Forever delayed - The Season Roadtrip DVD Review.

Yes, I'm aware I just shamefully ripped the Manic Street Preacher's Greatest Hits album name, but the remixes CD was so awful I feel no remorse.

N. E. Way.



Season Roadtrip trailer:



The Season Roadtrip DVD isn't the sort of DVD I'd usually have picked up. I tend to be fairly stuck in my ways when it comes to DVD purchases, so unless it's a UK street vid, or features some fairly well-known riders, I'm more inclined to keep my hard-earned money to spend on key essentials, such as food and Federal Thins. With this in mind, it was with some trepidation that I gently opened my erratic CD drawer (it killed my copy of Voices, no mercy) on my computer and let POWERDVD do it's thing.

I wasn't entirely unfamiliar with the Season crew prior to the video. Cory Jarman was known to me as "That guy with the really small bike" (remember the Blackeye Bikes sig frame with fist-length seat-tube?), Eben was known to me just from other videos and seeing his sig. Stolen frame, and the other riders had popped up recently in the pretty TNT PerspectivesBMX mixtape (Which you can see at the bottom of this post).

The beginning of the video follows a fairly similar path to the RoadFools videos, with a chance to work out just how you really pronounce "Merkle" as the entire team introduce themselves (all 15 of 'em or something ridiculous!). Having done the introductions, they move swiftly onto riding, and there's a wide variety of styles on offer. From tech grind-grind stuff to burly gaps, from front brake trickery to ridiculous fakie stuff (wait for that fakie manual along a manual pad to fakie whip off). As it's a roadtrip video, the editor Bud Dickman (no, really), has spliced in a healthy amount of bro-cam/chill footage in there to give you a bit of a vibe of the roadtrip. Cory Jarman comes across as being a particularly weird individual in this, but it's all good.

Without giving away too many spoilers, quite a few hammers get dropped in this vid. For a relatively short trip, a relatively large amount of serious things got done, and with the mix in of the bro footage, it has a good feeling to it in general. In terms of watchability, it's not really a 5 minute vid you bang on to get in the mood to go and ride, it's more of a wet, cold night's "What can I watch?" film.

The best part about the video though is the fact that instead of just having the one roadtrip video on it, you can view each individual rider's riding in their own split-section in the Bonus menu. This is a pretty cool idea, so if you want to understand how Troy Merkle or Dave Thomson get rad in detail, you can just hit up their section and check it out fully. Effectively, two-for-the-price-of-one - I'm in.

Overall, this is a 'nice' video. It's nothing stand-out special, but at the same time, there's enough good stuff in there to justify it's place in your DVD collection. I for one am glad I've got a copy of it, and it's opened my eyes to the world of video possibilities out there I may have previously dismissed.

Check out the Perspectives vid below (and the trailer up top!) to check out what the riders in the Season vid are like, then hit up the Shop and buy yourself a copy of the DVD!