{"id":241841,"date":"2019-11-05T10:18:29","date_gmt":"2019-11-05T10:18:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordpress-458273-1435032.cloudwaysapps.com\/?page_id=241841"},"modified":"2024-01-28T11:50:51","modified_gmt":"2024-01-28T11:50:51","slug":"alex-moul","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nocomplynetwork.com\/alex-moul\/","title":{"rendered":"Alex Moul"},"content":{"rendered":"

 <\/p>\n

Alex Moul is a musician and pro skateboarder from Oxford, England. <\/strong>Mouly invented tricks, got <\/strong>sponsored by Flip, <\/strong>made music, became a DJ and went pro.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

He’s done the impossible and more. <\/strong>We are stoked Alex Moul is now a No Comply Network Member.<\/strong><\/p>\n

So we had a chat about growing up in Oxford, Deathbox, Drum and Bass, hanging with Penny, skating rails with The Gonz, Ed Templeton and his best ever.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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How did you get into skating?<\/h1>\n

I started skating when I was 11 when I got a board for Christmas.<\/p>\n

I begged my mom for an Alva board.<\/p>\n

This must have been 1985-1986.<\/p>\n

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What did the board look like?<\/h1>\n

I had pink rails, pink wheels and a pink tail saver!<\/p>\n

I got pink and green fluorescent striped griptape that I cut out myself with scissors and fluorescent green Gullwing trucks and bright pink Powell ratbang wheels.<\/p>\n

It was Police Academy 4 that got me into skateboarding funnily enough.<\/p>\n

It had like Lance, and Tony and Tommy in it and when I saw someone go over a car;<\/p>\n

I thought shit, I\u2019m into that.<\/em><\/p>\n

A year prior when Back to the Future came out people in Abingdon started to skate too.<\/p>\n

I was like ‘ah you Back to the Future wannabe!’.<\/p>\n

But I ate my own words when Police Academy 4 came out.<\/p>\n

I was like shit.<\/p>\n

You can jump over police cars and you can grind curbs with sparks coming out of your trucks?<\/p>\n

I was really into that and that\u2019s what got me into it.<\/p>\n

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How’d you get into making music?<\/h1>\n

A good thing about Drum and Bass when it started out was that there was no rules, and skating was the same.<\/p>\n

When the rave scene split off into House, Jungle and Techno and later into even more genres, basically all the tempos changed.<\/p>\n

I liked break beats more.<\/p>\n

I was more into Electro and Hip-Hop.<\/p>\n

When I was a kid I liked breakdancing down at a Budgeons car park, that was me as a kid and that\u2019s what drew me towards Drum and Bass.<\/p>\n

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Where did you hear all this music?<\/h1>\n

There was no internet so I would get the street sounds tapes and the Electro compilations, from a little shop in Budgeons carpark in Abgindon Oxford.<\/p>\n

There was a little curb outside that I\u2019d always skate.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s loads of footage of me in the old Deathbox videos skating there.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d go there and get those cassette tapes.<\/p>\n

Also my older sister would tune me into new music because she always went out with guys in the American air force base.<\/p>\n

She\u2019d be into a lot of Let\u2019s Jam Radio Active.<\/p>\n

All of this new music, I heard when I stayed with her, get my breaking on, between the ages of 8-10 years old.<\/p>\n

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At that time, were you sponsored?<\/h1>\n

I had that Alva board for six months but then it got thrashed, then I got a Santa Cruz Corey Flame.<\/p>\n

By the next Christmas, I got the Tommy Guerrero sword and flame board and that was when SS20 just opened up.<\/p>\n

I got that board from there.<\/p>\n

I was sat on the SS20 doorstep the day it opened waiting for them to open the door, that day I went skating with Sean Goff.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t think I was any good or anything.<\/p>\n

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What did he say?<\/h1>\n

Sean told me that I had to shoot some skate photos with a photographer called TLB from Rad Magazine.<\/p>\n

I was a full-on skate grom at the time so we skated a lot.<\/p>\n

I shot some stuff, quite a lot.<\/p>\n

I remember apologising that I hadn\u2019t made the trick and he was like no, its fine…<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t realise he was stoked on the tricks I was doing!<\/p>\n

Then I realised Tim was from RAD and what that meant.<\/p>\n

I thought amazing, maybe next month I\u2019ll have a photo in the mag.<\/p>\n

Next month’s RAD issue came out and I didn\u2019t have anything.<\/p>\n

But little did I know the month after that I had 7 pages in it!<\/p>\n

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What did you shoot with TLB?<\/h1>\n

I was one of the first kids to Boardslide a handrail and a Kickflip down a two stair!<\/p>\n

And the rest of the shots were all these no comply variations.<\/p>\n

Skating to me at the time was just my own creative outlet.<\/p>\n

Before I even saw the mag I was in SS20 and I was bugging Sean Goff and the phone rang, he passes it to me and says it was Jeremy Fox.<\/p>\n

Jeremy asked me<\/p>\n

‘Would you like to be sponsored by Deathbox Skateboards?’<\/p>\n

I didn’t know what that meant at the time.<\/p>\n

But I was down to do it.<\/p>\n

After the phone call, he said we\u2019re going to London to go skate, you should come down, oh and you\u2019re now sponsored by SS20!<\/p>\n

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Sick. Is that how you met Deville?<\/h1>\n

Yeah.<\/p>\n

We went to London that day to meet up with Deville Nunes<\/a> and Jeremy to film.<\/p>\n

I shot a rad checkout that day and shot a photo of the One Foot.<\/p>\n

I learnt One Foot in the bus shelter in the rain on the way to London.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t remember this but later that day.<\/p>\n

I went to London and I ended up teaching Deville Ollie One Foot\u2019s that day.<\/p>\n

It was a rad picture in Skate Action.<\/p>\n

It was the same day I learnt them and the same day I taught them to him.<\/p>\n

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How did you learn new tricks?<\/h1>\n

People used to just call you up from Scotland or wherever and ask you to describe certain tricks and how you did them.<\/p>\n

The dialup phone was our social network of the day in the time before the internet and mobile phones were available.<\/p>\n

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What was it like skating in London back in the day?<\/h1>\n

I\u2019d been there six months before.<\/p>\n

My friend\u2019s dad was living in London and my friend told me to come down.<\/p>\n

Joe Farman (RIP).<\/p>\n

I\u2019d go to Southbank<\/a>, no phone or internet and I knew I would have a place to stay for the week.<\/p>\n

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Who were you homies with?<\/h1>\n

I remember Simon Fort and I met Matt McMullan.<\/p>\n

He was a legend.<\/p>\n

He did crazy Nose Manuals and Wallride Revert the SB wall.<\/p>\n

He took us to Yellow Blocks, Shell Centre and loads more spots up the river.<\/p>\n

We went into a tube station, it was kinda downhill and he Nose Manualed the whole thing.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m talking for like a gd 5 minutes, he just didn\u2019t stop.<\/p>\n

From then on we became really good mates.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d go home and learn some new tricks, then go back to Southbank with new tricks.<\/p>\n

But by the end of the week everybody had them down so I had to learn new ones.<\/p>\n

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What motivated you to try new tricks every week?<\/h1>\n

I like to think outside the box but back then there was no point of reference…<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve always thought you can do new tricks , you can always push the envelope so I was always trying to think of that I didn\u2019t realise it was ahead of its time.<\/p>\n

A new video would come out every year and I thought I\u2019ve already done most of these!<\/p>\n

But I saw some other tricks that gave me ideas and I thought of ways I could add something to it.<\/p>\n

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So it wan’t a competitive thing?<\/h1>\n

No way.<\/p>\n

Skateboarding is like freedom to me.<\/p>\n

Once you can break the boundary of that first Ollie, the sky is the limit.<\/p>\n

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Your Crook Melon Grab down the Shell Centre handrail and the 180 Nosegrind were ahead of their time. How did they go down?<\/h1>\n

In that era, the Ollie Sad Grab thing was quite big and I realised if I did a Sad Grab down the stairs, I could put my front truck on there and pull it off.<\/p>\n

I had a Deathbox sequence doing it, which I liked but originally, it was more of a bonk.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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What other tricks did you do?<\/h1>\n

180 Nosegrind Stalefish down a 2 stair rail in Spirit of The Blitz.<\/p>\n

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Did you skate with Tom Penny?<\/h1>\n

I lived in Abingdon, which was close to Oxford, Tom<\/a> was in the centre.<\/p>\n

\u00a0We started hanging out as we were all forming Deathbox.<\/p>\n

Tom and I met on Clarendon Street and immediately I thought this guy is rad to skate with.<\/p>\n

We\u2019d meet up on the weekends as we were growing up.<\/p>\n

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How did Tom get on Flip?<\/h1>\n

I got Tom Penny on.<\/p>\n

Well I was trying to get Tom on.<\/p>\n

He got on New Deal Skateboards flow and he got some coverage in RAD and then he caught Jeremy\u2019s eye and he\u2019s got a wicked eye for skate talent.<\/p>\n

He asked me if I thought we could get Tom on?<\/p>\n

I said, ‘he\u2019ll be on the team next week!<\/p>\n

It was a cocky thing to say but Tom and I were good friends and I thought it would be the best thing.<\/p>\n

I spoke to Tom and told him he\u2019ll be skating rad places every weekend.<\/p>\n

He was down and he\u2019s stayed on the camp ever since.<\/p>\n

In our era, if you were on the team, you were on the van, you were together all the time and if somebody didn\u2019t get along, they weren\u2019t on the team.<\/p>\n

Everybody loved Tom and we all got along from the start.<\/p>\n

We were mates and we hung out all the time.<\/p>\n

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Stories from growing up with Tom?<\/h1>\n

The Southsea mission was a naughty one.<\/p>\n

I remember knocking on the door and asking his mom if he could go skate in town but we went on a train hundreds of miles away to Southsea.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t think it mattered that much at the time though.<\/p>\n

We went to the skatepark, I\u2019m a few years older than Tom.<\/p>\n

I thought I\u2019d take him down for a treat and this is years before anyone knew who he was or whatever.<\/p>\n

So I took Tom down to Southsea, when he was about 14 and we skated with the Isle of Wight guys.<\/p>\n

They were the most amazing skaters at the time.<\/p>\n

We went to this one spot, we were doing tricks down the stairs and I 180 Nosegrinded the rail, all those guys we were looking up to, looked at at us going,<\/p>\n

“What the fuck is going on?”.<\/p>\n

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What happened?<\/h1>\n

So we\u2019re skating the stairs with those Isle of Wight guys.<\/p>\n

Tom wasn’t sponsored or anything, the board he was skating was worn down and his tail was scrapped into a razor tail.<\/p>\n

I remember he did a massive 8ft Melon Grab and his back foot came off and he credit carded himself from an immense height.<\/p>\n

We were all little but he was the smallest.<\/p>\n

Tom was like<\/p>\n

‘Oh it’s fine, don\u2019t worry\u2019.<\/p>\n

And he walked up the bank and his white shoes turned red with blood.<\/p>\n

At this point I was like oh my god.<\/p>\n

I had to take him to the local medic!<\/p>\n

He split his No Mans Land open but I had to go back to school the next day.<\/p>\n

I phoned his mom and told Tom basically I had to leave him there.<\/p>\n

Not sure how he got back to be honest.<\/p>\n

Yeah, his mom was not my biggest fan after that happened.<\/p>\n

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No way.<\/h1>\n

Yeah. I used to call him Stop, Drop and Roll.<\/p>\n

Tom would never get hurt.<\/p>\n

He\u2019d just stop drop and roll and get out of any sketch tricks.<\/p>\n

Then later on when he was skating ramps we\u2019d call him \u2018Bunch of Grapes’ because he looked like he was holding a bunch of grapes.<\/p>\n

Then one tour, we went on with Deathbox and I came back and his style had developed massively and the tricks he was doing were immense.<\/p>\n

I would show him something one week, then the next week, he\u2019d have it down even better than me.<\/p>\n

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Why did you never go pro for Flip?<\/h1>\n

I skated for Flip but I never had a pro board.<\/p>\n

It changed from Deathbox to DB, then to Flip, for about a year and a half.<\/p>\n

It was a weird time in skating for me and I didn\u2019t want to be a part of it.<\/p>\n

If you didn\u2019t look a certain way, you were fucked.<\/p>\n

I got into DJing a bit.<\/p>\n

I went on tour every week as a kid, I never got to meet girls.<\/p>\n

I was 17 so DJ’ing sparked off.<\/p>\n

I was still doing well in contests but the magazines, would still be writing captions about \u2018Alex Moul Techno King\u2019.<\/p>\n

It was a lame time in skateboarding for me.<\/p>\n

They didn’t care that I was doing well , it was just about what I did.<\/p>\n

I remember Jeremy asking me to do a contest in Belgium and I just made up some bullshit to get out of it out of time.<\/p>\n

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When did you start playing music?<\/h1>\n

In 1991, was about the time when I got into spinning tunes.<\/p>\n

Jocke Olsson let me have a go on his technics and that was amazing first experience.<\/p>\n

My friend Lee Chin who I grew up skating with, Oxford SS20 legend, he started to DJ as as well.<\/p>\n

In the end he went to do to Metalheadz and other stuff like that, so I got into it through him and others.<\/p>\n

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What was Flip doing at the time?<\/h1>\n

Flip went to Cali around end of 1993 and it was about that time I wanted to be a normal human.<\/p>\n

I did some normal jobs, temp jobs, warehouse jobs and picker packer jobs.<\/p>\n

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Did you work in music?<\/h1>\n

So I applied for a job at Massive Records, a record store in Oxford.<\/p>\n

I was just a teaboy and sweeping the floors, and by the end I was the main buyer for all of the label\u2019s drum and bass.<\/p>\n

It was there that I met Graham Luster.<\/p>\n

He asked for a song called Tunnel Vision and it turned out he made it,<\/p>\n

He’d heard my music, we got chatting and we arranged to make a song together.<\/p>\n

All he had was a Akai MP60, drum machine, sampler and a Yamaha YS Keyboard.<\/p>\n

Graham was amazing to make the music he did on that setup.<\/p>\n

The first thing we made we had some interest from Legend Recordings, so we made a tape and gave it to DJ Spinback, who was a legendary DJ back then.<\/p>\n

He listened to it and loved it.<\/p>\n

He was the resident DJ at Raging Rabbit and I wanted to play there.<\/p>\n

So I ended up warming up there at the end of 94\/95.<\/p>\n

So Graham and I made another two tunes.<\/p>\n

Then our first main tune got us signed to Timeless Recordings.<\/p>\n

‘Chilled’ and ‘Spirits’ and also Graham’s tune Invisible Man came out on Goodlucking Recording, which was a label run by a guy from Oxford.<\/p>\n

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Where did you go out?<\/h1>\n

So we used to go to Speed in London.<\/p>\n

We would go religiously every Thursday in London and we\u2019d either get in or not, an hour and half to London and sometimes we wouldn\u2019t even go in.<\/p>\n

I once met Bjork in there.\u00a0It was ridiculous.<\/p>\n

This one week Fabio played \u2018Chilled\u2019 at Speed, the one week, we didn\u2019t get in.<\/p>\n

Then we made Spirits, the B-Side and that was the funky one that kicked off<\/p>\n

Basically by this time I was cutting plates every Friday the music house and people were cutting daps of our plates every week were cutting more and more.<\/p>\n

Fabric Fabio was on BBC Radio 1 and he was playing our tunes on Radio 1 and we were tripping out.<\/p>\n

Then Graham and I got in especially early so we could get into the club and they were playing \u2018Chilled\u2019.<\/p>\n

Then the music stops and suddenly they play our b-sides but no one was in there!<\/p>\n

The owner Leo was in there doing the sound check, and he said to us<\/p>\n

“Your die had fan regulars aren\u2019t you?”<\/p>\n

He asked us our names and discovered that we were Mouly and Lucida.<\/p>\n

He told us to never wait in the queue ever again!<\/p>\n

We just walked straight in.\u00a0He didn\u2019t know that I DJ\u2019d or anything til that moment.<\/p>\n

I made a tape and sent it him and he called me up and he asked me to play Speed that night,<\/p>\n

I said I can\u2019t do that!<\/p>\n

I wanted obviously to but I hadn’t cut anything new that week so I turned him down.<\/p>\n

The next week Thursday, I went to a music house in London and cut everything that I\u2019d been working on.<\/p>\n

I got someone to cover me at work, ended up working at the club and it went off.<\/p>\n

I ended up doing a residency there for three months.<\/p>\n

It was rad and I met a load of great people through it!<\/p>\n

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Who are your favourite Drum and Bass artists of all-time?<\/h1>\n

LTJ Bukem was my favourite<\/p>\n

Total Science<\/p>\n

Future Bound<\/p>\n

Goldie<\/p>\n

Metalheadz<\/p>\n

Pendulum<\/p>\n

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You played at Cambridge Uni? How did you get that gig?<\/h1>\n

I can\u2019t remember how but somehow I got the headline set at Cambridge University and it was packed and it went off.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t bring our tunes with us, it got requested and luckily my mate had a copy.<\/p>\n

It got three rewinds and a girl said to me that tune was so good I was going to take my clothes off!<\/p>\n

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How did you get into DJ’ing?<\/h1>\n

I was still skating but not filming.<\/p>\n

DJ\u2019ing was the new buzz for me.<\/p>\n

My friend Peter Haslam, DJ Slicer at the time, we\u2019d hang out together.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d spent all my Deathbox money on vinyl, he was a good DJ and he\u2019d play my tunes.<\/p>\n

He got a gig at a place called Prism in Oxford.<\/p>\n

He decided to put me on the bill too.<\/p>\n

We split the session together.<\/p>\n

I was playing \u2018Whistle Posse Blow’ and the place was pumping.<\/p>\n

We had two hours. I don\u2019t want to stop after half hour.<\/p>\n

I wanted to keep going.<\/p>\n

I did the first hour and I just thought to myself and I just stopped the song and I played this song with a huge atmospheric intro.<\/p>\n

It was a risky choice.<\/p>\n

I looked into the crowd and there were hundreds of people with their hands in the air.<\/p>\n

I thought wow!<\/p>\n

\u2018I\u2019m controlling the mood of this room right now\u2019.<\/p>\n

This is unbelievable.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s such a big compliment.<\/p>\n

If I meet someone compliments my skating I\u2019ve got time for them, its amazing that people even remember you.<\/p>\n

So it kinda equates with the feeling i get from DJ\u2019ing.<\/p>\n

So after that I just wanted to play out all the time.<\/p>\n

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That\u2019s gnarly. What about the time you skated with Gonz in Harrow?<\/h1>\n

So Gonz was filming for Video Days.<\/p>\n

I was down in in London for a week and I saw him do a 180 Nosegrind 50-50 down Shell Centre handrail and then I heard he was going to Harrow to a demo.<\/p>\n

I went down there that weekend and I hung out with Matt Stewart at the time.<\/p>\n

Matt lived in Harrow so I went down there with him.<\/p>\n

I was lucky enough to meet Gonz the day he was down at Harrow.<\/p>\n

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What was he trying there?<\/h1>\n

He tried to do an Ollie Frontside Pivot on the lip and totally hung up.<\/p>\n

His board went over the other side and he landed on his head.<\/p>\n

I thought that was it, the demo was over and then he got it up and just did it the next go, no problem.<\/p>\n

I was amazed.<\/p>\n

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What else went down?<\/h1>\n

There were some rails behind the swimming centre there,<\/p>\n

I said to Mark would you like to skate the handrail with me?<\/p>\n

He said yeah.<\/p>\n

At this point I could only do the basics 50-50s, Lipslides.<\/p>\n

I did my first Smith Grind during that session.<\/p>\n

But I had no idea what I was going to see him do that day.<\/em><\/p>\n

Warming up he did a Salad Grind down this six stair rail, getting on right at the top.<\/p>\n

Second trick Frontside Grind, both first try.<\/p>\n

Third trick 180 50-50 right over the top, he does it all first try.<\/p>\n

Then it starts getting interesting.<\/em><\/p>\n

He starts trying Noseblunts, we were freaking out, we\u2019d never seen anybody try anything like that.<\/p>\n

Then he Noseblunted it, by this point there\u2019s a full crowd watching.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m just trying to learn Smith Grinds and I\u2019m just watching, mesmerised.<\/p>\n

Then he did a Switch Boardslide.<\/p>\n

We were all like damn he\u2019s just done that backwards!<\/p>\n

There was no Switch at this point.<\/p>\n

Then he tried a 270 to Backlip and by this point we were all freaking out.<\/p>\n

And after all of that, he tried to Darkslide the rail and was actually getting on it and nearly doing it..<\/p>\n

Blind Video Days hadn\u2019t come out yet.<\/p>\n

We hadn\u2019t seen a Noseblunt on a curb and we just saw him do it down a handrail!<\/p>\n

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Wow. When did you decide to move to the states?<\/h1>\n

I was working in that record store in Oxford and I had a little bit of success with record making and DJ\u2019ing .<\/p>\n

I was making money but there was always something missing.<\/p>\n

Even though I was skating a bit I wanted to do more.<\/p>\n

Then Jeremy called me up from Cali randomly.<\/p>\n

He said, “Tom is killing it out here, you should see what we\u2019ve been upto since you were a part of everything from the start”.<\/p>\n

He asked me if I wanted to go out to The States, and said that he’d pay me to come out and see what\u2019s going and hang out with everybody\u2019.<\/p>\n

At that time that was exactly what I needed. So, I called up my boss and quit my job.<\/p>\n

I told her about the opportunity Jeremy offered and she let me have the time off.<\/p>\n

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I got off the plane and we went straight to Ed Templeton\u2019s house.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s my childhood hero and there I was sat on his sofa.<\/p>\n

Those two weeks were great skating in the sunshine with Tom, Geoff and everyone was great and I got back into skating deeply.<\/p>\n

I got back home and within two months, I stopped working for the record store, was skating full-time and then the next year I went back to Cali for 3 months.<\/p>\n

I came home, my girlfriend left me and I just sold the house and I thought fuck It and I moved over to America.<\/p>\n

It was rad joining everyone again<\/p>\n

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How did that Frontside Flip over that handrail go down?<\/h1>\n

I was unsponsored at that time.<\/p>\n

Jeremy would hook me up with Flip boards but with Arto, Bastien on the team I had to take a backseat.<\/p>\n

Arto had just got his first Hasselblad Camera and he hadn\u2019t shot anything yet.<\/p>\n

Bastien was getting on the rail, that was the day he Crook Backlipped it and Luke McKirdy was there.<\/p>\n

I got up there and I tried to Kickflip the rail to hype up Bastien but then everyone said Rodrigo TX already did that for the Es video three weeks before.<\/p>\n

Then I tried a flip and he came up to my feet but I kicked it out.<\/p>\n

I thought “Oh God, I can\u2019t jump down this thing!”<\/p>\n

Seven months prior to that I\u2019d been diagnosed with a crooked spine and told not to skate.<\/p>\n

But I thought fuck it!<\/p>\n

Arto\u2019s set up his flashes and he’s got his Hasselblad out.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d never Frontside Flipped anything that big at that point, and then they put a 12 pack of of Heineken and a pack of cigarettes on it.<\/p>\n

Bastien had just got his trick on it and I tried and my shoelace ripped on the flip but I rolled away.<\/p>\n

I was bummed because I touched my hand but everyone else was stoked.<\/p>\n

Seven months ago I was told that I wouldn\u2019t be able to skate by doctors.<\/p>\n

We went to an 11 stair rail after and Bastien Backlipped it and I front Willied it.<\/p>\n

I went to chiropractor and they told me I had arthritis in my spine , at the time, they said I was the youngest person they\u2019ve ever seen with it.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

How did you get that?<\/h1>\n

Bailing and slamming repeatedly over years and years.\u00a0My friend Pete Evans came out to visit me and he knew all of these stretches to deal with back issues.<\/p>\n

I knew he\u2019d want to skate and he showed me all these stretches and within three days I\u2019d straightened out.\u00a0By the end of the week I was skating and in four months I was pro.<\/p>\n

I just want to thank Pete Evans, he sorted it all out.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

What got you skating again?<\/h1>\n

I was just going out with Geoff and Arto and Ewan Bowman was staying with me, whilst he started his job for filming for Flip.<\/p>\n

I was going out with them, skating with no pressure.I remember Rowley saying,<\/p>\n

“Shit Mouly you got more clips then any of us right now!?”.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I was so hyped that I was back skating I was just going for it.<\/p>\n

Kids out here would call the Switch Bigspin Heel ‘The Mouly Flip’ because of the way I would do it.\u00a0Tom even called me out and said it looked like a pressure flip.<\/p>\n

It was flattering because I know I do it totally wrong but some people like it.<\/p>\n

I remember watching Josh Kalis doing a Switch Bigspin Heel out of this kicker over a bin at The Brooklyn Banks in New York.<\/p>\n

He rolled up to me and said \u2018I bet you could do this first go Mouly\u2019.\u00a0I just laughed.<\/p>\n

There was no way I could do it the way Kalis was doing it but I appreciated that he came over and said that.\u00a0I remember Ewan, me and this guy were driving to a double set spot.<\/p>\n

I wasn\u2019t feeling too good and we were with a skater I\u2019d never met before called Billy Marks.\u00a0We went there and I Ollied it, then Billy Kickflipped it.<\/p>\n

I went there to do that.I was pissed. I had to think of another trick.\u00a0I tried a Varial Heel and caught it five tries later and I was riding away from the biggest thing I\u2019ve ever done.<\/p>\n

Then I got a Frontside Flip down it too.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Sick<\/h1>\n

So next month Thrasher magazine came out and the back cover is the Varial Heel sequence for an Indy ad and the Frontside Flip is a double page spread in the mag.<\/p>\n

Then Stacy Lowery called up my girlfriend\u2019s house in San Diego and he said,<\/p>\n

“We\u2019ve all been talking because we want to put someone new on the team and we want you to join Santa Cruz.<\/p>\n

….We want to give you a board, pay you and put up on the team!?”<\/p>\n

I told him I\u2019d let him know, I\u2019d think about it…<\/p>\n

He was like,<\/p>\n

“What is there to think about!?”<\/p>\n

Thing is I\u2019d been skating for Flip for years and I didn\u2019t want to be disloyal to them.<\/p>\n

So I called up Geoff and asked him his advice.<\/p>\n

He said,<\/p>\n

Why are you talking to me right now, get on the phone and get talking to them!<\/p>\n

I got off the phone to him and did just that.<\/p>\n

I was just so blown away by the deal at the time due to my back injury.<\/p>\n

I never thought I\u2019d get that opportunity again.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Rad. So how did you become Santa Cruz TM?<\/h1>\n

There was a former TM, he left and everyone chose me to take up his job.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t want to do it at first but then eventually I was proud of the work that I did as a TM for them.<\/p>\n

Kris Vile for example I\u2019ve got a good story about him.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Down to hear it.<\/h1>\n

Back in the day, I headhunted him for Santa Cruz.<\/p>\n

I saw a video of him, a Vans UK thing and I was like bloody hell this kid\u2019s a ripper.<\/p>\n

I called Ben Powell, and I said,<\/p>\n

“I haven\u2019t seen anyone that good out of England for a while, do you have his number?”.<\/p>\n

Ben gave me his number and I called Kris and he hung up on me!?<\/p>\n

He thought it was a prank call.<\/p>\n

I had to call Ben back to tell him it was Alex Moul and then he finally answered my calls.<\/p>\n

Then we had a chat and then he came on the tour with us and everyone loved him.<\/p>\n

He was great and got everyone going and really inspired everyone around him.<\/p>\n

He\u2019d get cracking right away and made everyone else go for it.<\/p>\n

He\u2019d set it off.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what I like about Kris, he\u2019s a skate rat.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Hardest trick you\u2019ve ever done?<\/h1>\n

Front Foot Impossible Back Foot Footplant in the On Video Section.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t think anyone else has ever done that before.<\/p>\n

Ewan Bowman filmed it.<\/p>\n

I was stoked on that one.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Your first pro contest ?<\/h1>\n

So Jeremy turned me pro didn\u2019t think I was ready, I wasn\u2019t pro material.<\/p>\n

So Eindhoeven was my first pro contest and Ed Templeton was there.<\/p>\n

Then at one point in the contest it was just me and him.<\/p>\n

Everything came to a standstill and everything was watching me and Ed T skating and we were both ripping and everyone was just watching.<\/p>\n

So Ed, that day showed me late Shuvits, I learnt them in three tries, he was really surprised.<\/p>\n

We went out street skating, he was trying to do Tailslide Bigspin out, at the time it was crazy.<\/p>\n

Then the next day it was my run.<\/p>\n

I did Shuv it, Shuv it Ollie Impossible, went up to the vert wall did a 360 One Foot to Fakie, turned around went to the funbox, did a Bag Lady down the handrail, did a Front Foot Impossible, went across the course, did a Frontside Ollie Tailbash, then went back and did a Kickflip on flat on the way back.<\/p>\n

Out of all the tricks I did I was the most stoked going full speed.<\/p>\n

I did a 540 one foot Ollie, came back and did a BS Mute Japan, really tweaked and I did a Frontside Ollie late Shuvits off this ramp over the gap to end the run.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d only just learnt late Shuvits the day before and I won that day.<\/p>\n

I won a bag of popcorn and $500 dollars.<\/p>\n

Vert won $1500 dollars and a popcorn that\u2019s how much things had changed!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Crazy<\/h1>\n

As we went to McDonalds, Wurzel, who was an original Deathbox rider, said,<\/p>\n

“Ed Templeton\u2019s won Munster World Championship twice in a row, you beat him so you\u2019re World Champion Mouly!”.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve always shared that joke but I was the first skater from outside the US scene to beat an American Pro at a contest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Alex Moul is a musician and pro skateboarder from …<\/p>\n

Alex Moul<\/span> READ MORE \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":298797,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"default","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"default","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"default","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"set","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""}}},"categories":[33102,45,322,34249,34248],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nocomplynetwork.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241841"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nocomplynetwork.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nocomplynetwork.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nocomplynetwork.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nocomplynetwork.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=241841"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.nocomplynetwork.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241841\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":322711,"href":"https:\/\/www.nocomplynetwork.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241841\/revisions\/322711"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nocomplynetwork.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/298797"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nocomplynetwork.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=241841"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nocomplynetwork.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=241841"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nocomplynetwork.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=241841"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}