The Thousands

We can't imagine why you are lying in a sand dune right now. You could be putting lambs on fairy bread. Or writing a punk song about the time you got a parking ticket. Or playing professional gong! Everything else just pales in comparison.

Covershot by Santa Katkute. Be king of the dunes like Santa, email us your covershots!

Scary Japanese experimental duo Sarry were so good at their Dada sideshow a few months ago they were nominated for Best Event at Perth Audio Weird Performance Awards. That’s some kind of flattery considering music that sounds like a fusion of noise and ritual sacrifice isn’t exactly everyone’s cup of goat’s blood. Luckily for us, though, the clever chaps at ‘the garage’ recorded the set and put it out on a CD, along with local purveyors of loud, slow, doom - Drowning Horse.

Sarry are a different kind of miserable with ‘Memento Mori’ making this humble reviewer think she was listening to Throbbing Gristle’s First Annual Report, before some bowel-emptying sub tones from 821’s bass (yes, his name is a number) made her realise otherwise. Lady-singer Fujiyuki also coos in Japanese, so that’s another reason not to make the comparison with the 70s outfit from northern England. But considering Sarry’s sound, we’re sure that they share their themes.

Around the same time John Marsden was introducing us Aussies to the illicit world of teen sex and Young Adult Fiction with The Dead of the Night, there was a much cooler counterpart in Blake Nelson’s Girl in the US. His main protagonist, Andrea Marr, was a fifteen year old girl discovering shaved heads and alternative culture in the then super-hip days of Portland, Oregon, circa 1994.

Weirdly, it makes you think that grown men do growing girls better than we do, and Blake’s second instalment to the Andrea Marr saga, Dream School, is further proof. It's been 18 years since Girl was first serialised in the now defunct Sassy Magazine but Andrea is miraculously only three years older and setting off to experience the joys and disappointments of being a gifted Portland punker in the midst of an elite (read: elitist) university. In realising not everyone thinks mix tapes and DIY culture are the best things in the world (us excluded), Andrea navigates a campus of casual sex and drugs with a dash of the 90s nostalgia we’ve all been gagging for.

When you're little, the world is made up of inarguable facts: blue is the best icy pole 'flavour' and your dad would definitely win in a fight against Superman in the unlikely event that Superman turned evil. (Superman would fight stronger, but your dad would fight smarter.)

Abdul-Rahman Abdullah has taken time off being an ambassador for an imaginary nation to remember these certainties and recognise them as early exercises in mythmaking. From a toy triceratops on the bedroom floor to a lamb reclining in a dish of hundreds and thousands, Inside the Little Kingdom explores fuzzy recollections of Abdul's own childhood myths through vivid sculpture.

Predictably, these stories fade as we grow up to encounter things that challenge their absolute truth - admit it, once in a while an orange icy pole really hits the spot - but they linger half-remembered, still crucial elements of our identities. (Don't worry, we still reckon your dad could give Superman a pretty good run for his money.)

Before it was cool to serve beverages inside them, glass jars were used by my family to collect odds and ends around the house. Containers emptied of Strawberry Jam were aligned around the garage, filled with nails, screws, nuts and bolts. I couldn’t see it as a child, but those jars were indeed a mini-exhibition concerning the things we place aside for future use.

The Conservatorium speaks to both the practice and thematic impulses behind an empty jar. Curated by Proximity’s Renae Coles and Perth Zine Collective’s Anna Dunhill, this exhibition will be the first hosted in the recently opened Paper Mountain, an artist-run community centre which will be decorated by multiple mini-spaces of the glass, plastic or ceramic variety. Amongst the artists involved are such luminaries as photographer Jackson Eaton, artist Sheridan Coleman and writer Lily Chan. Even a live school of fish will be present within one container in Abdul Abdullah’s Life Support System - talk about creativity in confined spaces!

Like a plastic Peanut Butter jar of Allen keys, The Conservatorium reminds us that the most essential of items exist in the tiniest of spaces, prompting us to reflect on what we store away. Not only what we collect for future preservation, but for past introspection.

In December, our google-eyed tumblrowsing led us inevitably to this pair of shorts. Just look at them! It's like you got carpet burn on a magic carpet.

They're called the Aladdin Walking Short and they're by a New Zealand label called Sly Guild, which was started by three brothers "who see themselves in a bit of a ghost town when it comes to manufacturing locally for a streetwear market that is ruled by pre-made then print tees". So they're doing it all themselves, including cutting and sewing everything in house.

They've got a lot of new stuff in their online store now including t-shirts, tanks, classic camper style 5-panel hats and some incredible shirts (our editor has bought one due to it being "clubwear in the resort-iest sense"),

It's no surprise that Stolen Girlfriends Club have nailed it yet again with their AW12 'Here Lies The Bones' collection. Derek Henderson and Maya Villiger shot the women's and men's ranges respectively (and ingeniously). And now I, personally, want nothing more than to laze about a teenage boy's share house, occasionally pouring cornflakes all over my face while I wear patterned suits and faux raccoon fur and get Russian prison tattoos.

Lace tanks and dresses with flowery human skeletal detail, and silk georgette wrap shorts, shirts and dresses printed with psychedelic, i-just-dropped-3-tabs, sugar skulls and Russian pirate sketches are central in the women's range.

The menswear (Stolen by Stolen Girlfriends Club) is safely monochromatic, with some very welcome sections of leather and deep red and blue cable knit, and an adapted version of the women's russian pirate sketch shirt. The sweats are long and the printed tees (especially the dark green mull leaf made from tiny bones) are hard to fault. The entire collection is.

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.

If people at work are giving you crap for your lame lunches, show them that you know how to bring the party by throwing a few home-made tequila peanut butter cups under the lid. Chocolate-melting dexterity and a lot of commitment is needed to make them look purdy, but if you muck things up, they still taste totally deadly. Just don't forget the chewy afterwards - don't want those co-workers getting a whiff of your sugary high!

To make twenty peanut butter cups you’ll need:
2 cups/one jar of peanut butter (crunchy or smooth)
1 packet/two sticks of butter
1 packet of icing sugar
2 shots of tequila (or rum)
Two packets of cooking chocolate melts (more/less depending on the size of your moulds)
Dash of milk
Moulds for tiny muffins (re-useable plastic ones work the best)

Step One: Melt the choc in a saucepan over hot (not boiling) water. Be careful not to burn it. Add a dash of milk if it is the thick kind that is tricky to stir. Do not use the microwave!

Step Two: Spread the chocolate up the sides of the moulds (this is by far the hardest part). If you are struggling, do the one side at a time and then the bottom. Keep one quarter of the melted chocolate simmering to be used as the top later. read more

Perth is a city full of wonderful and exciting things, but it is rarely a city that can claim a ‘first’. Until now! Now we have the best ‘first’ ever: Australia’s first micro-festival of one-on-one art, aka Proximity. Put that in your cool pipe and smoke it you new wave everything east coasters!

What happens in Proximity is this: 12 independent theatre, dance and live artists from WA have each custom made a performance for you. Well, they don’t know you yet, but they do want to get very intimate with you! In the bathroom, in the kitchen, on the desk, in the hallway (mental note: food, trike bikes, tap shoes and/or beards may be involved). This show requires audience members to give as good as the performance they’re getting.

Perth artist Renae Coles self-admittedly pursues projects that are 'poetic and ridiculous'. She is a co-curator of The Conservatorium (also showing during Fringe World), a member of the Spatula Collective, and has had a residency at PICA. As a Proximity performer (her piece is called ‘The Union’) she can also illuminate the concepts and experiences of Proximity in a much more proficient manner than we can.

Danielle Marsland: What do you think the intimate performance experiences in Proximity can offer to people?
Renae Coles: Each performance is so different, so unique. A lot of them have a participatory element, which is interesting, because usually for an audience member to participate in a performance they have to be humiliated or dragged up the front. There's none of that in Proxmity because there is no other audience - it’s just the two of you. Even the ones where you don’t participate and you just watch, it’s still a performance just for you, which is a really beautiful gift.

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If you don’t think there's something about the Australian comic sensibility and its penchant for the crude humour of the self-made man, then you haven’t met Barry Morgan yet. As the singing organ salesman from Sunnyside, Adelaide, he’s warmed the hearts of everyone from the cast of Spicks and Specks to former Cabinet Minister Amanda Vanstone. He’s also about to set this town alight during Fringe World with his Hammond Aurora Classic and it will take more than Sir Les Patterson or a career-peak Eric Bana to stop him.

The word ‘boom’ carries a lot of weight around these parts. Not only does it come loaded with connotations next to words like ‘economic’ and ‘mining’ but it is also an apt onomatopœia for what happened to the long-neglected Perth Entertainment Centre not long ago. Unlike local developers, there are some out there who aren’t prone to just burying the past and that is why The Final Curtain is a film installation (as part of Fringe World) that will be celebrating the life and times of our lost emblem to Perth kitsch.

With 32 nippled gongs as part of their repertoire, The Kurbist Gong Band are some pretty lucky fellas. They’ve been tweaking their boob-shaped bells for the past seven years, playing Southbound, the Hydey when it was still manky, and even school workshops, all without once having to explain whether it is appropriate. That is probably because they play serious music with an inventory of instruments from around Asia and a focus on drone-y polyrhythms. Plus, with other bits and pieces by the name of ‘higalong’ and ‘crickello’, how could you not take them seriously? Catch their free performance at Fringe World this weekend.

Kooky punk siblings Astrid and Otto live in a fantasy world of plastic lions, bananenhaus (banana houses) and dinosaurs. Like a couple of Berlin gypsies, they are packing their bags to bring an odd mix of melodic genius and sexual tension to Fringe World’s Spiegeltent. Even without their signature red lipstick, these guys rock enough eclectic electro to knock your clogs off. If you’re dying to see what Eurovision is like on crack, we will catch you (and all the other big cats) there.

There's a new drink that's just hit the streets of Perth: it's called the Thom Yum. Basically it's the greatest cocktail I've tasted in a long time - an incredibly delicious, sweet, sour, and spicy surprise package, with a little bit of secret gold it leaves to the end to reveal… Which is convenient, seeing as it was invented by a guy called Thom, who's also the promoter for the event Barefaced Stories - an evening of delicious, sweet, sour and spicy surprises, with a little bit of secret gold at the end of each tale, from the mouths of Perth's most engaging story spillers. Barefaced is moving into overdrive for the Fringe Festival, shaking (and possibly stirring) up the Blue Room every Tuesday night.

Thanks to a certain cinema classic, I know lots of people who can't think about gangsters without thinking of pie fights and a pint-sized Jodie Foster, before she was hanging out with spiritual aliens or psychopaths. Fringe World appears offering up something more substantial than whipped cream on which to build new memories of old Chicago, if Pugsley Buzzard is even half as rad as his name suggests. Maybe just don't sit in the front row, in case his Tommy gun is actually full of lead, instead of just cabaret magic.

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 colourful and original kids blowing up basic hip-hop (it's been sorely in need of a shake up for probably a decade). We also love them because they agreed to do an interview with The Thousands. Via fax. Thanks guys!

In between rapping about fucking dolphins and eating cockroaches, OFWGKTA manage to release a million singles and mixtapes, release books, Tweet nonstop, run a solid tumblr and make this here clothing line.

This is all important because Odd Future are now in our city for the Big Day Out. Get your tickets here. In Sydney they did a pop-up shop for Odd Future clothes, which they will sadly not do anywhere else. But do not eat a roach because BDO have given us an orange t-shirt with a cat on it and some long white Golf Wang tube socks to give away. To enter, you better answer this very important question.