Table of contents for Issue 69 - Spring/Summer Issue in Huck

The working-class city of Warabi is just a short train trip from Tokyo, though it feels like a world away. As the neon-lit streets of the latter make way for low-slung houses and densely packed apartment buildings, the metropolitan abundance of Japan’s capital seems a distant memory. Down one of its numerous narrow streets – past a bakery, a series of bars and restaurants as well as an ancient strip club – lies a relatively nondescript house, only distinguished from its neighbours by a Maori-inspired mural on one wall and a banner hung over a second-floor balcony. Inside lives one of the most sought-after tattoo artists in the world: Horiren 1st, a modern master in the ancient method of Tebori. Horiren’s studio is compact and well-kept. The walls are covered…

On the surface, everything about Misty Tyers’ life seems perfectly ordinary. She’s a barber who’s good at what she does – so good that her time gets booked out months in advance. She also loves music and, every year, goes on a week-long heavy metal cruise with 60 bands and 3,000 people. And when Misty’s not moshing or cutting hair, she’s lifting weights. Kettlebells, to be precise. She’s good at that, too, and hopes to make the world championships in Serbia this year. But something in the 32-year-old’s bedroom hints at a life less ordinary. In between the weights and medals from her athletic endeavours, on top of a green and red chest of drawers, sits Misty’s Satanic altar. “I credit [Satanism] for a lot of the successes in my…

On a quiet road just off the high street, in a residential part of a British seaside town, there’s a small, unspectacular building sandwiched between houses and takeaways, its walls painted completely white. The owners refer to it as a massage parlour, but ask anyone in the neighbourhood and they’ll tell you: it’s a brothel. Nobody who works there is allowed to talk about sex or exchange cash. That happens in the private rooms. The signs outside, meanwhile, remain coded. One simply reads, “A: £50.” But it’s not offering a massage treatment – it’s advertising anal sex. “The [owners] told us when they put the sign up that if the police ask, it’s aromatherapy,” says Lydia Caradonna, a 21-year-old history student, sex worker and activist who operates out of the…

Studying to become a filmmaker made Bronwen Parker-Rhodes go broke. To support herself financially, she began moonlighting as a DJ in strip clubs around London, playing six-hour sets that dancers would choreograph routines to as she watched on in fascination. One evening, two years into the job, Bronwen decided to get on stage herself. The buzz from performing proved so great that she started dancing regularly. It opened up a new way of seeing things. “I was surrounded by confident, amazing women,” says the 38-year-old, speaking over Skype from a cluttered bedroom, boxes full of files stacked in towers behind her. “It was a real celebration of being an exhibitionist. I just fell in love with that world.” For her final project at UCL’s Slade School of Fine Art, Bronwen…

In an East London hotel room strewn with clothes and suitcases, EarthGang’s Johnny Venus is sitting on an unmade bed, plucking at an acoustic guitar. “I’m still learning,” he quickly clarifies, his dreadlocks wrapped in a white towel, a pair of white motorcycle boots at his feet. “I play the drums.” Alongside him, the other half of the group, Doctur Dot, is scrolling on his phone, eyes fixed on the screen. (He plays the trumpet.) Despite plenty of competition, EarthGang has become one of the most original outfits to emerge from Atlanta in the last decade. Fluctuating between hard rap and yelpy melodies, their music takes the city’s trappy aesthetic in an electrifying new direction, blending old-soul musicality with socio-political awareness. It’s an approach that has drawn comparisons to fellow…

Two years ago, Holly Herndon gave birth to a nascent AI baby named Spawn. The computer learns by listening: absorbing complex stimuli and then creating something new in her mother’s voice – sounds that Holly would never be physically capable of producing herself. That might seem like an unbelievable shift for someone who spent most of their early adult life intimidated by computers. But for the last seven years, Holly’s boundary-pushing blend of experimental music has been posing increasingly bigger questions about technology, community and communication. It’s a trajectory that has seen her develop a cult following for an acclaimed body of work – one determined to prove that computers can convey emotion better than most instruments. That said, Holly doesn’t fit the cyberpunk stereotype. Her journey from a religious…

ANDY GILLMAN ARTIST AND PHOTOGRAPHER Andy Gillman is drawn to a particular type of destruction. He explores abandoned spaces – empty buildings and housing estates, old stadiums and power stations – with a camera in hand. The 36-year-old has been doing some variation of this since he took up graffiti as a teenager: tagging everything from streets and buses to track sides and trains. First it was all across London, then around the country, then Europe. And while he never set out to collect them, trainers became a consistent fixture along the way. (Andy has owned as many as 15 pairs at one time.) “When you’re on a mission – a day out when anything can happen – that also means that anything can happen to your trainers,” he says.…

Belfast’s Springfield Road became a hotspot of violence during the Troubles. As a thoroughfare running through a predominantly Irish nationalist area, it also intersects with nearby Ulster loyalist neighbourhoods – forming a sectarian fault line that gave rise to riots and massacres. In 2017, German photographer Toby Binder wandered along the road searching for an opportunity – not to reopen old wounds, but to document another pivotal moment in Northern Ireland’s history: Brexit. The 41-year-old has spent much of his career covering youth around the world: from child labour in Bolivia to kids accused of witchcraft in Nigeria. But over the last 15 years, Toby has poured his personal time into a far-reaching project about young people in Britain’s former industrial cities – places with disproportionately high levels of drug…

The first time Adrian Street adopted the look that would change the face of wrestling, people couldn’t believe their eyes. Five years into his career, he had grown bored by the way other wrestlers presented themselves – just trunks and boots in the same old colours – and wanted to inject some personality into the sport. But once his colleagues in the dressing room caught a glimpse of that new look – long blonde hair, bronzed body and a baby blue velvet gown with silver lamé – they said he’d be out of his mind to go out there looking like that. This was Britain in 1962: a time when wrestling meant working-class men beating each other up without fanfare. Convinced that his newfound showmanship would win the crowd’s admiration,…

24 Hour Party People MICHAEL WINTERBOTTOM (2002) The rise and fall of Factory Records: a tale of sex, drugs and Joy Division. Inherent Vice THOMAS PYNCHON (2009) A freewheeling mystery set in California’s countercultural heyday, starring a pothead private investigator. Pink Flamingos JOHN WATERS (1972) The trashy epic that first introduced the world to the ‘Prince of Puke’. Locals Only: California Skateboarding HUGH HOLLAND (2010) Photos from skateboarding’s golden age, when the Z-Boys reigned supreme. ‘Juice’ LIZZO (2019) An upbeat anthem from the queen of self-love. The Psychedelic Experience TIMOTHY LEARY (1964) The go-to guide for enquiries of a mind-bending nature. Loose LONDON-BASEDZINE Bursting with provocative photography, this is a publication for those who prefer to live loosely. ‘Feet’ FAT WHITE FAMILY (2019) This deliciously dirty track sees Peckham’s finest…