Zane Crowther – Issue 51 Interview

With the release of Zane Crowther’s video 2 Arms Can Truly Hold last week, we felt it necessary to publish Zane’s interview as printed in Issue 51 conducted by Al Hodgson and with photography by Reece Leung. There’s insights a plenty and we’re really proud of having a creative force such as Zane in the mag, especially with the photo’s by Reece and journalism by Al. Stoked from every angle.

So Zane, let’s just get this out of the way. Do you consider yourself Mancunian or Brightonian?

My time in Brighton was a huge part of my childhood and I made some lifelong friends there, but I definitely consider myself a Mancunian.

How old were you when you and your mum moved from Manchester to Brighton?

My memory is pretty fragmented in the order of things as we moved around so much, but I believe it was 2006, so I was 7 years old. Then we went back to Manchester briefly, then back to Brighton, London, back to Brighton again. And then I moved to Manchester to study in 2018. My mum decided to move in the first place because my dad was a pretty messed up guy and she wanted to get away from him. And Manchester at the time could also be quite a dangerous place, especially in the area we lived in, Whalley Range/Moss Side. My sister had been chased home by random men, I had watched a group of guys rob my mum and beat her up when she was taking me home from the skatepark one time. So, although we loved Manchester, she felt like things were too hard and it was a good time to try and have a fresh start.

That sounds gnarly. I’m sorry that you witnessed all that happen. But I guess it led to the Brighton chapter of your life, and all of us meeting. I think I first met you and your mum (shout out Denise) when you were about 8. You skated a lot back then. Then I didn’t see you for a few years, only for you to suddenly return to skating as a teenager, about two feet taller, with your front two truck bolts upside down on the board (so the nuts were on the grip side) for some reason. What was all that about?

Yeah, my mum really held it down and ensured that I could still enjoy myself. She was always very encouraging, even when times were super hard for her. Brighton was an interesting chapter with the fact its skate scene was very tightly knit. Me and my sister would go to the Level skatepark and that’s where I’d met you, Harrison and everyone. There was a point at secondary school where I was getting bullied pretty badly for having long hair, a northern accent and being quite clearly poorer than most kids in the school. I was the perfect walking stereotype for the rich kids to rip into. And, simultaneously, skateboarding just wasn’t considered cool. All my friends from the skatepark were at different secondary schools. Eventually, though, I got back into it. The Level had a new concrete park by this time so it was very exciting, and we were all teenagers so were getting up to all sorts of stupid stuff. Hence why I had the upside-down front bolts. I saw a video of Quim Cardona skating them like that and also Louie Barletta saying that they help you boost ollies higher or some shit. It didn’t.

I think it might have done long term damage to your flip trick repertoire.

Undoubtedly. I was a very obsessive and lazy kid all at the same time. I feel like I learnt 180s, shuvs and wallrides, and that was literally all I bothered with for a long time. I would obsess over specific clips in videos, like Ocean Howell doing a huge wallride nollie where he holds onto the top of the wall to pull himself up – I think it’s in the Ipath promo – I literally was obsessed with doing that. And, predictably, Jake Johnson in Mindfield. The wallride god.

On that note, you’re quite the purveyor of the wallride, with the photos of this interview being no exception. What is your favourite texture to wallride, and, other than Ocean Howell, JJ and Trinity from that scene in The Matrix, who are some of your all-time favourite wallriders?

I don’t really know why or when it became such a big thing for me. I would probably say red brick; especially if the wall ends before the stairs, that kinda makes it less methodical and more miraculous. I had a huge crush on Trinity when I was little, the penultimate wallride baddie. Other than OH and JJ, worthy mentions definitely go to Kevin Rodriguez / early Polar videos and also the really early Pyramid Country videos.

Returning to Act Two of your skate character arc (post hiatus number 1), I feel like that’s when you became more embedded in the Brighton scene. You made a few videos with your crew, almost all of whom went on to grace the pages of this mag. I think you having this Vague interview might complete the set.

I remember seeing the videos you, Sirus F Gahan, Ed Hubert and James Cheetham were making in and around Brighton. I was always really into filmmaking but I think this was the first time where I had thought about filming skating. It offered a new angle for me to express myself creatively. It’s an exciting process to film someone battle a trick, go home and capture it, then think about where it fits in a video, what song you want to use etc. It seemed that, for a while, Brighton’s skate scene had gone pretty quiet and had grown a reputation for people just lurking at a skatepark every day, drinking and smoking weed. I spent a lot of time with Harrison growing up and, when we were a bit older, there was a lot of motivation to emulate what you all had done in the past; creating scene videos and having momentum to explore the city, which in turn influences other people. It just so happened that there was a really solid group of people who were extremely talented and willing to skate awful spots instead of our brand new concrete skatepark at the time. The Level was great, but it was also full of drug addicts and vulnerable, angry teenagers who were stuck in county lines drug dealing operations.

From the perspective of someone slightly older in the scene, it makes me so happy to see you all do well, especially considering how many talented Brighton heads in the past kinda fell off. So anyway, from there you eventually moved back to Manchester for uni. Was that move intended to be permanent at the time?

Yeah, going back to Manchester for uni was decided pretty much on the basis that I was becoming quite jaded with Brighton. It’s very insular and I just wanted to get out as quick as possible. It felt like I had filmed every inch of the city, got my heart broken, finished college and done all the growing up I could do there. It felt like time to move on. With relocating, I knew that I wanted to experience being in Manchester again as I still identified with it a lot. Brighton meant a lot to me but it wasn’t for the physical place, it was my friends, the spots and the strange champagne socialist fever dream vibe of it all. I had a video which me and Harrison had shot over about a year or so, all the way until I moved away, and I began editing once I had moved up north. Once it was done, I came back to Brighton to do a video premiere and it was absolute chaos. Ellis Gardiner got kicked out of the venue before his part even played. Manchester always seemed like home, it’s where I am from. I knew I really wanted to make art and learn about film so I jumped head first into it all.

You studied filmmaking, right? And specialised in sound design?

Yeah, I did music production in college. I focused primarily on soundtracking and sound design, but I was pretty obsessed with all areas and tried to absorb as much information as I possibly could at the time.

Since uni you’ve worked on numerous film projects in music, fashion, documentary, etc. Are there any projects you’ve been particularly stoked on?

I got really into music videos as they offered a way to try visual styles and techniques without being bogged down in other complex stuff. After lockdown I worked on a lot of videos for Manchester-based artists like Rainy Miller, Blackhaine and Space Afrika. All those people were pretty well known in Manchester’s contemporary/experimental music scene and have gone on to gain worldwide attention in different areas of the arts with their projects and collaborative efforts. Since then, I have done all sorts of bits in video and sound across music, fashion and work for artists such as Jasleen Kaur and Suzanne Lacy. Last year I created a full seasonal campaign for a clothing brand called ‘Heresy’ in which I was given a lot of freedom to produce and direct. That was a really exciting and slightly scary learning curve in terms of tackling larger scale projects. Hopefully I can continue doing this kind of thing in the future.

Did you find your approach to skate videos ever bleeding into your non-skate freelance work? Or do you see them as completely separate?

I think for me it’s gone both ways. Documenting skateboarding is like a really specific and tailored version of observational documentary. You are coordinating movements and responding to the skater. But you’re also making a framework where you can react to things which are sudden and unpredictable, so it’s naturally very DIY and spontaneous. I’ve worked on shoots assisting Percy Dean a few times and it’s interesting viewing it from the outside in terms of how people with a background in skateboarding use spaces and situations instead of creating them formulaically. We are more resourceful and reactive to what is there in front of us instead of trying to simulate things.

And, with going back into filming skating, nowadays I want to film everything in between and document the people involved. You’re kind of in a position where you’re capturing someone at a moment in their life, and they will never be that same person in the same position ever again. I think that’s pretty special. That might just be symptomatic of me getting older and being more aware of my own mortality…

Despite working at Note most of the time you’ve been back in Manchester, would you say skate filming took a bit of a backseat once you started filmmaking? And you had some issues with your hip.

Yeah, in my first few years in Manchester my relationship with skating became pretty tumultuous. During my studies, I was hit by a lot of pretty difficult things. My hip began to hurt pretty much all the time and I realised I had some type of lump on my pelvis which restricted my movement. I became super anxious about falling on it. I would go out filming with Joe Gavin, hurt myself trying something, and then just be upset and not know what to do. In 2019 Chris Barrett took his own life, he was an absolute legend in the Manchester scene and this was really hard for a lot of people to process at the time. Not long after this, I found out my father had also died by suicide after a really long battle with alcoholism. A few of my Brighton friends took me on a skating holiday to Barcelona for my birthday as they knew I was having a really hard time and wasn’t doing too well. We found out that Ben Raemers had passed away on that trip. When I got back home to Manchester, I was pretty vulnerable and didn’t have much support with knowing how to deal with my emotions and processing grief. I was smoking and drinking most of the time and completely isolated myself from the skating community in the city. Losing people to suicide makes you hyperaware of people in a way which can be pretty overwhelming and for me it made skating and socialising way too hard to manage at the time. 

I think my issues in retrospect were less about skating and more about how I and other men approach talking to each other about their emotions and personal struggles. I have slowly managed to become sober and am trying to be kinder to my body. My hip is still pretty fucked unfortunately. I have a congenital condition called ‘coxa profunda’ which means my pelvis joint is way too big, so I will likely need a hip replacement in the next 5-10 years. Living healthier means I can skate and do stuff without pain. But I’d be lying if I said it didn’t still give me anxiety trying tricks where I’m likely to fall over. Working at Note was a huge help with me getting back into enjoying skating and being active in it again, I’m eternally grateful to Joe Gavin & Splodge. And yes, ‘coxa profunda’ would be my porn star name…

Wow man, that’s all pretty heavy. I’m really glad you’ve managed to work through a lot of that and come out the other side, despite the lingering hip problem. Given that you’re back skating and filming again, does that mean we’ve kind of entered Act 3 of your skate story arc?

Being at Note shop, having a closer circle of mates and being around the culture reminded me as to why it was such a huge part of my life in the first place. I had become really close friends with Mani Haddon, which only grew after he began riding for Garden (who Michael & Ellis also skate for). Manchester has a really rich history of skate videos but there have been points where there hasn’t been a filmer outside of projects directly for the skate shop. I eventually bit the bullet and got my own HD camera as I wanted to help Mani film for his part in the Garden video. I had come to terms with the fact that skating was a bit harder for me to enjoy with my hip etc., so it felt like a perfect way to still be involved and make cool stuff with my friends, and even help them with their efforts to gain attention and get into the industry.

One thing you touched on earlier is your involvement with audio production. It seems like your relationship with sound and moving image has been quite intertwined. How do you find they relate to one another in your work and, given your background, do you find you approach video projects from an audio-first perspective?

When I was studying, I was really into narrative films which used a lot of sonic storytelling and refrained from using non-diagetic sound. Filming skating is sonically very rich and full of complexities; the sound of someone doing a pole jam is equally as important as seeing someone do it on footage in many ways. Obviously soundtracks in skate videos are hugely important as they assign an overall feeling and atmosphere, but I think most people would rather skate with no music than skate with no sound and just music. I have done a lot of freelance work in foley and sound FX, a strange and intricate process which trains your brain to be very fixated on how things sound.

Your work with sound isn’t limited to video either is it? What is ‘Y0GA’?

I have made music all through college and university for fun. I started Y0GA in 2021 as a music project with the idea that it could turn into a collective and eventually get to a point where there’s no real line up, rather a constantly fluctuating crew of artists. It’s been largely made up of myself playing different instruments, a bunch of musicians from more classical backgrounds and then rappers and poets from around Manchester.

We have been working on a project for a long time while playing some shows around Manchester & London. The album’s titled ENSEMBLE and it came out via the Fixed Abode label last month. There were some collaborative elements from a few artists I had made video work with when I was a bit younger. It felt like a full circle moment, especially with how long the process has been. We just did an album launch show which we put on with help from the label, my partner Lydia, who is an artist, and Paradise Works studios in Salford. We played in a gallery space which Lydia had curated and designed in response to the music. It felt really special and like the closing of a huge chapter in terms of how much shit has gone down in my life over this 5-year period.

The album is great and I’m hyped for your vid to release too. You mentioned Lydia, any people you wanna give a shout out to?

Thank you and yes for sure! Big shoutout to Joe Gavin, Splodge, Jay, Mani, Adam, Ben, Marcus, Cinch and the Note crew past and present. Leo, Hasan, Jish and all the guys who have done what they can to make the video come into fruition. My mum Denise, my sister Racheal and my partner Lydia, they all have had my back through thick and thin (love you). Rainy Miller, Fixed Abode, Space Afrika, Sam Carson, Lili Holland Fricke, Moses Moro, RenzNiro and all the Manchester heads who have supported our musical endeavours over these years. Harrison, Dougie, Moose, Ellis, Dan, JP, you and all the Brighton lot (love yas till the end of time) and finally Reece for supporting our skating projects since we were teenagers and giving all the Brighton heads a platform to show the scene, their talent and pushing everyone onto bigger and better things!