Nike’s back, and coming on with their most foot looking shoe yet. Meant to simulate the free movement of being barefoot, the Nike Free RN 5.0 features the silhouette’s most defined shape yet, that gives support in all the right places, while maintaining the element of foot freedom with every step.
Watch the video as Bryan ‘Botak’ Chin and Julian ‘Sunflower’ Leong break down its history, scaling, and evolution of the model throughout the years.
Not one of the most ambitious projects in between the two to date, but it’s still collab material definitely. Billionaire Boys Club and Adidas team up once again to release another rendition of the NMD Hu, this time featuring plaid upper.
Not much has changed in terms of the silhouette’s structure. The shoe still features its cage and trail laces, complete with a knit upper and Boost midsole, except the upper now features a rather different plaid design, with words ‘Heart’ and ‘Mind’ embroidered on the upper. The silhouette is complete with a trail outsole.
Initially, the pack consists of 2 colourways, a blue plaid motif and a green one, but Malaysia so far is only getting the blue one, featuring black EVA plugs and a mix of blue and black squares on the upper.
The BBC X NMD Hu ‘Plaid’ releases on the 3rd of May, at Adidas.com.
Nike has just released two new colourways of the React Element 87, both in ‘Moss’ and ‘Dusty Peach’ and to our surprise, still has a full size run even though it was released almost 11 hours ago. And that presents you an opportunity to buy one of the best colourways of the silhouette yet, specifically the ‘Moss.’
The React Element 87 still gets outfitted with all the usual high-end trimmings, including a translucent upper, paired to a React midsole with gum protection outsoles. The pack presents a very neutral outlook on the shoe, that suits perfectly well with the all-important cork insole that sets it apart from other models. All in all, a suitable lifestyle shoe, with a welcome addition of customisation by way of colourful socks, and that doesn’t seem to be going away anytime soon.
The React Element 87 is available online now for a price of RM649 at Nike.com. We wouldn’t wait if we were you.
Darren Ashley never disappeared, nor did he go on hiatus. He simply remained behind the limelight, working with artists while simultaneously trying, and retrying to perfect his solo album. We caught up with him to know about How Did He Get Here, his change from live instruments to fully electronic, and why it took so long for him to release it.
Source: Pixar-Planet.FR. Anton Ego, ruthless food critic from Ratatouille
In the age of clicking heart-shapes, leaving ratings on your Airbnb or Grab, super-liking your match on Tinder; algorithms are created to predict what we would love. When everything’s automated, why do people even really “write” reviews anymore?
There are a lot of very obvious answers to this, of course. A simple 5-star rating doesn’t really tell you the ins and outs of that restaurant you’ve been meaning to visit. You sometimes need actual people for that. Let Random Raymond tell you whether the coffee they serve at the new abandoned warehouse in Bangsar is good.
Let Agonising Aisyah inform you of the blandness of certain banana leaf places. Reviews are guides for purchase, especially when you grow older and time doesn’t allow you to try everything on your own.
There’s a notion that some people have that it’s almost “nobler” to not listen to people’s opinions and just try things for yourself., but I don’t have the willpower or the free hours to watch every movie in the cinema to decide myself, Karen.
But more than just really elaborate explanations to a rating, reviews are important as mirrors of society’s values & preferences. They are essential to cultural preservation and the archiving of the arts. Because no art exists in a vacuum, it exists as part of a cycle of creation and reaction.
Sounds pretentious, maybe, but let me explain.
Since I’m more of a music guy, this article would lean more towards the importance of music criticism, but you’ll find eventually that it applies to almost everything that succumbs to the subjective perceptions of mankind.
The biggest truth about critics is that we are always wrong. The more accurate version of this truth is that we are always wrong, unless you agree with us. Whatever your opinions of media criticism might be, it is an age-old truth that generally people hate us.
The stereotype, made popular in movies like Birdman or even Ratatouille, is that critics are heartless, arrogant, smartalecks who dampen the spirits of people who actually work hard to give something good for the world. This stereotype also carries on in real life, especially recently, with tweets from famous artists such as Ariana Grande & Lizzo, or famous quotes from people like Leonard Bernstein and Frank Zappa
― Frank Zappa, The Real Frank Zappa Book
In some instances, critics are horrible people. The history of music criticism is filled with writers and naysayers who launch ad hominem attacks on the artist as opposed to the music, like the barrage of attacks on Malaysian rapper Altimet’s physical appearances, or just plain racists that deplored blues and jazz music as “devilish ‘negro’ rhythms (using words that I don’t think is necessary to type)”.
There are also plenty of music critics out there who don’t bring any value to the discussion, who haven’t done any research on the media they’re consuming, and hold as much weight as a random Facebook commenter (an inaccurate analogy considering there are plenty of social media users who actually do a lot of research and would have more knowledge than some “professional critics”).
To rule out all critics as ignorant haters though is probably not a good idea. There is value in the overall existence of a class of people who call themselves “critics”.
At risk of sounding like I’m writing a plea as to why I should keep my job, here’s some big reasons why media criticism is essential to any society, including Malaysia.
Some of the most annoying people in the world are exceptionalists. Who hate things just because they’re popular. Who dismiss all trends as having no artistic or social value. Some take their snobbery to another level, and say everyone who follows the masses are mindless sheeps. Critics that do this are a bore at best.
Yet there’s still value in well-elaborated and articulate contrarians. The history of art is filled with people vehemently defending the value of something that the majority won’t even turn their noses to, like the relatively smaller number of music critics in the 70s in the UK that defended the worth of reggae against an increasing number of punk subcultures.
Just to bolster my credibility, I’m going to bring up Ratatouille again because there is an excellent quote on this:
“But the bitter truth we critics must face, is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defense of the new. The world is often unkind to new talent, new creations, the new needs friends… Not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere.”
-Anton Ego, Ratatouille
It’s a good counterbalance to a world where number of streams affect chart positions and algorithms derived from your daily listens keep you in the same of loop of music. Some random person telling you about some obscure artist, recommending you a whole new world you wouldn’t have otherwise ever stumbled upon.
Finding a critic you trust can be like finding a soul mate, a feeling no Spotify algorithm can duplicate. Even critics you disagree with have value, you’ll also know to avoid that critic and never ever trust their taste. Either way,it’s a good middle ground between searching for every single new music yourself and relying on an artificial intelligence to translate your personality into data.
More than anything, reviews can function as a teaser, or even an all-out analysis about a particular timeframe or culture. Often the reviews of American 60s folk come with an insight into the political message it contains, or the absence in the latter James Taylor years of romance and melancholy. Every insight into trap music now stems spiritually or literally from the rise of SoundCloud rappers.
A society’s moral panic towards a genre, like the scare around black metal in Malaysia, or even the vitriol towards “rock kapak”, is encapsulated not just in the tabloid sensational newspapers, but people dissecting on their own terms their favourite Exist album, and what makes it so beautiful. Justifying with every letter to the editor or their zines, why the rest of the community who think long-haired rockers are hedonistic immoral people are wrong.
Reviews should be celebrated as an archiving method of a certain art beyond the perspective of the creator and from the perspective of the audience.
That’s why it’s also important that reviews are not just experts talking about their particular field. It must also include the voices of the masses. I understand why artists get mad that people who have no idea what the difference between rhythm and melody even is are commenting on music. Artists have every right to only decide to listen to people in the industry, their fans or technical music experts.
However, criticism should not just be monopoly of experts. Criticism from people who have never played music matter too. After all musicians don’t just make music for other musicians, the people at large are listening to your music. Not all opinions have the same worth, but people listen to music for so many reasons, and not everyone’s looking to find clean productions or satisfy a music theorists’ wet dream.
Remember, chefs are not the only people who get to talk about food.
Reviews are pointless unless they are diverse. If every person writing a critique is of the same background, or off the same academic qualification, what you get is the same opinions packaged differently. It is important in our industry, and scene that many different people do reviews.
People who listen to a lot of music might have more baggage to work from, understand why some music sound the way it is. Their perspective might be multidimensional, but it doesn’t make it automatically more valid than a person who listens to one album every year. It depends on what you as a reader or a listener want from a reviewer. Maybe all you listen to is indie, so there’s no problem in listening to a person whose entire review catalogue are bands that sound like the Strokes.
I would argue though, that the best reviewers are those who step out of their boundaries, and attempt to understand or make sense of things they would have otherwise never touched. These attempts might be outright exhausting, like a person who’s not even fond of vanilla hard rock listening to his first doom metal album (oversimplified), but the attempt to understand is laudable. A society that is critical can appreciate the existence of an art they themselves don’t understand, but might give meaning to others who do. And it just doesn’t stop at art, it also extends to appreciating the diversity in lifestyles, cultural upbringing and more.
No one is forced to love anything, but having discussions out in the open regarding politics in music, for example, can expose you to a whole array of music that you might just find new love in.
Discovery itself can be a satisfying experience. Reviews can facilitate that, especially when they are often written with references to other bands or genres.
It might not have the same value as the art itself, but eloquent criticism can stand the test of the time and even be enjoyable media.
One of my favourite reviews ever was a scathing review of Justin Timberlake’s latest album, “Man of the Woods” on Pitchfork. There are so many reviews from that music site that I disagree with, and although I didn’t have a positive view of Justin Timberlake, I didn’t hate it as much the reviewer did. Whatever their point of view was though, the review is hilarious, acerbic and just fluent in its mercilessness.
A review can function the same way parodies can bring new life to an original art form, or remixes breathe new vigor to an original track.
The same way that the best form of art (in my humble opinion) can make you realise new things about the world or feel emotions you don’t quite understand, the best reviews can make you realise new things about the art. Accompany context to text. See things amongst a bigger picture, or give a personal take unique from others.
Artists lashing out at critics in the West is not a scary omen. It’s an inevitability, where freedom of expression often triumphs anyway.
But in our country, very few reviewers exist. Every single instance where people talk about getting rid of “critics” makes me sad. The publications that do reviews, died out due to lack of sustainability. People don’t really need reviews, algorithms do everything. Media publications are too worried to be honest, for fear that the people in the industry that they rely on will cut off their connections with them; or worse, file for defamation. (eg. Harian Metro’s review of Hantu Kak Limah and Mamat Khalid’s response)
I respect everyone out there still reviewing music, or other art forms out there, as consistently as humanly possible for themselves: from Uncle Review on TAPAUtv to the occasional postings from Junklist and TamanBunyi, to the revival of Azzief and Fikri’s writing on The Wknd Sessions. I’m not including the even more vibrant scene of film reviews on websites like moviedash, pages like Movie Addict and more.
It’s tough when it’s always more financially sustainable to make puff pieces for artists who need promotion and are willing to pay for it, than to brave the odds of losing clientele from an unfavourable review.
The major reason why there aren’t as many reviewers in Malaysia anymore is this supposedly high barrier of entry. No, you don’t have to go to music school, although some knowledge in theory and history helps. You need to be articulate in your own special way, and have the knack to always learn and discover more.
One of the hardest things you have to accept as a critic is the anger and fury you WILL receive from people who disagree with you. You most definitely will get things wrong. Embrace it. Learn from it. That stupid thought you have about Yuna? Write it. Who knows, someone might just find some new meaning in it.
Or maybe you’ll get hate from Yuna fans wishing you death. It’s all part of the fun. Just remember to stay humble, and it helps to realise how big the world of music is. But you gotta take the first step yourself.
We spice things up a little bit for the second episode, as the game master decides that for the next challenge, the hosts will style a woman, in men’s clothing. Will Josh come triumphant again? Will Ben pull off a similar undertone? Will Isaac come close to clinching the title? Will Ethan add more layers to the mix? Find out in this episode of FLEX!
Special thanks to Soraya for helping the boys out during the challenge. Be sure to follow her on her ig at norsoraya.
Follow FLEX on Instagram and stay tuned for the next episode!
The Vaporfly series has always been a sort of pinnacle in the Nike series of shoes. It was even deemed too good as compared to other runners due to its outstanding performance, and represents refinement of existing technology to its maximum. It is a damn good running shoe, and one that can also double as a very comfortable walking shoe, should the exercise bug not hit you at all.
Of course, the Vaporfly Elite is out of reach for a majority of us, which lands us here, to the Vaporfly 4%. Still as good, and at a much more relatively affordable price. Previous 4%s were donned up in mesh paired to the Zoom X sole, but for purpose of decreasing weight and improving efficiency, Nike has decided to use the Flyknit instead of the mesh. Of course, to the casual runners, the difference may be negligible, but over the course of 26.2 miles, seconds can be shaved off the final time, and in any race, you need all the help you can get.
The silhouette also gets done up in red with a blue to red gradient near the lateral forefoot, complete with black laces and black swoosh.
The Nike Vaporfly 4% retails for RM 1025 and releases on the 30th of April at Nike.com. Time to up your running game.
Futurecraft is no longer just 4D. Just recently, Adidas shook the world a little bit by introducing a sneaker that is 100% recyclable, called the Futurecraft.Loop, with the idea behind it that you it would complete the circle between manufacturing and consumption and back to manufacturing. And they mean it in the most literal sense. A bold claim? Definitely, and it’s substantiated too, as the Futurecraft.Loop is not only just a way to help combat global pollution and reduce wastage, it also means that in the future, whatever pairs of shoes that you like and want to keep, can virtually live forever.
Let’s talk facts first. To achieve this feat, the Futurecraft.Loop is developed with only one material throughout, a type of plastic called Thermoplastic PolyUrethane (TPU), incidentally, the same type of material used in Boost. Everything from the midsole, outsole, upper, and laces are made from the same stuff, and when they wear out, simply send the pair back to Adidas and it will be reused for something else.
However, it won’t be fully a 100% the second time on. During the first generation, the shoe is made of brand new, fresh plastic that’s not recycled. This is because using recycled TPU on the get go means that the first generation quality will not be up to quality control standards. Senior Designer Ulisse Tanzini had this to say, “You’ve got to make sure the first one is very pure so you can continue the process of making and remaking the shoes for as long as possible. If you start with a compromised material, the process wouldn’t last as long.”
What this means is that as the generation goes, the amount of good quality grade plastic will go down and down from 100% from the first generation, to maybe about 70% in the next and so on and so forth. Current tests indicate that once the first generation wears off, only about 5% – 10% of the shoe can be reused to make a new one, whereas the rest is grinded down to surface running tracks or playground mats. Now obviously the goal is to not just stop there, but join both ends of the line to form a true, recyclable shoe in every sense of the word.
It gets a bit more interesting here on out. As you extrapolate that fact that every shoe will eventually have a 1:1 copy of itself using the same materials, it also means that the same silhouette, same design, same feel, can all be reconstructed again, translating to a shoe that never really dies. Imagine all of your Ultraboosts, Yeezy 350s, 700s, NMDs, Yung-1s which are torn, scuffed, rotten, or destroyed, can simply be remade new without purchasing a whole other pair. Quite a favourable outlook, don’t you think?
Of course, getting there requires time, plenty of resources, and plenty of alignment. Hence why Adidas has chosen to unveil the shoe now, rather than later when it has perfected its 1:1 sequence. This then, is a call to action to its other partners, that to lay this new, sustainable foundation, Adidas needs help, and lots of it. By 2024, the Three Stripes have made a business pledge to only use recycled plastics in its products, and with such scale, requires a partner who believes in the same vision.
One of the bumps that Adidas has to go through is finding a right recycling company who are willing to take on relatively tiny batches of product at the start. Materials engineer Tanyaradzwa Sahanga had this to say, “For the recycling industry, this is peanuts. We are talking about one to five tonnes – that’s nothing. These guys process in triple digit tonnes.”
On the production side, Adidas are planning to gradually move its entire manufacturing process to Asia, where production costs are significantly lower than the West, and subsequently, make the shoe more economically viable over a large scale. “We don’t want this to be a premium product,” says Graham Williamson, “There should absolutely be pricing parity with other performance running shoes.”
So there you have it. The start of a giant stride towards a more sustainable future. Realistically speaking, it’ll be 5 – 10 years from now till they’re able to create the ecosystem to support such a bold and courageous endeavour, but hey. It’s time companies are held accountable for their actions towards the environment, and Adidas is definitely taking it in the right step.
Get ready for storytime with Papa Chin, as the bossman recaps the entire Game Of Thrones series with a little help of he Adidas X Game Of Thrones Ultraboost collab, while Julian is helpless at understanding the series.
Star Wars has a rich and storied legacy, and Uniqlo has celebrated that fact multiple times throughout the process of the legacy, heavily featuring it in their UT line of clothes. Now, in accordance to the Masters of Graphics project, the brand has called upon UT’s Creative Director, none other than NIGO himself, Jun Takahashi from Undercover, and Tetsu Nishiyama from WTAPS to come up with a collection that takes from the stories of Star Wars, and the subsequent creativity that fueled them.
For Jun’s contribution, the beloved droid pair R2-D2, and C-3PO are presented with a delicate touch, as he treats his canvas with unique sensitivities. Certain examples include a design that injects a hint of danger into the
fantasy setting for the habitat of furry Ewok bipeds on the forest moon of Endor. Jun had this to say, “I fondly remember Star Wars as the first science fiction movie I saw in my childhood. The characters
and prop designs are endlessly novel and fascinating. As a long-term fan, I was delighted and honoured
to take part in this project. I used a cartoon series I really loved as a design motif.”
NIGO however, chose to highlight Greedo, his favourite character from all of the Star Wars films. Apart from that there is also another design with Yoda’s famous ‘Do or do not, there is no try,’ with a picture of Yoda in a basket. “I adored Star Wars films so much that I grew up around them. They were all great, but episodes IV, V and VI stood out most. I loved the scene in which Greedo appeared, although this was where Han Solo blasted him. The exchange between the characters and the rhythm of Greedo’s speech were superb. I want people to enjoy quotes from Greedo and Yoda on the UTs,” laments NIGO.
Tetsu’s collection however, is more fleshed out, as more motifs are used to create his designs, especially the ink tie-dye with stormtrooper spiral motif, as well as a Mandalorian recruitment poster, and a psychedelic take on the notorious Boba Fett. According to Tetsu, “Star Wars and Lucasfilm had a tremendous impact on me. Even today, the figures and other merchandise in particular appeal to me as a fan and creator. So, when asked to take part in this project I was determined to put my heart and soul into it as a Star Wars fan.”
The collection will release on April 29 nationwide.