“Gabe Morvil Is The Best Surfer No One’s Heard Of” — Dane Reynolds

“Gabe is one of my favourite surfers that I didn’t really know existed until fairly recently,” says Dane Reynolds. “He’s always going really fast and has a really unique technique. He’s a really cool blend of some of my all-time favourite surfers. It’s probably a dumb cliché, but you never really know what to expect when he stands up on a wave.”

Part profile. Part delayed welcome to the team. Part interview. Part surf clip. Part Timo Simmers. Part Gabe Morvil.

Former have just released the third installment of Defective Units, only weeks ahead of their team feature film release, DEFECT. World premiere: Saturday, June 13 in Ventura, btw. Buy tickets here.

For the past few months, Former has been dropping little gifts along the runway to launch:

Volume #1 — Craig Anderson and Ben Howard in Chile
Volume #2 — The B-Team in Puerto Rico
Volume #3 — An introduction to their youth squad: Timo Simmers and Gabe Morvil

Still, these are the hors d’oeuvres before the succulent sit-down degustation. As filmmaker Hunter Martinez told us when we hosted the first prequel on site, “all the best footage has gone into Defect.” Get that into your skull. If you’re impressed by the surfing here, you should in theory, be delighted by the slow-cooked main course.

Now for the cast.

Timo Simmers has been increasingly visible (and audible) over the past few months, between Stab High VB and StabMic. More and more, we’re seeing his personality unfurl alongside developing one of the deadliest straight airs in the biz. Interestingly, we learn his favorite animal is a sea horse here, which, if you’ll allow a brief digression, is one of the truly weird and wonderful sea creatures where the males get preggaz and the consecration happens via underwater dancing. Also, their eyes move independently and they’re terrible swimmers. 

To each their own.

Morvil, we’ve seen less of (barring a cameo in Stab Highway East Coast), likely a byproduct of coming from Wilmington, North Carolina, and spending most days working as an apprentice electrician. To the same question he elected the deep sea anglerfish as his most cherished animal — the ones with a bioluminescent fishing rod bulb hanging off their dorsal, to lure in prey.

Funnily enough, the anglerfish’s taste for extreme dimorphism lines up neatly with Dane’s read on him: “He’s like a hybrid of Ando, Droid, and Laurie Towner.”

Based on the quality of the offcuts seen here, I’ll wager Gabe’s part in DEFECT will be a true breakthrough part that threatens the timely completion of his apprenticeship.

Let’s get this animal out of the deep sea.