The Thousands

If we had a dollar for every giveaway in this issue we'd have, like, 19 dollars. We could buy our own ticket instead of living vicariously by reading our OUT listings aloud while Thomas tries to sing the new Rat vs Possum album. Instead of touching Josh and Matt's books on a Friday and sharping old Italian men at cards.

Cover shot by Cathy Marshall and Mon Ditbunjong. Be deadly like Cathy and Mon! Send covers to melbourne.photo@thethousands.com.au.

Rat vs Possum exist in a post-LCD Soundsystem world where rock music can heavily borrow stylistic ideas from funk, dance and mainstream pop without feeling cheap or somehow impure. If you are only aware of the group from their debut Daughter Of Sunshine, this might seem like an odd thing to say. While it had about as much right to call itself ‘world music’ as a Vampire Weekend album, it was still a more earthy and earthly indie record that was accurate in describing itself as “faux-tribal”.

However, on listening to their new album Let Music & Bodies Unite, it’s evident that the influence of electronica and disco has seeped further into their sound since then, altering what they want their band to be - and, crucially, how they want their audience to dance.

‘Never Die’, for instance, is a vocoder-heavy tune that makes it feel like its creators have been stuck in a bunker with only No New York for company, while the lively rhythms and brash synth work of ‘Beat Inside You’ and ‘Home (N0)’ sound desperate to be given a chance to ignite a dancefloor somewhere as soon as possible.

It certainly makes Rat vs Possum appear bolder and, ironically for a record less ‘experimental’ than their last one, more willing to take risks; where Daughter of Sunshine sounded like it intended to visit distant lands, Let Music & Bodies Unite feels like it wants to visit distant galaxies.

Chet Faker did the best debut live set I’ve ever heard, live on RRR last weekend. It was something eerie.  After the performance I had a chat to Chet Faker about his sound, process, sex and the voices he hears in his head.

Robert Francis Coleman: How'd you find today, playing live on the air for the first time?

Chet Faker: Apologies for the garlic bread in the mouth. Well, today was only our sixth run through of the set, so, haven't really had too much practice.Having to talk in between was, you know…

R: What's your biggest concern about talking?

CF: Either swearing or saying something else that offends people.

R: Drug references?

CF: Don't know what you're talking about…

R: There was a song where you alluded to…

CF: Yeah, ‘Solo Sunrise’. It's a song written about quitting. Quitting something that you're addicted to. But it's written as if the thing you're addicted to is a person.

R: Like the whole 'love is a drug thing', or…?

CF: Yeah, pretty much, but it wasn't necessarily about love; though it could certainly be interpreted that way. read more

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.

Edgeley's spring/summer range challenges us all to a spring/summer that's less easy colour tee with jeans and more tailored, colourful, uh huh, she got herself together. Using the print of her artist friend Andrew Hennig, Alice has sewn together a collection that I think a Basquiat girlfriend would wear. It's wearable art. That's it, very wear-appropriate art. The base of the range is a spray paint graphic printed on silk with black trimmings. The button up 'Tony Silk shirt' is best tucked in to a pair of black skinnies or a pencil skirt. The longer form of the shirt is the 'Peggy dress' with third-length sleeves and sharp shoulders.

If you have been travelling along Gertrude Street of late you will have noticed one stand-out piece worn by le mannequin. At first intimidating, the 'Viz silhouette dress' (destruction site inspection high vis) is a figure hugging nylon-mesh with a long black love heart strip running down the centre. Could you wear this? Any girl with herself together could pull it off this summer.

Since its inception in 2010 independent art book service World Food Books has grown from a small outpost at the recently concluded Y3K project to a travelling book cart and online mail-order service. After several months emerging at various art pop-up locales via wheels, World Food Books is finally open for regular one-stop book shopping in the Nicholas Building.

Co-helmed by Melbourne artists Josh Petherick and Matt Hinkley, on most days of the week this third floor space is their office, closed for office business. On Fridays they open the doors to the public. The trusty cart joins a moveable timber display stacked neatly with a hand-selection of international contemporary art journals, artist books, monographs, editions, newspapers, catalogues, and rare books. Printed ephemera we have grown used to ogling on the internets can now be touched in real life. Touch it! But only on Fridays.

The chosen collection of reading matter has expanded since early days but it is still highly curated. My favourite Poles Morava Books have their titles here. So do De Appel, Semiotext(e) and The MIT Press, to name only a few. Local contemporary artists are pages away from their international peers. Shelves are shared between critical text and self-published self-stapled art pieces. You will find something thought-provoking and, once you're done feeling it, it's only right to take it home.

Why everyone has to be so freaked out about art I don't know. Well, I do know. Haters gonna hate. Curators gonna curate. Everyone be actin like your mate. Once I was so afraid of an artist I spent two hours coming up with the question, "Do your sculptures pit art's fashionable atheism and the irony now embedded somewhere in all post Grunge-era conceptualism against a personal ambition to explore the sincere?" Then when I got to the gallery I went, "Hey have you seen that Jeff Koons movie?"

Last year, Brooklyn-based art journal Paper Monument published the pamphlet I like your work: art and etiquette. The editor said, "We had noticed that everyone involved in art talks endlessly about feelings of social unease..." Check it out. It's full of great advice such as, "Wait until you are at least six blocks away from a show before expressing a negative opinion about the show - this is known as the six block rule." And, "If you're a skinny artist, be clean and neat. If you're a fat artist be crazy looking and disheveled."

Why am I appraising you of this resource? Because Saturday is Gertrude Studios open day. The day when you're allowed to burst into the studios of the Gertrude Contemporary artists and, you know, meet them. Laith McGregor, for instance. You can meet him and ask him why he did this picture of Wilson from Castaway. Trevelyan Clay as well. Who else? Darren Sylvester, Katie Lee and Jake Walker, to name three. Or just snoop around. If anyone talks to you, quote David Lynch: "I don’t know why people expect art to make sense when they accept the fact that life doesn’t make sense!" Then run away.

They're Douglas & Hope plates with work from Melbourne creatives including Dawn Tan and Dylan Martorell on them. An illustration of a burger! An owl with two heads! A monster! Eatin' off some melamine on my mezzanine. Doo-de-doo. Smothering my crumpets in that margarine. Any of you dis' my melamine I put yo' head on the guillotine. Boyfriend be taking me on picnics where we use our melamine. Cooking up home-made burgers using pressurised kerosene.

In other Douglas & Hope news, Cath Hope has gone to the country. She's spending some time at the Newstead Butter Factory and next weekend is an open weekend. You can have a look at the old butter factory she's working in. You can buy some melamine plates. You can have some of Cath's tea, coffee, bulboar snags and kiwi scones. Apparently they're better than ours.

The Butter Factory open weekend is on Sat Dec 3, 10am-6pm and Sun Dec 4, 11am-5pm. More info over 'ere.

At a coffee shop in my hometown I ran into my friend Jon, who I skated with when we were teenagers. While his toe-headed son Mylo played we talked about old times; Jon recalled, "We were dicks! We'd crash parties, walk into bars like we owned the place. I was never an instigator. I'd just sit back and watch, like, 'what's gonna happen tonight?'"

What's rad about Odd Future and probably what's got "old" white dudes like me interested is they broadcast that vibe worldwide; the fun of being a young skate punk, being kind of a dick and not caring. We get to watch without instigating.

This book is mainly photos, sandwiched between a bit of Tyler's Always Amusing Soundbite-Based Prose. It's not amazing or anything; it'll make the haters fume, but the diehards will swoon. It's got pizza shots, Sharpie tees, homemade tats, posing for pictures, cute skate outfits, girl action, skate photos, and lots of bird flipping, showing the crew can be as creative, silly, funny and offensive in real life as they are on recordings.

My favorite photo is the crew sitting on their boards, on the curb, eating take out. Skaters are the best at hanging out, and hanging out is the best thing in the world. So why is anyone surprised we all love Wolf Gang?

I'm the kind of girl who likes my coffee warm and my card games ancient. While Leonardo Di Vinci was in Florence revolutionising the modern world, the people of Naples were wildly gesticulating to a brand new scene. In the ports and piazzas they were playing Scopa, a 600-year-old card game of opportunity and honour.

Scopa means 'sweep' (and 'sex') in Italian so if you're not in the mood to do it Saturday morning, sweep I mean, then at least you can get busy on the card table. Pull up a few crates in your local alleyway, drink black coffee so strong it hurts your teeth and make like any self-respecting 72-year-old Italian man.

Scopa is entirely based on luck so play your cards right and an inexperienced honkiano like yourself could end up whipping even the most well seasoned club veteran.

The things you will need for this are:
A deck of Scopa cards
Milk crates
Tiny espressos
A healthy swag of Italian swear words to hurl at your opponent  read more

The taco renaissance trailing through Melbourne shows no sign of abating and thank God because I’d really like to see those Old El Paso jerks go out of business. David and Tim, owners of the new Fonda Mexican in Richmond, told me they came up with the idea behind the ‘authentic’ taco craze over two years ago, then spent that time painstakingly researching the perfect menu and snaring chefs Lupita Reid and Ravi Press to do the heavy lifting. In that time they’ve watched their idea spread quicker than polio at an anti-vaccine commune and have opened their doors just in time to be counted amongst the tortilla new wave.

Beyond the tacos (which are both cheap and awesome) there’s a variety of standard fare that mixes the traditional with the non-chorizo quesadillas and kangaroo burritos. The liquor license is due by the end of November so look forward to margaritas, tequila that doesn’t come with a plastic sombrero on the bottle and plenty of cevasa. In the meantime you can cool off from the sun/homemade salsa with an evaporated milk and soaked rice on ice (the horchata - which is way nicer than that description implies).

Open 'til midnight on weekends, there is now no Godly excuse to still be eating souvlaki at your age.

This exhibition is a collection of limited-edition, hand-signed prints from Marc Martin 's new book Silent Observer, plus some from his old book Curious Explorers Illustrated Pocket Companion to Exotic Animals A-Z and some illustrations he found time to do in between releasing these two aforementioned books. It's like David Attenborough met Roger Hargreaves, moved to Melbourne and cloned a protege. Hey you know what else? Lamington Drive is hosting The Design Files 2012 Calendar launch on the same night. One P Mod wrote this aforementioned calendar up last week.

Obus is having a four-day sale starting today. Everything with a pink dot on it from the Destino Mexico range is on sale - from 10% to 30% off, to be precise! I have a pink dot on me just thinking about it.

Seismometers register earthquakes, hygrometers measure humidity, Geiger counters detect radiation. There's no instrumentation out there quantifying the amount of art in the atmosphere but that's okay because holy crap West Space would break the fucking thing this Friday. Three openings: Telepathy and Love: The Spanish Apartment curated by Sean Peoples and Veronica Kent, Pong Ping Paradise by Laith Mc Gregor and Suburban Memory by Polly Stanton and Saskia Moore.

Despite having a name that sounds like a pair of wang danglers, Red Hot Shorts has gone from strength to strength, wowing audiences with their curated short film nights for more than two years now. This month's edition is a 2011 finale and Gus says they promise to go out and bang you. Wait, go out with a bang. It's a retrospective of shorts - all of which have recently won a 'Best Short Film' award at the Academy Awards, Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF), Melbourne International Animation Festival (MIAF) or the recent RMIT Student Awards. None of my shorts have won an award, which goes to show I should get a pee pee pouch at least.

Everyone knows rock is the music of the devil. Thankfully the good people at St Michael's on Collins Street are willing to ignore this fact and are letting London-based art/noise outfit HTRK rattle their stained-glass widows with an Almighty Drone as part of Melbourne Music Week's Labels Live series. HTRK are spooky-sounding enough as it is so getting them to play in 150 year-old Lomardic-style house of god is definitely going to be killer. Helping shake the pews on the night will be Melbourne's psych-rock babes Beaches, violin-toting ambient loopster Wintercoats, and new Mistletone signings The Orbweavers and Montero. We've got a double pass to give away!

Helping draw a line under the whole Melbourne Music Week thing will be a show curated by Hazel, Blake and Tig from Two Bright Lakes. So as well as visual space invasions by Cornelius Brown and Joshua Batty there’ll be loads of local bands. Let us list them: Oscar + Martin (they sound blissfully reflective)! Canyons (they’re the darlings of Modular)! Lost Animal (they sound like Nick Cave if he started making lounge jazz)! Plus Teeth & Tongue, Nick Huggins, and then Bamboo Musik playing records to dance to too.

PS: Wait until you see this roof. Here's a photo we took up there last year, of James wishing he had a slip 'n' slide.

At Throwing Frisbees you are all invited to throw frisbees. Sam will be throwing the sausages around that he just cooked on his BBQ. Mary & Peter are throwing on a performance called 'Chiaroscuro, Baby'. Everyone's throwing together stalls by leaving comments on the Zuckerbook page. Someone commented with this. Hehe. And these guys are throwing on performances too: Coins, Rainbow Chan (Syd), Alex Lashlie, The Townhouses, Children in Bloom, Natasha Rose (Patinka Cha cha), The Fuses, Flash Forest & Mol One, Birds for Running and The Shards.

Christmas is approaching and with that comes the delirium of Christmas shopping. You may have convinced your relatives last year that tea is the new soap as far as presents are concerned, but this year they'll be onto you. Do you want to be a disappointment? Do you? DO YOU? Go to Markit@FedSquare this Sunday and reclaim your title as 'nana's favourite'.

Markit@FedSquare is a biannual market run by Simon Obarzanek focusing on the best Australian independent designers and illustrators -  each selling everything from jewellery to homewares, stationery and clothing. For many of the stall exhibitors, including Beci Orpin, Betty Jo, Cat-Rabbit and Kate Rhode, this is the only time you can buy from them in real life, as they usually only exist in virtual realities (Etsy, Bigcartel etc).

And guess what? Thanks to Markit@FedSquare we have a $500 HAMPER to give away! This type of hamper is not synonymous with laundry. It contains the unsoiled products of Corky Saint Clair, Beci Orpin, Limedrop, Pieces of Eight / Edition X, Emily Green, Able & Game, Handmadelove By Dawn Tan, Third Drawer Down, and Dumbo Feather (did you know Paul Jennings is in the latest issue?) How Unreal, Unbelievable, Uncanny and slightly emotionally Unbearable if you're not the winner. There's just one catch: you've got to pick it up in the flesh this Sunday at the Markit if you win. Work those biceps. (To enter, just answer the following question.)