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It’s a suburban jungle out there in this fashion story by Matthew Burditt and Mila Franovic. Gaze upon the indifferent aesthetics of the modern condition.

When a young man finds a mysterious suitcase inside his grandfather’s attic, he unlocks a pre-apocalyptic mystery and a skateboarding adventure like no other. For the full storytelling effect, pair with the “Into the Thicket” video, online now.

With the rise of the independent skateboard brand coming to the forefront of our culture, we took the time to ask some of the creative forces behind Kitsch, Studio, Polar, Palace, Magenta and Welcome to find out what keeps them going and where the future of skateboarding is headed.

When Ryan McGuigan asked Goodiepal — a Danish artist on the run from the cops for being a Radical Computer Music-maker — to score the soundtrack of his latest Green Apple video, little did Ryan know how out of this world he was about to get.

Paul Lawton takes everything he learned captaining Mammoth Cave Records in the exploding music scene of Lethbridge, AB and takes it with him to the ever-bustling city of Toronto with a new music concept, Ketamines.

When you’re a band on the brink of blowing up, sometimes things get a little explosive on the inside. We sat down with London, ON’s favourite new punk piece as they record a debut album and get set to take on the world, one smashed Telecaster at a time.

After eight years of blending dissonance with an unhinged approach to psychedelic garage rock, San Francisco’s Sic Alps have finally come up with an album that shakes off the rough edges and goes straight for the pop jugular. While the group, whose only mainstay over the past eight years has been multi-instrumentalist Mike Donovan, have certainly flirted with a cleaner pop edge in the past (listen to 2009’s ultra-catchy L. Mansion 7-inch single), Sic Alps have always kept the curious at arm’s length by adding in an unhealthy amount of discord. Hooks in their songs are normally buried beneath a wall of feedback and obscured even more so by Sic Alps’ penchant for recording everything at home on a simple eight-track, but even with these obnoxious tactics, they’ve still managed to attract positive attention over the years from a multitude of labels and critics, building a small but devoted base of cult-like fans that quickly devour their recordings upon release. Now, with the release of their fifth album, simply titled Sic Alps, Donovan and friends might find their audience broaden, thanks to an album that does more than just flirt within pop structures, it damn near revels in them.

Despite standardized labels like ‘post-punk,’ ‘post-hardcore’ and ‘grunge’ looming over them, Toronto three-piece METZ belt out a sound that is distinctly their own and reminds us why genres are for pussies. While constantly pushing the boundaries of live music, with screaming feedback, towering drums and a bass tone that forces into you an otherwordly pulse, this past Fall METZ signed a deal with SubPop and released their first full-length record. Now, after four years of hard work and relentless touring of North America, METZ have honed their craft with a truly unique synergy and have become known as the band that plays really heavy, really loud music, really well.

Every city needs something really fun and cool happening, but it’s weird to think of these big cities all over the place where nothing good is going on, and it makes you wonder: how can that happen? You eventually realize, it’s not simply because they are boring places, it’s because they don’t have the right people, excited and enthusiastic enough to contribute to the culture. Luckily, Vancouver has Ryan Smith and Daniel. R ripping into the untouched territories of romantic puke and pleasure under the haircut with their respective independent music labels: Green Burrito and Student Loan. Separately, these two indie wizards do it all: release (and often sell out of) several 7-inch records and tapes from local favourites, promote events at various venues around town and deejay their own wild parties. Now, Ryan and Daniel have teamed up as event promoters to ram piles of teen fantasy pills down the geriatric shaft of Vancouver’s twenty-first digit. Look out Saskatchewan—here we come!

For over two decades, Ryan Allan’s photos have helped narrate the storied history of Canadian and International skateboarding, traversing epochs when photographers didn’t follow trends—they started them. Looking through Ryan’s accomplished portfolio reveals a lyricism that speaks to a bigger picture and during his trip back to Toronto recently, for the release of his Blue Tile “Collabros” tee, I had the chance to discuss his extensive career and quickly learned how each one of his photos is another part of the story.

PHOTOGRAPHY MANDY-LYN
FASHION EDITOR MILA FRANOVIC
hair and Make-up SHANNON REYNOLDS
TALENT Siouxsie, BRENNA & ADRIENNE at RADKIDS, AND BRITTANY
with help from Pacific Boarder, Vancouver BC

The sheer number of skate photos that are shot each year is almost incalculable. You’d have to be Stephen Hawking or have access to one of those super-duper computers to come up with an algorithm that would calculate it. Remove amateurs and part-timers, and the remaining few individuals that actually know what they are doing, still manage to amass a staggering amount of useable frames. But not every photo sees the light of day, and for every cover-worthy banger out there, there are hundreds of gems just collecting dust, and we’ll tell you why!

PHOTOGRAPHY ANDREW VOLK
hair and Make-up JENNA KUCHERA
Models EVY at rad kids, and FINN

Find out if Chris Haslam, Ryan DeCenzo and Mark Appleyard survived their attempt to set a record for Most Parks Skated in a Single Day.

“In skateboarding, it is a rare instance indeed when physical consequences override the satisfaction of glory. Why else would we ollie between two rooftops, light the coping on fire, or try to hit the maximum possible number of skateparks in a single day? When we first invited Globe shoes team riders Chris Haslam, Ryan DeCenzo and Mark Appleyard to participate in this attempt at setting a world record, they were reluctant to say the least. Even on a picture-perfect morning, when a whole crew of good friends had gathered together in preparation for an unprecedented adventure, resentment still brewed amongst the sleepy skaters who were expected to perform. It was only once they had settled into their vehicle, with all the comforting familiarities of life inside the van, that the motivation to succeed finally materialized. And so it was decided, that even if inspiring adventure in others meant skating for 18 straight hours and risking a blown-out knee or sprained ankle, then by god we were going to see this thing through…”

Discover one of Canada’s most influential and intriguing punk icons wandering around Vancouver’s DTES.

“I never left music, music left me.” Randy Pandora sweeps aside his long steel-coloured hair and describes the terrible beating that left him with a brain injury and forced him to leave the music scene. When punk was defining independent music in the late 70s, Randy Pandora was the statuesque and fiercely intelligent frontman for The Generators and Exxotone. A few years later his memory was gone. Familiar faces became the faces of strangers. Memorizing lyrics and performing live was suddenly impossible. Music may have left him then, but it never forgot Randy Pandora. He’s a living legend hiding in plain sight. You could pass him on the street, distracted by your headphones, and never realize the influence he’s had on the music in your ears. But the moment you do see him you catch the posture of a performer, the charisma of an intellectual, like fragments you’ve seen before in a dream. In fact, Randy is no stranger to your subconscious. The sound and culture he helped pioneer is what music is made of today…”

PHOTOGRAPHY MOLLY STONE
Stylist ANNIE CASTALDI & BRITTNY MOORE
Model ABBY BROTHERS

Navajo noisemaker Raven Chacon composes a silent symphony using elk antlers and some complicated gadgetry.

“His long, black hair blocked his face. A tube hung from his mouth, the other end attached to one of the electronics. At the edge of the table beside him was an elk antler. Rhythmic noise oscillated inside the room, harkening the feeling of a slow, gradual airplane take off. Tonal shifts were subtle; the volume slowly increased then withdrew in tidal progressions. Without warning. the transcendental wave was dramatically interrupted with influxes of cruel pitch. Chacon was drawing the audience to a standstill with his mystical narrative…”

Catch up with Dirty Beaches and find out how he makes such great music despite not having a real studio to record in.

“In 2011, Dirty Beaches (known to his family as Alex Zhang Hungtai) thought he had finally made a record that his father would enjoy—the critically acclaimed Badlands. When his father heard the debut vinyl LP though, he admitted to not caring for the lo-fi, paranoid rockabilly featured throughout. This came as a disappointment to Hungtai who had clearly looked up to his father, evident in the sepia-toned photos of him as a young man that adorn the covers of the early Dirty Beaches 7-inch singles. But Hungtai moved on from this blow and accepted the fact that he might never be able to satisfy his father deciding then to focus on what would please himself before anyone else. He told me, “Whatever I make next, I don’t give a fuck if he likes it or not…”

Unpacking Danny Way’s new documentary “Waiting for Lightning” and an exclusive interview that goes inside the mind of this living legend.

“Danny Way is going to die. Gasp. Yes it’s true, everyone does, but unlike you and I who are not jumping 75 feet over the Great Wall of China on a skateboard, it’s likely going to happen sooner rather than later. Or so a title like Waiting for Lightning, Jacob Rosenberg’s new documentary on Danny would imply. So what motivates a man to continually push himself to the brink of destruction, to continually look death in the face for the world to see? Danny and Jacob may be the only two people on earth who can truly answer that question, so we asked them…”

Nü Sensae drink a case of beer and answer some tough questions culled from a Christian teen website.

“Two is a party but three is Nü Sensae. After nearly four years, three 7-inches and one critically acclaimed LP TV, Death and The Devil (Nominal Records), the Vancouver punk two-piece comprised of Andrea Lukic (vocals/bass) and Daniel Pitout (drums) have added friend and guitarist Brody McKnight to amplify their sound. McKnight (formerly of Sex Negatives, Mutators and now playing in Heavy Chains, also with Lukic) joined Nü Sensae just in time to add his mirrored guitar riffs to the band’s powerful punk sound before they wrapped up recording their follow-up LP under new label, Suicide Squeeze records. I hung out with Nü Sensae during a quick rest before they headed out on a U.S. tour in March (5 dates opening for Pitchfork darling, EMA) and even though I’ve known Nü Sensae for what feels like a decade, this was my first time talking with the group as a trio…”