The Thousands

We went out for a walk this week and found a fence! No kidding. Then we also stumbled across psych cowboys, fruity and vegetably things, Polish dumplings, Kingers, suburbia and monkey business. It was pretty cool. We'll probably go for another trundle soon.

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

I grew up in the middle class north eastern suburbs of Adelaide - more north than east. It was pretty well average as far as I remember. At least it seemed so. Stuck in a burb with one shopping centre surrounded by seemingly insurmountable sprawl for a soon to be teen. The relative banality of day to day repetition. School holidays of: "What should we do, Daniel?", my best friend also named Daniel would ask, "Wanna go to the shops and hang out?" "Yeah, I guess," I would guess. This would often end in trying to skateboard with the older guys, ogling girls that were clearly too old for us (or were we too young? We were 11), building crap jumps for our BMXs, and probably throwing some rocks and/or fruit.

Live… Suburbia by Anthony Pappalardo and Max G Morton is essentially a personal photo album and curation - punctuated by Morton and Pappalardo's punchy acidic prose - of growing up in suburban Boston in the 80s. And while it is half a world away it has more in common with anyone who has enjoyed the joys of low density living than you might at first think. At its core, it's but one version of something we all experience - it's about growing up and finding things while stumbling through the maze of adolescence.

For these Bostonites it was preadolescent white-belt sidekicks to learning the skinhead skip, from bikes on the front lawn to chasing girls in the mall, from Kiss to Cro-Mags to Oi! punk to straight edge to art rock, to urethane on concrete and heading off to college. The catalogue of photos is expansive, from the oh so suburban normal to others that really capture the time - Kiss face paint, impressive mullets, and the hardcore scene. Not only is it about the imagery, it's also a great read and an interesting window into a bunch of kids' lives.

Like San Francisco’s Chrome and Sacramento’s The Twinkeyz before them, quiet and illusive Californian sci-fi punkers, Nothing People, have built a dystopian landscape of fuzzy, demented tunes, drenched in deep, dark reverb. Their latest release, a split 7-inch with Adelaide’s own psych cowboys, Mondo Phase Band, is no exception.

Nothing People set the scene of a post-apocalyptic underground - frightening, fuzzy and real. Side A begins with Pride, the kind of hollow, deep-bunker, drum sound we have come to expect from these guys, immediately accompanied by heavily fuzzed screeching guitar and mechanical, delayed vocals. Compromise follows with a bass and drum driven repetition, with fuzzed guitar feeding back through a range of vintage effects.

If Side A is post apocalypse, Mondo Phase Band give us the resistance. Side B is introduced by four cowbell hits that preface a synth driven guitar jam which, sans Moog and phaser, wouldn’t be out of place in Neil Young’s mid 70s back catalogue. Bringing this split to a perfect finish is the motorik driven Equalizer. Fading into pounding synth and angular guitar, it soundtracks Mondo Phase Band’s triumphant ride into the sunset as the credits roll.

Bursting with cohesion, both sides roll in and out of each other. Nothing People, unsurprisingly, provide us with another stellar release while Mondo Phase Band prove there are big things to come for them before they head to LA to record their debut album.

Diggers isn't just about pottering around in the shrubbery or tending to a limp basil plant - it's hardcore horticulture!

Ever heard of a Sweet Chocolate Capsicum? A Turk's Turban Pumpkin? A Cream of Saskatchewan Watermelon? Didn't think so. If it's obscure, Diggers definitely has the seeds for it in their overwhelmingly large range, and likewise if it's an heirloom or cottage-garden-style fruit, vegetable, bulb or flower that is particularly suited to Australian climates. A growing empire with a focus on cultivating your own food, Diggers has two shops in Victoria and one in our Botanic Gardens. Yet if you prefer to shop from the comfort of your dark room and glowing screen, you can also order online!

The Botanic Gardens shop is a joy to be in - it is filled with light and has that warm, earthy, greenhousey smell that places like Bunnings and Big W seem to struggle to replicate. And if your thumbs are less than green, fear not; you can still be saved! Diggers not only has seeds and plants, but garden accessories, books and even chook keeping gear! Plus, they will begin holding workshops in the new year to bring your skills up to scratch. A visit to Diggers is a perfect start to a summer spent outside. Straw hats and overalls here we come!

I feel strongly that Lars von Trier is fucked in the head and that we should condemn his films’ glorying in women’s psychological (and sometimes physical) suffering. But Melancholia surprised me with its romanticism… albeit the sublime kind tinged with suffocating dread. It’s an intimately powerful film that imagines the end of the world with tenderness rather than bombast.

Its disquieting, slo-mo prologue of apocalyptic imagery feels like video art. Like a nihilistic companion piece to Terrence Malick’s Tree of Life, it’s set to the prelude from Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde. This music recurs almost obsessively, coming to represent the florid inertia of sisters Justine (Kirsten Dunst) and Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg).

Severely depressed Justine fails to keep her shit together at her wedding to gormless Michael (Alexander Skarsgard) at the country estate of Claire and her husband John (Kiefer Sutherland). Some months later, almost catatonic, Claire returns to the house as an undiscovered planet named Melancholia collides catastrophically with Earth.

The sisters’ terrifying mum (Charlotte Rampling) abhors the sentimental rituals Claire cherishes. But Justine’s more atavistic rituals – baths; nude moonbathing as the planet encroaches; constructing a ‘magic cave’ with her small nephew – provide solace at the last.

I’ve known Lisa King for a while now. I first met her up in the dance studio/sometimes art factory Paperhorse Studios. I once bought some of her art I saw in a basement pub. She did a few covers for my dud magazine. I even blessed her with a new nickname ('Kinger').

The best part about knowing any arteest for a while is that you get to dip back in and out of their work, checking out from time to time refinements in style that appear to you to be spontaneous and effortless. The secret, of course, is that there’s nothing effortless about artistic progression: it’s a painful, frustrating, monotonous process that takes bolting yourself inside a room with nothing but a pencil, wad of scrap paper, and 32-pack of bog roll to overcome.

For the past little while, Lisa’s been in this type of lockdown. She’s had a few shows but mostly she’s been hacking away at that sketchbook, slowly and incrementally getting somewhere – and Friday’s show represents a big payoff in the process. I suppose my only concern for the show, Gazing Heroes, is that it might be a bit of a fire hazard. I only say this because there’s a lot of wood involved: a smattering of painted longboards and skateboards, delicately constructed sculptures, and a tribal hut smack bang in the middle. Permeating the portraits of people and animals on show there’s a raw, earthy vibe; something haunting and primordial that I almost called ‘primitive’ before I heard Edward Said slowly begin to rotate in his grave. Whatever you call it, it’s magnetic – and another fascinating point on the Kinger trajectory for us to dip into.

Hey DIYers! Instead of waking up at 3am to bid on eBay for that overpriced vintage guitar effects pedal, why not have a crack at making your own? Impossible? Nope just read on!

Having myself not soldered (soddered if you’re American) a piece of metal since high school, let me tell you that all you need to get by is a pedal kit from Build Your Own Clone and the occasional online tutorial. Actually you better add to that list a decent soldering iron as things can end up a bit like doing surgery with a stick of butter otherwise.

A few hours and probably half a litre of summer sweat later and you should successfully have cloned your first pedal. Even if the pedal's circuit board looks more like a used cheese grater than a refined piece of sonic technology the sound should be just right.

With BYOC claiming to have the world's finest DIY kits, the verdict on my own attempt at the Scrambled Octave Pedal for the tech-heads out there is that it was easy to assemble and gives a damn nice fuzzy tone, with enough levels of controllable octave to create something nice and freaky. Well worth having a go if you want to keep an eye on the beer fund and sleep through that eBay auction alarm.

Dumplings. It’s a beautiful word, encompassing all that I hold dear. There’s the pretty little packages of prawn and coriander at yum cha; the cheap, ungainly and delicious blobs from Dumpling King; or slippery, ginger-filled pork gyoza (Wasai’s are the best). Then there’s the European side: some made of dough sitting in a stew, some made of potato, filled with meat. The real king of dumplings though is the Polish variety: pierogi. Savoury and sweet; vegetarian and meatatarian; steamable, boilable, fryable! So many dumplings...

If all this is making you hungry, the best place to go for pierogi is Mama’s Pierogi on Port Road. You can buy all the flavours of the rainbow – mushroom and sauerkraut, meat and sauerkraut, lentil, potato and cheese (yes!), spinach and fetta, sour cherry, blueberry, strawberry! They also have goulash, bigos (Hunter’s Stew), stuffed capsicums, cabbage rolls, gherkin soup... yeah, it’s made of gherkins. Take your bag of treats home and cook them how you want, or sit down with a plate of pierogi in the shop cooked in brown butter, onion and breadcrumbs. Hells yes.

I have always had a pretty hard time with most zoos - lions pacing back and forth looking pretty peed off, more fences than open air, and those spoilt and boring pandas get refrigerated rocks, bamboo flavoured icey poles, and poon tang on tap that they are always 'too tired' for. All the while the dudest of all African animal dudes - the hippopotamus - gets a pond that resembles more the Brickworks bumper-boat pool than a sub-Saharan oasis. So, to sort this sadness out I stood up to my demons and said "flllegggum" and went to the... zoo.

However, this time I went up the freeway to Monarto Zoo and it felt a lot like that moment in that dank mess called Garden State when they stood in the rain and yelled into that big hole. I'm not sure what it was but I am fairly sure I was feeling good emotions, possibly relief. My friends said stuff like, "BEST DAY EVA".

The giraffes had hectares of space that they shared with humungous ostriches (way cooler than emus, by the way) and other horned creatures in a pretty valley that even had a lake. It was funny watching them trying to drink, it was so difficult for those lanky dorks but they seemed happy for the stretch. The cheetahs were like pet dogs, they even sat on command just like Ubu! The meerkats were their usual uptight but charming and attentive selves. And there was a cafeteria full of Frozen Coke, flat whites and sausage rolls. For something like $30 you could walk around just about anywhere except near the lions and jump on and off unlimited Zu-loop shuttle buses with humorous semi-literate tour guides. Total bargain - I didn't think restoring my faith in zoos would come so cheap.

Another week, another gig, another night at the Metro, another battle for a place to park the bike, another long overdue catch up, another cuppa from the pokie room, another 'shouldn't have had that much to drink', another awkward conversation, another hilarious in-joke, another stamp on the wrist, another 'to La Sing, or not to La Sing?', another dreamy Stacey Wilson project, another mesmerising Gold Bloom outing, another frustratingly talented lad from Melbourne and a debut headlining show from Bad Dreems. Alright? Alright.

Hey look, it's Adelaide's favourite and most kickin' soul outfit, The Transatlantics! Why, what a good-looking bunch of young folk. And sass to boot! Those girls, look how they move. I hear we won't see them again for a while, they're recording soon. And look, over there on the horizon! It's that young band with ridiculous amounts of talent and spritely folk tunes, The Bearded Gypsy Band. And who's that handsome and well-dressed stranger over by the bar? Oh it's Max Savage. I hear his music is well heartbreaking. I ain't missing this gig.

This is a really special show. Not just because the most excellent scrapsters Twerps are in town and are launching their long awaited self-titled debut record, but because it's a happy-sad moment. Happy because Hit The Jackpot, one of the very bestest, are playing this show, but sad because this will mark their indefinite hiatus as Jess and Kynan move to the States. With support by Old Mate and the incorrigible Matt Banham who has almost beaten the department stores to Christmas this year, this is a show you should most definitely get to if ya know what's good for ya.

Having been crooned to sleep as little ones by Bob Marley himself, the Marley family know good sound. In an effort to carry on the still-relevant, ever-simplistic mantra of 'One Love' they're keeping the spirit of their old man alive, creating a 'movement' in the way of headphones and speakers.

All the products at The House Of Marley have been crafted using the sounds of reggae as a starting point. In short, the bass on these things is out-of-control, without a trace of even the slightest distortion. They've worked on the high pitches, too, for clean sound on either end of the sonic spectrum. Aesthetically they're about as far away from the heinous futuristic get-up you might see chumps sporting on the bus. These are very simple black and brown leather, recyclable, with a tangle-free cord and plenty of other techno-jargon-filled features you can smile-and-nod about too.

Backing up the earthy aesthetics, the Marley family use only reusable or renewable materials to make and package their products. It's times like these the glass feels half full.

You can buy Marley Headphones from these stockists or if you're lucky you can win the pair of Exodus Headphones we are giving away! Over-the-ear design, 20Hz-20+kHz frequency response for clear sound reproduction, a 40-millimeter dynamic moving coil speaker drive for sound reinforcement and integrated three-button Apple controls compatible with iPod and iPhone - RRP $149.95. To enter, just answer the following question. (Warning: We've rigged it so that this kid can win).