On a fresh and wintery Friday morning, the Substance tour rendezvoused at the Wellington ferry terminal. It was there that Ben McLellan, Dallas Marshall (Daliman), Sean Bone (Thug), Gus Curwood, Chris Maessen (Big Red), Jake Mein and Adam Kinsman set sail southward in search of… More ›
Grey Is The New Street Art! Text by Levi Hawken I wanted to write a few words to explain what Create and Skate is all about. With so much going on at the time of the event we didn’t have time to get a proper… More ›
Emeralds are a komische/progressive electronic trio from Ohio. That’s a very long way from Berlin, but they manage to harness the best of the German ambient and eccentric electronics scenes with a futuristic burst of burbling, pulsing synths. If I had to use one word… More ›
This tale begins with our five skateboarders stuck in the sprawling urban abyss that is Auckland. Precipitation was falling thick outside and the sorcerers that predict the weather couldn’t foresee an end in sight. The leader of our pack, Guy ‘Dragon Throat’ Coney, gathered the… More ›
In June of this year the Vans NZ Team got together in Auckland city and headed off on a short roadtrip through the Coromandel, Bay of Plenty and back to Auckland to session Mountain Dew’s Skate Pinball. Haimona Ngata went along with Mike Bancroft, Adam… More ›
A few years back, suffering from the breakup blues in a cabin in Wisconsin, Justin Vernon picked up an acoustic guitar and made some music. The resulting album, For Emma, Forever Ago, was a huge international success. Round two finds Vernon in a very different environment.… More ›
Text and photography by Ollie Logan. First published in Manual #35, September 2009. We were on a zebra crossing in New York’s Lower East Side when my girlfriend Kate spotted our good friends Bill and Rachel. They knew that we were overseas, but had no… More ›
Text by Craig Haze. First published in Manual #41, May 2011 Brutal is a word bandied around a lot in the metal community, but brutality shouldn’t necessarily be measured by plain old heaviness or technical ability alone. There are plenty of bands that are barbaric,… More ›
I’m calling it already. This is the best hip-hop album of 2011. Wildly unorthodox, with piles of dissonant samples and some of the most insanely idiosyncratic rapping I’ve heard in years, it kicks off with a creepy Charles Manson rant and never drops the weirdness… More ›
Text by Craig Haze, photograph by Caleb Smith First published in Manual #36, December 2009 There’s irony, and then there’s Iron Maiden. You can’t love Maiden ironically; admittedly, you might genuinely believe your love of them is ironic, but Maiden undoubtedly appreciate the ridiculousness of… More ›
The Irrom Northland Tour Text and photography by David Read First published in Manual #37, March 2011. Let’s make it clear, I am using the words Northland and tour in the most general way. We did in fact travel to Northland on this trip, at… More ›