.co.nz. Write to us: email letters@redbulletin.com

THE NEXT ISSUE OF THE RED BULLETIN IS OUT ON OCTOBER 2

ILLUSTRATION: ALBERT EXERGIAN

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