Tuesday 16 December 2008

From the sky up review

One of the stars of From the Sky up, Aki back to front wheel switch.

The follow up to "Here Comes The Sun" is out now, I bought my copy from FF, the selling factor for me was the 20 min Chase Gouin bonus section, only a fool would dismiss this...
The first section goes to Simon O'Brien, quite a rarity to see him these days. In the modern day era of web videos/over exposure, its refreshing that you dont see too much of Simon, everyone knows Simon is one of the worlds best riders afterall. Could he live up to his epic solo dvd standards? He did raise the bar!!
There are glimpses of brilliance from Simon. Shot in really good locations, I get the feeling this is just a warm up before his next solo dvd hits. Anyway, what does he do? As always from Simon theres plenty of variety, double front wheel boomerang out of a combo, xft mccircle turbine step thru to halfpacker, and my favourite, whiplashes direct to tea kettle, insane!!! Cant' wait for his solo dvd!!!



The next sections goes to Akihiko Takahashi, Zion's Japanese rider. I've heard a few people refer to him as the "Japanese Cory Fester". And from this DVD you can see why, the guy is a backwards riding machine! Long backwards combos with mad technical switches thrown in, snappy style. One of my favourites is all one handed, check this: one handed backwards fork wheelie to backwards crackpacker step over backwards halfpacker to backwards hang5 step over to backwards fork wheelie round to backwards hitch, hard enough with both hands, one handed is epic! I especially liked Aki's part cause you could see he really worked at it, shot over time, so many hard tricks, filmed with nice backdrops also, as a video part should be. The ender to his part is insane, multiple backwards hang five to backwards halfpacker backwards crackpacker walkarounds. Dont miss this section!



Sequences Aaron Frost hasnt featured on a dvd for a while, I believe Mixt was the last time. Aaron has mad around the world  ambidextrous bike skills, flowing from side to side, his part is full of really long combos, one of my favourites is his xft halfpacker ride in from fork wheelie position to hitch to steam bar flip to crackpacker walkarounds. Aaron is good!
The next part is one of my favourites! Ed Nussbaum has the skills, I rode with him at the Marina parking lot in Long Beach last year, and this is where this part is filmed. The opening combo is one of the best on the whole DVD, hang five to 360 flip to steam one kick walkaround direct to halfpacker turbine, talk about buttery! Ed has mad skills front and back wheel, crazy gerator walkaround to xft backwards wheelie pivot to junkyard glide on pedal, so sick! Ed is massively underrated, much respect Ed! 



Matt Wilhelm has the next section, Matt like Aaron hasnt been on a DVD in a while, so this was great to see. Super dialled, looks like Matts section was filmed in one day, shows how dialled he is. One trick I havent seen him in a while that I loved spinning gerator over headtube to switch foot caboose to upside down mega spin flip to mega spin up to blender flip to upside down mega spin flip to mega spin perverted out! That is a combo right there! Awesome! Bobby Carter filmed Matt's part, dialled!



The last part goes to Chase Gouin, do I have to say anymore? Nah......
But I will... This is flatland history right here. Chase's part covers old tricks and new. Some of his tricks are mind boggling, try this (jokes) whiplash to opposite chick whips stomping on the tyre over ten times without touching pegs to xft tomahawk, flat out amazing! Is this guy old school? Give me a break?!!!!
His perverted decade combos on here make new school riders with foot jam decades look stupid!!!!
And theres so called "New School" riding as well on the bonus section, really nice halfhiker turbines, pedal hang five shove its anyone? Loads of nice floating style combo that Chase originated. His part and bonus scetion is comprehensive and not to be missed.
I feel silly typing this, its Chase! The guy is a legend, pay some respect! Go buy this for a piece of flatland history.
Stewart did a great job with this DVD, much better production/editing than HCTS, nice mix of music for the soundtrack, and 8mm/16mm footage also.
I give this a high 4 out of 5.
Whole DVD has feel good factor about it. Glad I bought it.

6 comments:

EZChris said...

going to buy this for Chase's and Akihiko Takahashi's section alone.

anyone who says chase is oldskool is a pure nutjob - we all still see people doing bloody turbine timemachines in top level contests yet some of chase's next level tricks are considered outdated? yeh, right.

flatmatters said...

you bring me to a question chris, that bothers me a little bit... if something is considered old school does that make it worse than new school? ive heard people generalise like that, not as simple as that!!
for example is a double perverted brakeless that chase did eons ago worse than a turbined steam or time machine variation, thats considered new school but isnt.
haha.
good debate.
although there is no debate on chase being the man!!

EZChris said...

thats a very good point, E.
alot of people do over look this difficulty aspects and alot of the time oldskool riding just gets overshadowed by whats considered "current".

Personally I dont tend to seperate the two as much - I know when I see a trick thats pure solid to pull and give it justice regardless of its old/newskool status - and I also know when i see a link full of pumping halfpackers.

flatmatters said...

interesting what you say chris, i think a lot of new school tricks are just simple variations of tricks that already existed.
And sadly everything these days is 'labelled'.
new school rider, old school rider, street rider, park rider, vert rider, flatlander, dir jumper and so on, tis all becoming disjointed from what it originally was regarded as, just BMX.
Riders will always look at whats current, and the majority will copy a few tricks from the guys at the top, nature of the beast.
What i find interesting is no one touches Chases perverted decade stuff at all, so is that still new school? When does something become Old? When everyone does it?....

Unknown said...

its all about variety, totally diffrent and diverse styles is what i like to see, old skool or not, i remember seeing wulfran laines run at ninja spin, and it was great to see something diffrent from all the spinning and hes about as oldskool as u can get

A said...

i rate this dvd as one of the best in my flatland collection it has variety,diversity,originality,a bit of old,a bit of new,rolling,spinning,scuffing,switches etc the lot a dvd which you can never get bored of .Regarding the old school ,new school divide personally this is where individuality comes into effect each rider has a different concept within their trick repetoire which stands out it's personal choice i mean every rider is open to critisism we all think differently in achieving our goals whether it's progressing,consistency,going brakeless etc that's what makes flatland so great it's the challenge it brings and the fun aspect it gives us all.