The Thousands

Some malevolent force beyond our reckoning has made tomorrow the weekend so we're sending this to you a day early. Can you imagine? A day early. We realised this on Monday. As Mr Tyson says, "Everyone has a plan til they get punched in the mouth." Luckily Chris had accidentally been on a date to the Model Railway, Lani just finished sewing her bags, one Mr Hilton tweeted us a video he made at the Guitar Emporium and Odd Future sent us a fax. This thing just writes itself.

Cover image by Cathy Marshall. Be deadly like Cathy! Send covers to melbourne.photo@thethousands.com.au.

Russell sits at work with a blistering hangover, repeatedly revising a text to a guy he picked up the night before: "I feel like shit." Should I add a smiley face? Oh no wait - how about an exclamation point?

Weekend does an excellent job portraying the many modern day complexities of meeting someone you like, letting (or not letting) them know, and starting (or not starting) a relationship. The intimate details of this male / male coupling make the film particularly insightful and funny for homosexuals, especially if you've always felt like outsiders to 'gay culture'. But the pair's predicament will resonate with anyone who has felt their heart flutter or break in the last decade.

Though it's a small film, Weekend grabs at a lot of big ideas that will needle you long after it ends. Writer/director Andrew Haigh crafts characters that are refreshingly imperfect, and so three-dimensional you actually hear them speak (rather than their screenwriter). I hate to harp on the gay thing (and to call this a 'gay film' is reductive) but in comparison to the bulk of gay narratives, where all onscreen action is intended to provoke one of three physical responses (laughs, boners, or tears) having a film that appeals to your head and heart is extremely rare.

Beautifully shot, Haigh's Weekend artfully unpacks the issues surrounding the roles we play in relationships and in life. And, thankfully, it doesn't provide any easy answers.

Odd Future get bagged on for being misogynistic or just obnoxious, but, y'know, hip-hop. That's not new. We love them because underneath those artistic flourishes are a bunch of creative, funny, super colorful and original kids blowing up basic hip-hop (it's been sorely in need of a shake up for probably a decade). They rap about fucking dolphins, and they made a video of Tyler eating a cockroach that still made most end of year lists.

In between releasing a million singles and mixtapes, starting a clothing label, releasing a book, Twittering nonstop and running a pretty thorough tumblr, OFWGKTA have been lured down to Australia for BDO 2012. And we convinced BDO to organise a fax interview (thanks guys!) (fax transcript below).

What do you think people would find most surprising about Odd Future?

Odd Future - They all sleep in one bed.

The Odd Future clothing line is rad. Who are some of your influences (designers, labels, style icons)? We know you are big fans of Dill's label Fucking Awesome.

Odd Future - Supreme, vintage.
Tyler - Meth and cats inspire me a lot. And 90s Nick.  read more

Bad news, team: people die. Peter Carey’s The Chemistry of Tears told me so. In the book, horology conservator Catherine Gehrig is beat up about this death thing - her boss/lover kicked el cubo and it’s driven her to Stoli, rack and kleptomania. She starts restoring a mechanical bird while poring over the notebooks of Henry Blanding, the chap who commissioned the machine in 1854. He’s an Englishman adrift in Germany, mourning the death of his first child and worrying about his sickly second child. He hopes the mechanical bird will invigorate the ill kid. We get to hear from both Catherine and Henry in an Inception of grief.

Sound stodgy? It isn’t. This is a book by Peter Carey and Peter Carey is an Australian legend. A stamp told me so. In his hands, Catherine’s restoration of the automaton becomes a saga of personal growth and Henry’s trials turn into a mystery filled with ambiguity and shady Germans. While reading the book, take regular breaks to reflect on our relationship with machines, our attitude towards the unknowable and the ties between grief, madness and obsession. Five minutes every hour. I hope you don’t mind the book’s slipperiness, I really do. There’s a lot going on and Carey is happy to let it all float about, so don’t expect resolution in neat little bows. Life’s a mystery and so on. You need to be more patient. Your mum told me so.

Tenderfoot's what you call someone who's inexperienced at being outdoors. It's also the name of Condiment's exhibition about eating outdoors. Okay I'll say it: Right now some good looking kids are instagr.am-ing burnt marshmallows and buying up on Patagonia when there really is no need to. Camping has become a 'thing'.

So what takes Tenderfoot beyond the ridiculous? For me it's the open acknowledgement of being amateur and the way the exhibition manages to capture that collective, familiar feeling of eating outdoors. The work of Kasane Nogawa (Japan), Ye Rin Mok (South Korea), Nich Hance McElroy (North America), Peter Sutherland (North America) and Jessica Brent (Australia) is proof of this.

When I asked Condiment editors Chris and Jess about Tenderfoot, they talked about taking "the focus off the food itself and on how a prior experience can enhance enjoyment. For instance, a hot tin of tomatoes after a 50km river walk can be more satisfying than a $200 degustation." I really get this. When I was a tenderfoot, I went camping for the first time with my dad. The sausages, bread and raw carrot sticks we ate that night made for the most delicious and memorable dinner I've had yet.

I ran into Anita from Craft Victoria at a summer barbequa before Christmas and all I could do was look at her behind. No, no, above the belt guys. Her behind her back, where I saw she was wearing one of these incredible merino wool bags. After some investigation I determined it was the knitted handiwork of textile designer Lani Sommer, under her new label Soft Shocks. Yes, the bags were available to buy at Craft Victoria. No, we could not write about them yet because Lani's hands were not ready for this jelly.

You see, these bags are hand made by Lani in her Thornbury studio. Lani says, "The body of the bags is knit up using a hand-operated Singer knitting machine from the '70s. I make the rope using an awesome device called an 'embellish knit' which is basically a knitting nancy with a winder. I make the toggles from fimo/sculpey." The first bag took 12 hours, but now she's got it down to a cool 4.5. It can be a bitch, but Lani says that's okay because now she doesn't need to go to the gym.

The best thing is that each one is a one-off. Though every bag is structurally the same, Lani changes colour combinations depending on her mood and what kind of yarn or fabric is available at the time. Though Lani knows what she is doing (she is in her final year of textile design at RMIT, majoring in Knit), she would also like to thank Diane Sullivan and YouTube for making this all possible.

Don't be surprised if you go in to Someday this week and it has transformed into an '80s tropical euro super club: We got Michael Douglas to check it out for us.

The first Club PAM menswear delivery includes all the graphic tee designs for the season - and some juicy baseball caps.

RELATED LINKS:
Lookbook on Hypebeast

When I was 18 I found myself in a devastating creative slump. I’d been trying to learn guitar songs (mainly 'Classical Gas' and the Kirk Hammond bits of Metallica’s 'One') that I was in no way technically gifted enough to attempt. My stairway to heaven was only half-climbed and I was fed up. Then something glorious happened. I had a sonic wallop to the eardrums that made me realise guitars don’t need to be shredded, they just need the right tone, a few good chords and enough spooky-sounding reverb to freak out the squares.

Finding the right tone is about listening to your heroes then tinkering with awesome and unique equipment. That’s where Guitar Emporium comes in. It’s been run by an affable rocker named Darren for the past nineteen years and the man doesn’t muck around. There’s not much space so he only stocks a few beginner acoustics and the best, most idiosyncratic second-hand amps, pedals, guitars and parts. The best part is he’s strung up all the ‘miscellaneous electrics and pawn shop prizes’ he’s collected over the years as a self-described museum. Serious shapes. He’s apparently really good at fixing bung ebay purchases too.

IMAGES: Some stills above come from this awesome new video about Guitar Emporium by Chris Hilton of Contact Productions.

"Conflict is the essence of drama," the old screenwriter's saw goes. Which may be true, but, at least as far as contemporary film goes, it means the characters are unhappy all the goddamn time. Michel Hazanavicius's The Artist has its share of drama, conflict and unhappiness but the striking thing about this film is not that it's (mostly) silent or that it's black and white in a historically accurate way. It's that people smile throughout.

Michel Hazanavicius's now ten-times-Oscar-nominated film is the story of George Valentin (Jean Dujardin), a silent movie star who rejects the incipient era of sound film. We watch his tragic, hubristic fall as we simultaneously witness the rise of talkie starlet Peppy Miller (Bérénice Bejo). Dujardin looks the Platonic ideal of a dashing 1920s movie star. Equal parts Clark Gable and Gene Kelly (who wasn't in silent pictures, but the resemblance is too strong not to note).

People are going to talk about The Artist being an homage to a forgotten era; the way the performances skilfully walk the line between the naturalism that is demanded from contemporary film and the exaggeration that characterised silent ones. The score, the costumes, the whatever. What, to me at least, makes The Artist most unique is that it's an unapologetically joyful film. Which is a rare thing, particularly now. This exuberance seems to demand the technical affect and not the other way around. Plus, the dog is fucking adorable.

The idea was simple, the intent romantic: rent a bicycle built for two, ride around the Yarra Valley, stopping to sample wineries along the way. The reality was awful: fail in every numerous and long-winded attempt to secure said bicycle, bus around Zone 2 for hours on end, stopping only to sample what purported to be the largest model train village in the Southern Hemisphere.

First of all, let’s just stop it with the ‘largest in the Southern Hemisphere’ qualifications. Have you seen the southern hemisphere? It’s the shit one. Your radio telescope / shopping mall / model train village doesn’t really have to be that big when the only competition is in Uganda.

Secondly, why the hell am I looking at model trains? Because seeing grown men make tiny versions of transport infrastructure like it’s no big deal is weirdly awesome and you will have fun despite yourself. Also, it’s in a park with a huge lake you can ride those floating tricycles on. But don’t just take my word for it, see what Cardinia Council has to say of the park whose lawns it has to mow every other weekend: read more

UV Race are that great kind of easy-going shambolic punk that manages to sound unrehearsed and tight and at the same. They play a lot of songs about country town angst and the ridiculous amount of pretention in the world. They make you want to hang out with them so you can get drunk and make fun of how stupid people act; then act stupid yourselves. They’re playing on the roof of the Evelyn Hotel with a special super and (probably not so) secret guest (clue: THEE OH SEES) that will make your Julie Coopers boil.

Once it was a library, now it is a band room. And from tonight, and every last Thursday of the month onwards, it makes its most recent reincarnation: upstairs at the Gas is now... Gas Gallery! The plan is to have an artist, band, label, religious cult, political party, magazine, cafe, distributor, writer, poet, celebrity, non-celebrity, designer or it seems just about anyone who is interesting, curate an art exhibition with a music performance downstairs. For the opening it's Bjenny Montero - the lead singer from Montero! And what will he bring to the table besides that haircut? A collection of his posters! Comic art. Band/fan sketches. Sketchbook doodles. Sticker designs. T-shirt designs. Album designs. Video clips. Animations. His friends! Milk Teddy, Jon Michell, DJ Geoffrey O'Connor and Beaches DJs.

If you were unfamiliar with what has been variously labelled cosmic, space or nouveau disco - galactic, synth heavy, arpeggiated dance with the bpms turned down and the dub turned up - and had to guess where in the world could possibly be a de facto home of this re-edit heavy, expansive sound I would imagine Northern Europe wouldn't be anywhere near the top of your list.

Nonetheless, four of its biggest proponents, Rune Lindbæk, Todd Terje, Hans-Peter Lindstrøm and Prins Thomas all come from Norway. The last of whom is playing at Animals Dancing. Check his re-edit of Matsubara's 'S.O.S. (Society of Soul)'; his remix of 'Moustache' by Blackjoy; 'Goettsching' - his homage to the Ash Ra Temple founder and primary influence Manuel Göttsching - collaborations with Lindstrom like their remix of 'I Want It' by Locussolus; his mixes on Soundcloud and Beats in Space; or anything on his label Full Pupp. As is the style at Animals Dancing he will be playing from one until whenever he damn well pleases. Which is probably pretty late (or early, depending on how you look at these things) as long sets are apparently a speciality.

The various conventions and tropes of house and techno have, by now, been worn deeper than the grooves on that 200 gram virgin vinyl pressing of E2-E4 that you just paid way too much for. So when someone is willing to work within a genre but prepared to loosen its tie a little it can taste like a single malt when everyone is drinking a blend. You might want to occasionally tell Ital (100% Silk) to throw in a kick drum or two but you can't argue that what he's doing is interesting. Check 'Ital's Theme', 'One Hit' or this mix (with Bookworms) recorded ahead of his Australia / New Zealand tour. Support by the deep darkness of Kangaroo Skull, electro meanderings by Forces, what I have previously called 'Vangelis-meets-James-Chance-junglescapes' from No Zu and Plastic Champagne DJs. Postscript: I don't actually know whether there is a 200 gram pressing of E2-E4 so don't go emailing me about it. Go talk to a girl or something instead.

Of course. A Cambodian rock band "with Khmer Surin dance grooves, hints of the blues, French gypsy accordion music, acid rock [and] reggae." Let me print out that electronic mail and file it away in my filing cabinet. Right next to the press releases for the Uzbekistani beanbag shoppe and bakery, the DVD release of vintage Persian erotica, that back-alley Swedish butcher that only sells mince goat and framed portraits of the late Buddy Holly, the ham sandwich I am going to have for lunch and a CD compilation of Northern European people yelling at funerals. Oh, I see. You weren't kidding. Hold on a minute.

I have just listened to the music on The Cambodian Space Project's Myspace and am happy to report they are totally not a joke and are completely legitimate. You should see them play at The Grace Darling on Saturday. And it is space project as in outer space project. Not, like, space project as in convenient storage solutions at your local Ikea.

We're co-presenting this party with I Oh You and we're not going to tell you where it is. Until 24 hours before it starts, that is. The Drums are playing a DJ set. Whose lead singer Jonny Pierce possesses more than a passing resemblance to one William Zabka. Though that's kind of immaterial, you're paying to watch him (and his bandmates) play records, not get you a body bag. Besides, you'll probably be doing a pretty good job of getting yourself in the bag if previous I Oh You parties are anything to go by. They'd much rather go surfing than sweep the leg anyway. Alex and Jordan's knees are already bleeding. They are the Bleeding Knees Club, you see. They're hitting that sweet spot between garage and punk and making you wonder why people bother recording songs longer than three minutes. Last chance to see them before they tour the US and blow up like Tetraodontidae. Special guests Ships Piano, NPH DJs and Poncho DJs.

It's getting rarer and rare to be able to easily, perfectly encapsulate a band's sound within the confines of a genre. At least the ones worth listening to. Bands, that is. Not genres. The Pains of Being Pure at Heart make indie pop. In dee pop. They make it with considerable aplomb too. Aplomb, My Bloody Valentine-esque walls of guitar and an increasingly confident sound that transcends the sum-of-their-parts '90s influenceathon of their early albums. Peggy even gave us a recipe for Japanese turnips last year. All of this is why we are co-presenting this Laneway Festival sideshow with Mistletone, why Geoffrey O'Connor and Pop Singles are doing the support thing and why you should go.

In today's society owning an oil burner suggests you're a thyroid problem away from menopause. The same way eating a packet of Werther's Originals today implies you'll be using a bedpan tomorrow. So you have all these fancy essential oils, but nowhere to put them. You can't even walk into Dusk anymore without going postal. Regular oil burners are just a bleak reminder that you have entered the third trimester. OF. YOUR. LIFE.

Now picture this: a well designed oil burner. Incredulous, right? Wrong. Sydney-based object design label Page Thirty Three have reclaimed the mandate to aerate by producing a laboratory-inspired essential oil burner. The apparatus is built upon a Tasmanian oak hardwood base, and features a metal clamp that secures the glass flask in place with a grip tighter than the atomic bond shared between Marie Curie's isotopes. Each oil burner also comes with an Australian beeswax candle and homegrown lavender oil, working together to create a scent to bankrupt Glen 20. Light this baby and experience one hot flush you won't forget. Many applause (just think about it).

Buy one here or attempt to win one from this newsletter. Thanks to Page Thirty Three, we have one essential oil burner (valued at $169.95) to give away. (To enter, just answer the following question.)