On their recent return from a tour of Canada a friend came back bearing a slightly dog-eared copy of a publication titled Bucket-List and another, named after its protagonist, DRIFO: BTH CMP’S. The former publication opens with the description of a planned mission that was disrupted by the pandemic and subsequent lockdown in Canada. Having already stocked up on supplies, the duo behind the zine began to form new, ever more ambitious, plans. With the result that “what was originally a one spot mission, turned into a bucket list.” The resultant zine documents some of the pair’s activities. There’s lots of action shots and a brilliant series of kinda delayed shots of some excellent freights being painted.

Probably the most eye-catching, or at least very impressive in its ambition, is a roller piece painted on top of a concrete grain elevator in Thunder Bay. A nice panoramic shot shows three people admiring their handiwork from afar. Apparently the structure is an historic piece of architecture, and so the graffiti made the local newspaper with one reporter coming up with a theory as to the identity of the painters and meaning of the words. I always find outraged news reports of this kind quite amusing. Particularly when it involves an historic piece of architecture, it seems that the ‘vandalism’ simply equates to the fact that it’s the wrong kind of paint being applied. Indeed, towards the end of the article in question it’s reported that there had been plans to paint an image of the northern lights on the elevator. So much for preserving historic architecture.

Meanwhile, Drifo’s magazine comes with no accompanying text aside from a few shout-outs and a tribute “to all the pimp$ in the world”. Coming from London I appreciate a chrome filled dub and Drifo provides a load of them across a host of walls. Yeah, this graff is sweeet. Drifo has a range of styles here and obviously batters it. A nice page of tags provides a break for the eyes between various throw-ups and colourful pieces plastered across vans, freights, smooth concrete, windows. You name it, it’s here. The final few pages are subtitled ‘it takes a pimp..’ and show a picture of a chrome & black CMP’S over the bottom of some international street-artist’s mural in Montreal. What more do you need?