The first question of an interview is more often than not, “How are you doing?” It’s a pleasant little ice-breaker that’s started 99 per cent of conversations throughout history. However, when The Ocean leader Robin Staps sits down to talk with Prog over Zoom, we ask that opening question with more concern in our voice than usual.
In December 2022, barely four months before our chat, Staps had a near-death experience. His post-rock collective were enjoying a day off on a Puerto Rican beach during a South American tour, and the guitarist decided to finish the downtime with a sunset swim. Almost instantly, he was caught in a rip current and left powerless against the vicious waters for three hours. He’s convinced that, had the coastguard shown up just 10 minutes later than they did, he’d have drowned.
“I’ve been in rip currents before, in Australia: they’re usually very local, about 20 or 30 metres wide,” Staps tells us, now back home in Berlin without a scratch on him. “But I was in a 10km- wide bay, and this phenomenon was happening everywhere, basically. When the coastguard pulled me out of the water, they told me that it was their fourth mission that week. Two times they found the swimmer; two times they didn’t. That same week I survived, two other people died.”
この記事は Prog の Issue 140 版に掲載されています。
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この記事は Prog の Issue 140 版に掲載されています。
7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。
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