IKAM is a small run, low budget magazine that myself, Grant Robinson, Jon Matlock and a host of inspired, passionate and exceptionally talented contributors collaborated on this summer. It wasn’t a business model or a moneymaking scheme just a creative outlet for people who are fed up with the lack of creativity and stifling templates that many mountain bike mags and websites adhere to these days. It’s about us feeling that there’s a genuine culture to mountain biking and putting that front and centre. There’s no reviews (except album reviews), very few ads, no pro biker spotlights, or industry bro handshakes and backslaps. There’s a lot in it that isn’t mountain biking too. We feel mountain biking has led us to explore so much more than the bicycle so we represent those discoveries too.

It’s a little gritty, some would say shitty and it’s far from perfect. But that’s why we love it so much. Think about what modern mountain bike magazines or websites look and feel like, and IKAM is the total opposite.

This is one of my favourite images of all time. Ron Penny at The Farm by Grant Robinson. Dylan Sherrard wrote an amazingly descriptive yet dream-like piece about Ron Penny’s special place that provides a very lucid image yet gives nothing away.

Michael Bonney is a legend in mountain biking. We believe it and anyone who has met Michael believes it too. But what seals the deal is when Simon Gallup says it’s true. Yep, the same Simon Gallup who is the bassist from legendary English rock band, The Cure. Handwritten because Simon said “If you still want a written piece I would be happy to do a handwritten piece with spelling, punctuation and grammatical mistakes and send it in the post to you and you can burn it, amend it or do as you please but I find writing on a computer screen to make things feel very contrived and not how I speak or think !”

Straws suck. Nicolas Teichrob lives on the frontline of plastic waste – the Sunshine Coast of BC where each day sacks of plastic waste washes ashore – and his short, sharp essay asks us all to meditate on some on the smallest little acts of our day-to-day existence so perhaps we can improve our future days, starting with telling your bartender that you don’t want a straw when you order a drink.

Richard “Cunny” Cunynghame is a classy chap who has many interests beyond the bicycle, one of which is being a voracious consumer of music. Rather than fill our pages with product reviews (aka thinly veiled advertising pieces that do the work of PR departments more than they educate the reader by presenting critical thinking about expensive bicycle components) we gave Cunny a page to pick apart some of the albums he’s been listening to. Or not listening to in the case of One Direction.

At the end of the magazine there’s a crossword that relates to all the content within the magazine. Sort of like a test to see who was paying attention.

Jimmy Pratt. If you know, you know. Olly Wilkins digs up the dirt on this wizard of the spade and the air to provide further exposition for those that must know more.

Who the fuck is Tuck? He isn’t some big shot pro who can twizzle-wizzle about in the air, send the biggest hucks, win the most important races. He isn’t some awesome bro-buddy who works for the coolest bike company, knows all the right people or just looks cool. In fact, by the usual mountain bike media thermometer he is neither “cool” nor “hot”. He rides pretty fast, real fast for an old guy, but that’s not much saying much. However, none of these things matter. What matters is that he is one of the most amazing characters I have had the pleasure of meeting. Ken Tucker is 64 years old and he’s one in a million, that much I know.

The back cover. Because the back cover should always look as rad as the front cover because it’s a cover.

IKAM MAG is free if you can find Grant, Jon or I. Or alternatively it can be acquired for the cost of postage.