The Thousands

Will you take a look at that? SNAP! Everything is coming up yellow. The sun is out. The bees are buzzing. Websites have yellow themes. Other yellow things like... the sun. Snaps everywhere! Rites Wild has a cassette for spring. Travis is being funny with Wintercoats. Suj debunks the myth that Amiriteladies is a Greek dish and that Exeter lunches are all carafes of rosé and crispy things. Big Log Jam looks Cool Art Stuff. We are feeling happy.

Cover photo by Kate Gagliardi. Hit us with your best shot. Send yours to daniel@rightanglestudio.com.au.

Everyone we know seems to drool over everything Miranda July does. Her short stories, movies and art all document her hilarious journeys into the decaying soul of modern civilisation, while showing how she seriously removes sleep from her eyes. She’s the everywoman art darling, with an eye on the deep and the dumb.

Her new book, It Chooses You, is Miranda's procrastination project she wrote while making her most recent film, The Future. While It Chooses You is a diary of the angst associated with writing her film, it’s mostly a retelling of her encounters with eleven extraordinary normal people in L.A., people she tracked down via their PennySaver classified ads.

With Brigitte Sire along to take photos, and a guy called Alfred there to ‘protect them from rape’, Miranda takes us into the bedroom of Domingo, a single 45-year-old who pastes up photos of women and babies on his wall and pretends he’s in the LAPD. And 17-year-old Andrew, who's trying to sell tadpoles before they sprout legs. And the dangerously creepy Ron, who is under house arrest (there's a tracker on his leg) selling Dr Seuss books. Joe, the last we meet, is an old man full of nostalgia who Miranda generously casts in The Future, one week before he dies of cancer.

Miranda July’s problems with the writing of her film is compounded by the weight and significance of the lives of the real people she interviews. At one point she says that they are "too big for fiction". She’s right, and It Chooses You leaves you thinking that perhaps The Future, a lesser achievement, was in fact her real procrastination project.

Rites Wild, high times vibe train for Adelaide’s S. Wilson, has spent this passing springtime dropping mellow beats and spectral visions across this arid land, and now everything Rites Wild has revealed on previous releases is being bettered on the Spring 2011 Tour Tape. The reverb cascades like a broken glass waterfall. The haunting vocals are submerged in layers of minimalist synth drone. Percussive beats drive at the pace of a narcoleptic stumble. It’s beautiful.

'Detached Living' is a woozy trip. Spring sunshine peeking through the moth holes in heavy curtains. Downer beats, and (even deeper) downer vocals, spiral through the cortex. The juxtaposition of lilting synth riffs offer solid grounding to the ‘monotone doom pop’ tag afforded to Rites Wild.

'Seasonal Shine' finds the warm spring air penetrated by an occasional blast of night time arctic chill. There is a sense of hope and joy in its laconic delivery. The instrumental, 'Minimal Where', might be Rites Wild's chirpiest moment yet. It’s like riding a bike or sitting on the bus. A soundtrack to a simple journey.

It's uppers and downers on tape and captures the solitude one finds living in the isolation of a town trying to be a city. With an LP hitting next year, it’s good times set for Rites Wild.

Alright. Travis Cook is from Adelaide and Marcus Whale is from Sydney. They're Collarbones. James Wallace is from Melbourne. He's Wintercoats. Adam Lewis hosts Radiant on Sydney's FBi Radio, which you can listen to whether you're in Adelaide, Sydney, Melbourne or freakin' Calcutta, all because of a nice thing called the internets. Ya following? Collarbones and Wintercoats are in town this weekend, so we asked Travis to get to know James a little better on our behalf.

Travis Cook: You're playing in the City of Churches on the 19th, and then in a church with HTRK later in the month. You've got the whole church thing on lock. If you could choose any other unconventional location to play, where would it be?

James Wallace: I also released an EP called Cathedral, I think I’ve got a thing going on here. I’m going to go with a planetarium. People in reclining chairs staring up into the solar system with strings scoring the scenery, it sounds good to me.

TC: Your fringe is a big part of the Wintercoats Experience and according to Marcus this makes you a Certified Indie Babe. Does your hair allow you to pick up girls daily and should I dye my hair aquamarine in order to reach your level of desirability?

JW: Oh Marcus is going to be disappointed. I cut the fringe of a couple of weeks back. If by pick up girls you mean nights alone watching Arrested Development and eating bacon, then all the time. Well, last time we played together you had a pretty great bowl cut going on, so I don’t think desirability would be a problem with you with hair like that. Though an aquamarine bowl cut would be pretty amazing. Do it, please.

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I know what you’re thinking. Another page ripped off your Far Side desk-calendar, another online shop. Or maybe you were thinking about bagels. But whatever. This is not just another online shop. It IS an online shop, but it has something most others don’t – a conscience!

Final Episode started out like those other guys a year and a bit ago. It had a very nice range of accessories from Pamela Love, Cast of Vices, Jeremy Scott, Julia deVille, Deadly Ponies and more. It even dabbled in feel-good times by donating to a different charity every month, and by sending things to you in the post for free (does it make me a bad person that I prefer that one?)

But then it did a big-assed yawn and got sick of all that. It wanted more. It looked itself in the mirror and thought 'but what kind of more'? Like most suffering an identity crisis, it then went out and bought a red-hot Porsche. I jest! No, it became a different kind of guy, promoting what it likes to call a ‘public showroom for today’s best independent design’. It has started adding in new designers that aren’t necessarily big names, but do good things, like: Estelle, Serpent & The Swan, Diaz, Man and Recreational.

Most of these are Australian-based and sustainable. And they get to pick what charity 10% of their sales go to. Plus, FE has Objects and Print projects in the works, collabing with some fa-resh designers (you?). So yeah, it’s same same – but definitely different.

Okay, here’s what Eva and Franklin (Tilda Swinton and John C Reilly) need to talk about – how they ended up with a Eurasian kid (Ezra Miller; as a child, Rock Duer and Jasper Newell). Clearly there was a maternity hospital swapsie and they accidentally ended up with a sociopathic, high-school-massacring cuckoo. Where’s Angelina Jolie when you need her?

Eva’s subjectivity complicates the central question of Lionel Shriver’s source novel – whether Kevin is innately evil, or Eva’s ambivalent mothering nurtured his monstrosity. Lynne Ramsay’s film represents Eva’s torturous soul-searching in a lurid, nightmarish way, both in wistful memories of Eva’s life before Kevin and unsettling, retrospectively portentous ones of their battle of wills. As if in further penance, Eva stoically endures the hatred of her leafy community, whose golden children Kevin slew.

Ramsay’s heavy-handed use of ironic visual/soundtrack juxtapositions and allegorical imagery tip the film into melodrama, reminding me of I Am Love, also starring Swinton. Eva flirts with Franklin in the rain, but sprinklers offer a more sinister soaking; she echoes Kevin’s repulsive nail-biting by picking eggshells from mouthfuls of omelette. And both Eva’s tomato-throwing travel memories and her cleaning an anonymous vandal’s red paint from her verandah evoke her Lady Macbeth-style ‘bloody hands’.

Bianca Hester, Terri Bird and Scott Mitchell collaborate under the acronym OSW – Open Spatial Workshop. The word 'workshop' is a good clue – OSW's projects are characterised by a highly visible process that takes place over intervals of time in the gallery or in urban spaces. Their work often seems to be in a state of perpetual becoming – experimental in the sense that neither you nor the artist knows for sure what the project will culminate in (if anything). This sets the work up for all sorts of easy and possibly valid criticism - “I don't get it”, “Nothing happened” or “Who cares?”. It's a time-based project though, so naturally you've gotta give it time. The idea of giving something time and attention in exchange for slow growth isn't that popular – people would generally much prefer to hand over money for a quick fix.

And to be fair, OSW have gotten some pretty great results. In 2009 they ran the cheekily named west Brunswick Sculpture Triennial (wBST) in a series of backyards in Brunswick. In 2005 they won the Melbourne Prize for Urban Sculpture with Groundings - a series of spinning circular panels covered in grass installed in the ground in Queen Victoria Gardens. Their upcoming project at the aEaf - Big Log Jam - works on the premise of cannibalising their past projects into a remixed history of their own achievements.

P.A.M. have long admired Japanese artist Misaki Kawai. They say, "At first we just bought her zines for Someday store and from there we asked her if we could use her artwork for the collection we were developing." She must have said, "Sure!" because if you have a look at their latest collection, Wild Wild Life, Misaki's prints are all over it. Of particular note are these slippery silked-up pieces made from 100% Silk Spun Habotaithe.

Misaki Kuwai's print of tigers, lions, parrots and crosses is spread across a royal blue and mustard yellow backdrop for three different designs: A pine cone layered dress, a full-length jumpsuit (Uma Thurman Kill Bill booya(!) kinda stylin') and a singlet with buttons up top and a pocket band at the base.

Fittingly, this morning I found an old magazine with an article on wearing shiny clothes. It said, "The question must be asked - how does one enjoy wearing shiny clothes?" It's simple. I put on the jumpsuit.

There was such a time when “lunch at the Exeter” meant to me a half carafe of rose and some suspicious barbecued rice crisp things from the convenience store next door. Fortunately, youthful folly (or “food retardedness”) has been replaced by adult gluttony and now an Exeter lunch will generally consist of any one of a multiplicity of life-changing meals that are displayed on their menu daily.

We’ve all eaten pie before, but one has never truly known pie until one has eaten it at the Ex. First and foremost the pie sits on a bed of mash so velvety and buttery that chewing is optional. The fillings are equally as delish. Goat, mint and thyme heaven, amiriteladies? Or try the pork belly stuffed with chestnuts, which is so goddam crisp it’ll make a bitch’s freshly ironed dollar bills jealous. Other delightful menu items include squid stuffed with capsicum and sundried tomato, but you may prefer to call it mouthgasm from the Mediterranean Sea. However, if you are dining at the Ex because you fancy a pint and an impeccable pub meal, opt for one of the staple items, such as the ever-present schnitty, burger or steak sandwich… and inundate all of them in mushroom sauce. You’ll never resort to weird fake bacon chips again.

Remember school? That was fun. Remember that time the old man made you play football for four years as some kind of weird extension of his own disappointment as a mediocre sportsman, and the one time in those four years you finally 'hip-and-shouldered' some kid with your scrawny frame the kid ended up on the ground writhing around on the grass crying tears of agony like the fragile nine year old he was? Yep, those were the days. Okay, maybe your story doesn't go like that but there is a moral here: team sports teach you important lessons about social dynamics, good parenting, and the brutality of life. So, if you feel like you've stopped learning, forget French classes or that doctorate you're doing for the sake of it, there's only one thing left to do and that is thus: to play in a social sports team.

Through this you will learn a bunch of things about yourself that were left behind in the incendiary haze of smouldering pubescence/innocent youthful naivety. Things like you are actually an overly competitive narcissistic jerk or, on the happy side of the coin, you are a truly classy natural born leader. Social team sports are also fun because if you've had a bad day you can yell at the referee, the opponents, and your best friends, all in the safe environment of your local recreational facility. There are other things you can do that perhaps are less meaningful but just as important, like winning by confusing your opponents into sporting impotence by trash talking your own teammates. I recommend White Men Can't Jump for the rudimentary skills. Try "Your Momma so stupid, it takes her two hours to watch 60 Minutes!", and then customise your own from there.

So try it out, basketball, soccer, volleyball, all-in ping pong, whatever. At worst you'll get healthier / lose some flub / have something to do on a Tuesday night other than scrolling your news feed on Facebook.

Where was I at lunch? I was behind the bike shed just, y'know, 'chatting' with that babe-boy from the grade above*. Where were you? Planning to go to the Jade Monkey to see an epic five-band Friday night line up? That sounds great! The headlining band is from Melbourne, and Doe have been busy pulling some new songs together. Maybe I'll see if the babe-boy wants to come too.

*OK, so I wasn't. I was in the library researching my history project on the construction of the Hoover Dam. What of it?

C'mon, stop drawing a little basketball court on the outside of your housemates turtle's grubby container as if he's gonna play basketball, and git your awkward self down to Cuckoo to jut your limbs about. This Thing, an amazing artist-run experimental music collective from Sydney are bringing over Matthewdavid from Los Angeles and the infamous electronic label Brainfeeder. If you fancy the fine art of making beautiful music from a bunch of incoherent noises, then you will appreciate Matthewdavid. After the cancellation of Baths in October this will fill the gap. Matthewdavid is joined by Melbourne genius-men Galapagoose and Wooshie, and local genius-boy Slamagotchi.

Hey, guess what's really good? Chrome Dome, the band, are really good and they are playing two shows, dudes. That's doubley good, dudes! This one is at The Metro with all the free coffee, tea and biscuits you can handle plus a few cameos from bands including Repairs out of Melbourne plus locals Mondo Phase Band, Gold Bloom and Men's Health. The Chrome Domers play synth punk for fans of Suicide and The Screamers and they are here because they - along with Repairs - really, really like you and they are launching a wee 7" you should pick up.

Remember that episode of *Seinfeld* where George was a hand model? For a moment you had impure thoughts about him with his perfect cuticles, pearly white phalanges and liver spot free hand. You looked down at your own clappers and cringed.

Listen up flipper hands, you need Salus Body, the creation of Jason Cook, offering body, hand and therapeutic products including bath salts, herbal pillows, heat packs and soy candles. Their new "best of spa" range contains botanics that reduce premature aging, increase hydration and restore your sense of *wellbeing*. They're also free from harsh chemicals, mineral oils and synthetic fragrances.

Salus Body's Hand Rescue Kit is neatly packaged in a drawstring bag, containing their Lavender and Mandarin Hand and Cuticle Cream and Grapefruit and Jasmine Body Cleanser, which promise to reinvent your handshake with chamomile, aloe leaf, jojoba, plant extracts and vitamin E. Kits are available online at their website.

But listen to this. Thanks to Salus Body, we have a Hand Rescue Kit (valued at $69.90!) to give away. To enter, answer the following question.