Four Of The Year’s Best Edits Dropped In A Two-Week Span—Watch Them All, Here

We’ll be honest: it was beginning to feel like a really slow year for quality surf edits. 

January to March was relatively dry, Craig Anderson dropped his three-year-in-the-making masterpiece—The Quieter You Are the More You Can Hear—in April, and after that …crickets.

Then two weeks ago, riding a 6’1 Dahlberg at a carnivorous roll-in, Creed McTaggart detonated a pipe bomb and burst open the flood gates, revealing not one but four absolute bangers in a single fortnight, from the likes of Noa Deane, Ian Crane, Russell Bierke, and of course Creed himself. 

While the rapid release of these clips made it difficult to quantify their value, it’s become clearer with time that each of these edits will be remembered as one of the best in 2019. If you don’t believe us, just have a scroll down the feed and watch them again.  

You know you want to.  

Russel Bierke – “Flow State”

While on the Stab Innocents trip, Craig Anderson told us about the most incredibly surfed wave he’d ever seen in person. 

“I was at Shipstern’s,” Craig said. “I don’t really know what I was doing there—definitely not getting any good ones—but from the channel, I saw Russ Bierke catch the most fucked up wave I’ve ever seen. He basically air-dropped and hooked under this thing that… I don’t even know how to describe what this wave looked like. It was just insane. I’m sure you’ll see it soon enough.”

Fast-forward to today, Russ is finally back in reception, and his film ‘Flow State,’ is live on the internet. 

Having finally borne witness, we can say that Russ’ “best-ever” wave surely lives up to the hype. But in saying that, we also don’t want one wave to detract from the other 13 minutes of absurdly impressive surfing in this film. 

Flow State is a mesmerizing clip through and through, and it’s well-contextualized thanks to the constant dialogue between our protagonist and his fellow death-slipping pal, Brett Burcher. 

Noa Deane – “Ru.Bu 994”

For the last nine months, Noa Deane has bounced around the globe, usually with his right-hand man and collaborator, Mikey Mallalieu aka MALLMIC, working on his follow up to last year’s HeadNoise. 

His full-length Volcom arrival flick, which netted him accolades galore, included the heaviest pit to ankle-breaker ‘oop at North Point, and was always going to be hard to top. 

But Noa’s new flick “Ru. Bu 994” is gnarly, regardless of how high your expectations of young ND. His railwork and raw, tree trunk power is more refined, his airs are just as boned-out and full-on, and his comfort level in heaving pits is on full display. We’re also quite happy with his choice of soundtrack, the opening Slayer track and Husker Du the perfect sonic landscape to Noa’s jagged-edged, distortion-heavy approach. 

Creed McTaggart – “Cult of Freedom”

Creed McTaggart was the undisputed star of Globe’s 2014 masterpiece, Strange Rumblings in Shangri La.

You know, the film that earned Joe G and co. Movie of the Year at the Surfer Poll Awards, leading to Noa Deane’s drunken soliloquy on the newly-formed WSL. 

Meanwhile Creed, who was just 20 at the time, surfed so well in Shangri La (most notably in the Mozambique section) that he was personally nominated for the Best Performance award. He ultimately lost to Albee Layer in Attractive Distractions, but the writing was on the wall. A new star had been born.

Then, the unexpected happened. Creed kinda… disappeared. He started a band (Wash), and fizzled out of surfing’s limelight while pursuing more artistic avenues.

But in the past year or so, there’s been an evolution in Creed’s surfing. Longer boards, harder turns, a return to classic, Australian-style surfing. Dare we even call it, Margo-ian? 

There’s a clip from Fun Boys II that did the rounds on Instagram a few weeks back. It’s Creed surfing a six-foot-something Dahlberg at an unmistakable Australian wedge, absolutely tearing the place to bits. Guys like Mick Fanning, Joel Parkinson, and Taj Burrow commented in the affirmative. 

Creed’s surfing was so old that it was new again. And fucking unreal to watch. That’s continued above.

Ian Crane – “Beach Head”

Ian Crane is a Stab favorite. His surfing is peaking. His relevance, ever-growing. And in this little niche, there are a few gentlemen which surfing is better for having around; the golden retriever of San Clemente is one of them. 

“The clips are from this last year,” Crane tells Stab on Beach Head. “After Christmas, I went on a little road trip with Kolohe, Griffin and Jacob Vanderwork, so there are some clips from that. The rest are from a couple trips to Indo. I was surfing a bunch and had all these clips on this hard drive and then lost them all. 

“So then I got them all recovered, and once they were recovered, I was like, fuck, let’s just make something cool. That was a couple months ago. Then the thing fucking crashed, it sucked. Then I had to pay to get them recovered. 

“It’s a buddy edit. Usually, I feel like my friends are making stuff and I’m in them. I’m stoked to have my own thing out. But I had to put all my friends in it too. If I put out a video of just me I’d be embarrassed…like, “Yo come watch me rip!” he laughs.

P.S. who did it best?