{"id":311539,"date":"2020-11-10T11:29:40","date_gmt":"2020-11-10T11:29:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nocomplynetwork.com\/?page_id=311539"},"modified":"2023-07-19T17:24:11","modified_gmt":"2023-07-19T17:24:11","slug":"james-bush","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nocomplynetwork.com\/james-bush\/","title":{"rendered":"James Bush"},"content":{"rendered":"

James Bush connects the dots on tech tricks that many cannot. His passion for complex constructions doesn’t just end on his board, he also works as a graphic designer which just further draws his focus into laying down well-spaced lines and making stylish shapes.\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

His skating and art is inventive, with a refined technique embedded with layers of nuance. <\/strong>He’s been flipping his board all over the UK and Europe for years and he’s always managed to present something new, visually interesting and different.<\/strong><\/p>\n

So now he is a No Comply Network member, we hit him up to talk about how he originally got into skateboarding and making graphics, growing up in the UK skate mecca of Milton Keynes, getting sponsored by Motive, filming and skating at the Buszy, hanging with Jack Edwards, hitting ledges the hard way, inspirations from Danny Montoya, his angle on great design, meeting Callun Loomes, getting down for Get Lesta, skating for \u00e9S , shooting photos with Leo Sharp and his favourite\u00a0 skaters, spots,\u00a0 skate videos and more.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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@vzavz<\/a><\/p>\n

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When did you start to make art?<\/h1>\n

My mum was the head lecturer at Graphic Design at Northampton University. I was always making art since I was a kid. When I was 3 years old, I was copying typefaces and graphics off cereal boxes and I would draw all of the characters when I could barely even write.<\/p>\n

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So you were influenced by your parents?<\/h1>\n

I was adamant that I wouldn\u2019t be influenced by my parents, when I was a kid, I was like no way will I end up doing what my mom is doing but then as I got older and progressed through school and then I did a foundation degree, I realised I wanted to do Graphic Design.<\/p>\n

I accepted the fact that it was what I wanted to do it, and what I was into to, so I just went with it.<\/p>\n

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What drew you towards graphic design?<\/h1>\n

The way I describe graphics, is like if you took Fine Art and added some obsessive compulsive sort of mannerisms to it. I don\u2019t like sitting there and shading a face and creating realism. I like building something almost mathematically, so there\u2019s a lot of maths to graphic design that you can\u2019t incorporate into Fine Art. So I\u2019ve got this addiction to things about the medium and I like working out angles in a linear way.<\/p>\n

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Sounds like your skating, how did you start to skateboard?<\/h1>\n

Around 2003, I played Tony Hawk\u2019s Pro Skater and I was really into skating but I didn\u2019t think it was something that I could actually do. But I have family in America and my cousin skated. I met up with them and they had me going around on a board and I was like this is sick! I could stand on it and move comfortably and I was like this is fucking rad.<\/p>\n

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What was your first board?<\/h1>\n

I remember my first board distinctly, we weren\u2019t a rich family or anything, so I wasn\u2019t about to get a \u00a3100 board that I might never have skated. My folks bought me a WHSmiths board; it had an Alien with a hairdryer on it.<\/p>\n

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When did you really get into it?<\/h1>\n

I started off really slowly. Me and my friend named Ollie, were the only skaters in our area, skating around our neighbourhood when we were 9. We weren\u2019t allowed to go into the city centre and I didn\u2019t have the means to get there as well. So, that was the first two years of skateboarding for me.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t until I was about 11 that I started to skate in the MK city centre.<\/p>\n

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@swampyharold<\/a><\/p>\n

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Did you know Milton Keynes was a UK skate mecca?<\/h1>\n

I had no clue till I was about 11. Me and my friend Paddy went to a music festival in central called Music for You. We saw some brilliant Ska Punk bands there but we brought our boards and eventually we just went off and went skating for a while around the city.<\/p>\n

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Where did you skate?<\/h1>\n

The first spot literally right near the festival was the Theatre district. I saw that 8 stair and I started to Ollie the 6 that comes around that curve. I\u2019d never skated anything bigger than a 4 stair at the time.<\/p>\n

I skated, the 6, then the 7, and then eventually got to the 8. Then I started to Kickflip it.<\/p>\n

Giles Brown AKA \u2018Brownie\u2019, who I didn\u2019t know at the time but is now a good friend, started to film me kickflipping it. I was pushing as fast as I could go. Felt like I was going Mach 10. I\u2019d never skated a stair set that big before and I was just sliding across the floor because I was going so quick and not even popping my board! Yeah, he used that footage 10 years later in a video to mess with me!<\/p>\n

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What was it like skating in MK at the time?<\/h1>\n

When I first started skating there, I was just skating with my friends from my neighbourhood. But when the Buszy was built around 2005-2006, I started going there and I made friends with skaters who were my age,\u00a0 like Josh McManus, Matt Ballant, a lot of people who sadly no longer skate any more. It\u2019s a shame they were all so talented, Josh was sick, he was flip backtailing the T-Block in lines.<\/p>\n

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@mattclarkephoto<\/a><\/p>\n

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So, when did you get sponsored?<\/h1>\n

There was a local shop that was actually run out of the back of a van, called Arkology, run by a guy called Andy King,\u00a0 he basically started to give me shop tees and discounts when I was around 14-15. He just filmed me one day and that was that. We started filming and I started skating for the shop.<\/p>\n

Unbeknownst to me he started to send my footage to Rob Selley<\/a>, who ran Motive Skateboards. I\u2019d skated nothing but Motive boards up to that point.<\/p>\n

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At what point did you fully get on Motive?<\/h1>\n

I started to get Motive boards when I was 15, just flow style. Then Rob put me on the full squad after I put out my welcome to Motive video.<\/p>\n

That was the point I started to push myself in skating. I filmed more and started skating more every weekend and tried much harder to get good shit and skate stairs, hurting myself and really dealing with it. Before if I was skating stairs and I fell and hurt myself, I\u2019d be like man, I\u2019m over it! But that was when I started to battle for tricks.<\/p>\n

So we filmed that part, it was like a minute and a half. You need to see the jeans that I was wearing in it! Absolutely stinking man.<\/p>\n

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You skated with Jack Edwards who also did a lot of tech tricks, but did you feel like you were both pushing it at the time?<\/h1>\n

We used to stay at each other\u2019s house and go out skating a lot. Jack was fucked man. I looked up to that guy; I was skating with Jack a lot. I felt like anything I did was not all that, due to skating with him.<\/p>\n

Jack learned how to Switch Flip Crooks one day and on that day, he did it on the T-Block on the same day and then he did it off the ledge at the Theatre ledges in a line, in like five goes too. I was like man, how can you learn that shit and then go and do it off the T-Block, that\u2019s unbelievable!?<\/p>\n

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When did you last see Jack Edwards?<\/h1>\n

We hadn\u2019t seen Jack in a while. We were texting each other every day. He\u2019d come and stay at mine for a weekend and then I\u2019d go and stay at his for a weekend in Birmingham. Alternating. Then it got to the summer holidays\u2019 I\u2019d just finished my GCSE\u2019s and we were hanging out for a month straight, skating with each other and skating in Birmingham. We went to Pioneer with Selley and stuff and film there and had a lock-in and stuff.<\/p>\n

But then one day Jack disappeared and I never heard anything from him from that point. Then a month later, I got a message from his friend Greg Herbert<\/a> and he was like, \u201chave you heard from Jack? He\u2019s not speaking to anyone…?\u201d<\/p>\n

I was like nah man; I\u2019ve been trying to get a hold of him as well. Can\u2019t find him.<\/p>\n

He just disappeared\u2026We\u2019d hear whispers of a sighting of him, where people had seen him here or seen him there but nothing concrete.<\/p>\n

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Did you see Jack again?<\/h1>\n

A while after this, me and Selley were hanging out and Jack hit up Selley. Selley was like do you want to film some stuff at that new Radlands park?<\/p>\n

Nobody had seen him for about three years at that point. Jack came down and did all these incredible tricks in one afternoon, he did the Kickflip Nosegrind Nollie Flip out in ten goes maximum. All of those tricks he filmed were in five ten goes maximum.<\/p>\n

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I think he always disliked online criticism<\/h1>\n

Yeah he used to say that to me and Selley but we lurked through everything and there were zero negative comments on any of his footage. He felt like people were talking negatively though definitely.<\/p>\n

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It\u2019s hard to deal with it when you\u2019re young<\/h1>\n

He was a good dude and we had a lot of good times back in the day. It was one of the best times of my life, I just got sponsored, I was skating with my homie, who was a similar age, and had a ridiculous talent. It was inspiring to skate with someone like that.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d go around to his house and he had this little flip camera and he\u2019d go and skate this car park by himself and he had this one bench he\u2019d robbed from a skate spot and he\u2019d be doing Switch Flip Front Blunts on it.<\/p>\n

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Sick. Not many people have ever even done that trick.<\/h1>\n

Did you see that line that he filmed on that camera at that Lightwoods park in Birmingham? He did Switch Flip Front Blunt to regular on a ledge, and Nollie Flip Noseslide down the rail?<\/p>\n

All just filmed on his little flip camera.<\/p>\n

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Do you have a favourite trick by Jack?<\/h1>\n

Legitimately, it\u2019s the line at that skatepark. The way he did it was so casual. He did it that good. He could do everything in a couple tries. Just put his headphones and do what he wanted.<\/p>\n

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So at what point did you feel like things were starting to take off? I remember you filmed a banging ten tricks<\/h1>\n

Yeah, that 10 tricks was filmed by my friend Tommy filmed. That was funny. We were bored and it was raining and so we decided to film it and then for some reason Ride Channel decided to buy it. That was the moment I realised how wonderful the internet was. People were commenting on it like, check his Euro Laugh! It just made me crack it up. Like what does that even mean… I have a European laugh<\/a>!?<\/p>\n

I\u2019m really into reading internet hate comments, there\u2019s just something funny about the crazy stuff people will write anonymously.<\/p>\n

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What\u2019s the weirdest comment you\u2019ve read about your footage?<\/h1>\n

My favourite one is, my first part that went up on Thrasher, it was the Get 420, Get Lesta Video Part. I made that joke up early on when we were filming and mentioned it to Cal and he actually named the whole video after that! I couldn\u2019t believe it but some guy commented on it under the Thrasher video feed and said \u2018Yeah, that was a great part but I\u2019m still waiting on the mindblowing ender though!\u201d.<\/p>\n

I was like No! I went back to that spot six times for that trick, I snapped five boards, I broke my ankle and shit and that was what you wrote?<\/p>\n

It was the hardest thing I\u2019d ever worked for properly in skateboarding and he was like\u2026yeah I don\u2019t care!<\/p>\n

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@sidewalkhorse<\/a><\/p>\n

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What trick was that?<\/h1>\n

The Switch Heel down the Big Block 5 near Ipswich.<\/p>\n

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Yeah , that was gnarly<\/h1>\n

There\u2019s this crack that runs along the top of the steps and just this one gap, that\u2019s just over a board width and the first time that I skated it, on one of the first goes I had at it, I hit the crack and it fucked my balance up and I flew down the stairs and I ended up sitting on my ankle in the worst position, and my ankle went backwards. It was gnarly and I had a little black hole in my foot. It took me 4 months to recover from that.<\/p>\n

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