1. Tom Knox — ‘Atlantic Drift’

Is there such thing as a perfect video part? Determining an answer may require intensive quantitative computing, enchanted armor, and forensic analysis of Mark Gonzales in ‘Video Days,’ Guy Mariano in ‘Mouse,’ Jason Dill in ‘Photosynthesis,’ Dylan Rieder for Gravis, et cetera — all of which lay beyond the operational and budgetary constraints of modern weblog technology. Doesn’t watching the inevitable-feeling Tom Knox/Jacob Harris brick-and-bubblegoose masterpiece press the question though? It is a rapper-producer partnership as strong as any there were, probing and working many threads across ten engrossing minutes that mine London’s vacant schoolyards and blocks of flats — smirking humor, heartache, family, memories of spots and days past. It is tempting to sift for the nods and references, or ponder how many tries the street gap nollie out of the kickflip nose manual took, and whether the frontside boardslide to fakie after the backside 360 was spur of the moment. But the real reward is getting lost watching Tom Knox and Jacob Harris wind on and on through these claustrophobic brick and stone labyrinths, soaking in flourishes like the backside powerslide after the 360 flip to make it around the corner and cannon blasts like the monstrous curb cut ollie over the can to backside lipslide, set against incongruously beautiful summer days in an accursed year. Just cuz it’s obvious don’t make it wrong.

Summertime Mixtape Vol. 7 — Alex Olson, ‘Gnar Gnar’

Long before the techno music, the abdicated Girl pro slot and the post-‘Fully Flared’ shoe-sponsor shuffle, there was a plaid-clad spikey-haired yungster going off over a few sessions in London for a Mark Gonzales/Sam Salganik VHS-exclusive video project. In its way ‘Gnar Gnar’ captures the purest-form Alex Olson, with all the elements in place: the flannels, the poked backside tailslides, those gorilla arms, the frontside tailslides and backside ollies boosted for a camcorder still a few years away from being picked up by Palace.

1. Lucien Clarke – “This Time Tomorrow”

As far as young bros on the come-up in 2010, this Lucien Clarke dude’s got it all — form, cool looking locales, those snapback hats with the different colored brims that took over Britain a year or two back, the accent, backside noseblunt slides on command, etc etc. There is a leisurely air to the lengthy lines he skates that promise a lifestyle behind solidly latched doors among woodgrain and glasses of brown liquor, if you could hang out there in a baggy sweatshirt and said hats with the colourful brims. The cliffhanger frontside shove-it over the crunchy hubba and the nollie backside flip shortly thereafter are highlights with heaps of night filming and switch backside kickflips. Bouncy older rap song and he’s on the Palace board company, this was my favorite part all year.