Flatland-specific BMX brands are not by design money making ventures. There has to be a need, a passion, to want to go down that road, or “path” as Heresy is prone to say. Alexis Desolneux is that person. A product of the French BMX scene, Desolneux is not your average flatland rider — he rides by and large in straight lines, his combinations are insanely difficult and repertory, and he’s stepped up to hang 5 grinds down handrails in the distant past. He’s also a product of punk. Not the Green Day, Hot Topic version — Desolneux grew up idolizing bands and movements that required a DIY ethic, including Washington D.C.’s Dischord Records and bands from the label such as Hoover and Bluetip. “I have a lot of admiration for people who follow a certain way being themselves and just create their own ‘universe’ and aesthetics,” Desolneux told Flat Matters earlier this year.
Dischord Records started on a whim to release a 7” single from the Teen Idles, the band that label founders Ian MacKaye and Jeff Nelson were members of. After the band broke up, they took a cigar box of cash containing all of the money they had generated from playing live, got a record pressed and started the label as teenagers, because, according to MacKaye, who was going to put out a record from a dead band made up of teenagers that no one had heard of? Desolneux’s path isn’t much different. Frustrated with the existing brands of the moment, he brought together a group of like-minded friends in 2010 to create the brand that didn’t exist for them.
“Heresy was started out of necessity, in a similar way that some bands put out their own records, just because no one else will put out their records if they don’t,” says Desolneux.
