A Jarring Pairing That Really, Really Works: Aussie Folk + Maxing Shipsterns 

Musical taste.

It matters. Indeed, it can make or break a surf film. One of the most common complaints in SEOTY was musical choice – which is to say, second to the surfing itself, music was one of the most important features in determining the success of an edit. 

Kael Walsh’s ‘Idiot Box’ directed by Wade Carroll which won the Bitcoin last season (current value $37K AUD/$25K USD) got it right. That first song ‘No more Shubz’ by Klein was the kind of psychedelic onboarding experience that when paired with Tom Jennings water cinematography, let you know you were about to see something special. 

Dane Reynolds is a master of this too, obviously. How many artists in your current Spotify playlist were first heard in MarineLayerProductions or Chapter 11? 

Keen followers of surf media will recall last year when ‘Rejoice’ by Steve Angello and T.D Jakes (a terrible song) was used by Gabriel Medina, Barron Mamiya and Mason Barnes after originally serving as the opening track to John Florence’s ‘DONE’? 

Three fucken CT surfers all using the same song – c’mon lads. There’s 22 dudes on tour, 80 million songs on Spotify, and they’re poaching the same shitty techno preacher mashup? Laziness. 

This Shippies YouTube edit by Kyron Rathbone made me happy because it nailed the music choice at a wave that is so commonly scored to high BPM electronic jetsam. Big wave surf edits are probably the most guilty of falling into the trap of using high BPM electronic music to portray a sense of ‘danger’ and ‘havoc’. 

Dw cuz, most of us run the big waves:fear calculus quite automatically.

Anyhows, Dusty Rusty is this artist’s name – a young freewheeling vagabond who travels Australia doing live shows at small pubs with nothing more than his banjo, raspy voice and harmonica rig.

Check him out here.