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LoDown Magazine has always been the trendy guide for skate boarding, graffiti street art, music, snowboard and fashion. While the man who’s behind this leading magazine, Sven aka “Fortyounces” Fortmann, doesn’t only have a busy life being an editor, a DJ, a music fanatic and a movie buff, but he manages to enjoy his life and make it count everyday.
Being invited by the 7th Innovation Session, Sven is in Hong Kong and having a pleasant time checking the city out. Not caring about the typhoon signal 3, Sven was chilling out at 1/5, with his Heineken, and having a blast talking about LoDown.
Being such an expert in the street culture, you might assume that Sven should be an amazing skateboarder. Well, think again. “I sucked!” Sven tells us that after a terrible accident, he knew that he should stay out it. But instead of giving skateboarding up totally, he devoted his passion into LoDown, providing the most updated and unique info for the 12 year old kids, to the true music creators.
With only 7 people contributing to the magazine, Sven works with this tight team day and night. Knowing each other half of their lifetimes, the crew of LoDown tends to get along extremely well. “We all have different titles on our name cards, but we do help each other out.” Just when you think such a small team may not hold the complicated process of publishing a mega guide, Sven is currently working on the 43rd issue. “It’s always nice to have someone coming to you and say, ‘I have every issue of your magazine, I put them all on a shelf’”. One of the most important differences between the Internet and a magazine, for Sven, a magazine is collectable. “People can keep it, they don’t just throw it away.” As more and more people claims that they know all about street pop culture, posting street arts on the net doesn’t seem to appeal to Sven. “It’s like a second-hand experience.” Even so, he does admit that he needs his computer for work and for information.
As for his music sets, they diverse from breaks to hip hop to electro punk. “Normally after playing 10 minutes of the same genre of music, I get bored.” Sven reveals. Although playing for the 7th Innovation Session may be different from playing to a usual crowd, Sven insist to stick to the people’s mood to create the most suitable mix. With so many people, so many different music tastes, how do you satisfy them all? “Well, if I screwed up, I’ll quickly change it!” And what’s the magic trick? “Just bring at least 3 big boxes of music!”
Catch Sven aka “Fortyounces” Fortmann at 1/5, for the 7th Innovation Session. |
