The Thousands

Feeling starry eyed? Too spaced out? Get out a sponge and wipe the egg off your face, because we're bringing you back to reality, via doomsdayers, soothsayers, and fashion-forward voyeurs. Or let the eggs run down your legs, if you missed the chance of teenage pregnancy at The Prom!

Covershot by Weird Frequency. Send us your twilight shots and reefknots and what not!

Streamers, punch, buzz bands. Bourgeois Bogan’s annual Prom is a highlight on the independent party calendar, and it’s always totally off the hook. The girls raid op-shops for dresses to bespoke. The boys raid Dad’s wardrobe for a houndstooth. A few people take along a date, nearly all go home with one.

Two guys tightening their pink bow ties and buying up pineapple juice in bulk for this weekend’s Prom V are Bourgeois Bogan co-founders Petro Vouris (AKA Cluedo Pierres, Petrosex, Silkie Krusher) and Josh McAuliffe (AKA Lightsteed, Future Frog). Petro took a ride back in time in the DeLorean to make us a special ‘Best of the Perth Proms’ mixtape! It’s totally dancefloor-dreamy. Give it a whirl, send the link to your date, make plans to meet under the paper mache hearts…

Hey Petro! Take us back to the first ever Prom, in 2005, how did it start?

Some friends and I had just graduated from studying music at Uni - we wanted to create a project that could be an avenue for the kind of music we were into: electro-rock, art-pop, electro-billy. We formed a music collective, Bourgeois Bogan, comprised of my band Silkie Krusher & The Sex, Josh’s band Electric Limosine, as well as The Judy Planes, and Seven Day Weekend. We needed somewhere to play, so we started hosting our own events. They weren’t your average gigs, though – they were pretty conceptual.

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If I could pen an anthology of great, modern American stories, the life of Girls front man Chris Owens would be at the top of the list. Reared in the bizarre Christian cult Children of God, Owens led an itinerant childhood through various European countries. As a teenager he ran away from the group and found his way to the small Texan city of Amarillo where he worked at a local supermarket stacking shelves. By sheer fortune he met local philanthropist, media owner and conceptual artist Stanley Marsh 3 and started working for him as his PA.

After a couple of years with Marshall, Owens moved to San Francisco and briefly played in Ariel Pink and Matt Fishbeck’s Holy Shit, which very quickly imploded. Not long after he formed Girls with co-founder Chet White. Since their first LP, Album, Girls have upped the stakes with their new, kaleidoscopic, dead-honest shrine to pop that is Son, Father, Holy Ghost.

Dominic Kirkwood: What do you think producer Doug Boehm brought to your production that you wouldn’t have achieved otherwise?

Chris Owens: A lot of organisation… He has more experience in a studio read more

Apparently if you whisper something in one ear of innovator, backyard bar owner and raconteur Matt Acorn it comes out the other side as a fully fledged creative project, of epicly snack-sized proportions.

Magnolias, Marron Descent Film Festival, Human Xerox project, Gulls Review Hour and a crapload of the other best things to do/see/hear in Perth have appeared via the sticky hands of this creative tornado.

Egads! He's done it again! Eggs Press is a hot rival to crack the duopoly of Perth street presses, all the way to the yolk. Want to know the best beer to drink while you're listening to your favourite Perth band? Like to find out what the members of Water Temple have in common? Eggs Press has got it covered. If the first edition is anything to go by, expect snippets by a spreading omelet of perth band members, and for personal taste to win over censorship or advertorial.

Copies are home-delivered to your letterbox by the man himself, sticky hands and all, or you can ask him to bring it to you at work and he might throw in a killer python as well. This is street press that will make it straight to the sacred toilet reading pile, rather than the floor of your grandparents' chicken coop.

Some people might want to criticise contemporary artists as ‘inaccessible.’  I imagine them sitting around in wood paneled rec-rooms, framed posters of Dogs Playing Poker hanging on the wall, saying things like ‘Did you ever hear of that Christian Falsnaes?  Bloke calls himself an artist, but all he does is yell, get paint everywhere and scribble on walls.’

The old boys in the rumpus room are at least kind of right.  Contemporary art is a weensy bit daunting for those of us that didn't go to art school.

Enter SPACED: Art Out of Place.  21 contemporary artists got thrown into 16 regional Australian communities where they created work that bridges the gap between the ivory tower of academic art and the ordinary experience of a non-typical art consumer.

In addition to the month long exhibition showcasing the fruits of this labour, the IASKA presented SPACED features a weekend of free artist talks which just might help you wrap you head around a Falsnaes performance one day.  Don't count on it solving the timeless mysteries of Internal Semiotics, though.

A Colony girl is said to be a jet-setting gypsy. A concoction of words like 'disheveled', 'creative' and 'natural'. She's more the girl you'd rather be yourself than befriend. By night you could be your sweet yet awkward self but by day, with the help of a crankin' pair of Colony frames, you could be some unpredictable cat-eyed vamp. Like a sunglasses wearing super hero, in reverse.

In any case Brisbane designer Jessica Shipard is the Charlie to your angel. The Colony girl's champion matriarch. Jessica dreamed up her girl and label Colony during her years at the Queensland Collage of Art and unveiled the jet-setting femme during her design graduate exhibition.

With a love for quiet luxury and good, nay, great design, Colony's first collection is made up of boldly beautiful sunglasses and scarves. Cat eyed in shape and offering 100% UV protection, the acetate frames are hand crafted in an Adelaide studio. Such craftsmanship can be seen in the geometric cut outs which cleverly reveal the glasses frame work.

For when more protection and disguise is necessary, a girl can turn to the labels' hyper coloured scarves. Sold under the collection Dawn of the Giants, the styles feature painterly digital prints on silk satin or silk wool. Perfect for when a girl needs to shield herself from the sun, bad hair days or the occasional villan.

The palimpsestic title is a clue: Martha’s (Elizabeth Olsen) innermost identity has been blurred and desecrated by an abusive cult whose leader, Patrick (John Hawkes), renames her ‘Marcy May’, and forces all female members to answer the phone as ‘Marlene’. Seeking shelter with her estranged sister Lucy (Sarah Paulson) and Lucy’s husband Ted (Hugh Dancy), she doesn’t trust her memories yet is petrified Patrick is coming to reclaim her.

Writer-director Sean Durkin’s debut feature is subtly, almost perfectly calibrated between idyllic and terrifying, all the way to its chillingly ambiguous ending. Durkin expertly allows episodic, impressionistic scenes to unfurl and overlap, revealing how seemingly benign everyday objects and gestures have become horrible to Martha, and how her search for meaning has left her irreparably damaged.

As Martha’s behaviour escalates from merely eccentric to hysterical, Lucy and Ted struggle to help; Olsen brilliantly portrays both the opaque object of their frustration and the subject of crippling confusion and panic. Hawkes – who played Teardrop in Winter’s Bone – powerfully conjures menace from hippie-like calm. By the time he’s spouting such truly insane aphorisms as “Death is pure love”, Martha’s in way too deep to ever really be herself again.

We all know there's a growing trend of waiting 'til it's too late to punch out some offspring, except maybe in Mandurah. If you're looking for an antidote to any 20-something cluckiness, without compromising the integrity of your birthing bits, Hobart Deli provides the perfect pill, with a long Macc on the side.

Pinching the cheeks of one of North Perth's many lawned leisure-havens, the deli takes its name from its location, in the heart of the Motherland. As the convenient take away coffee of choice for many North Perth-based bands and creative types, it also provides opportunities for some sperm collection while you eat breakfast… Or maybe just before or after… Especially if single-parenting is on your agenda and you'd like child support to be paid in demo tapes and small-run EPs.

We recommend soaking in the fertile vibe with a croissant and fresh juice - and ask for blueberries to boost your chances of conception.

While Perth’s once rampant drive-in movie culture died in the ass with the arrival of TV, everyone is still going nuts for the outdoor cinema thing. Cinemas are competing for our affections, bribing us to their turfs vis a vis kiosks-on-steroids: local cheeses, gourmet pizza, fancy ice-cream. But not the Kookaburra, mate!

Located in the Mundaring Hills, The Kookaburra is outdated and daggy, but that's precisely what makes it awesome. Kind of like an old man who stills wears sock garters. You can see the visible joinery on the multi-pannelled, 10m wide screen and their website has some interesting reading about the toils of erecting a giant screen with historical projection machinery in the bush. The grass is long and super-cushy and there’s ‘natural’ log seating, so you can spread your salads, boiled eggs or Little Caesar’s pizzas out over a real tree.

My friends and I had a giggle spotting typos during the pre-show advertisements - a series of kitsch, power-point style ads for local services (Come see Randy and his team at Kalamunda Hardware!) all to a soundtrack of taped kookaburra calls.

If you don't dig ‘already out on DVD’ programming,  tilt your head back and (lame phrase alert) enjoy nature’s own film – seriously, the stars are crazy bright up in the bush! Can't be assed driving back to town? Camp out at the adjacent national park. The ‘Hills community spirit’ is alive and well among the cinema staff - as I desperately scraped together loose change at the 'cash only' till, the kindly cinema attendant gave me a ticket for $6 (instead of $13) if I "could promise her one thing"- to make a return to the Kookaburra again soon.

Can we really recommend a Hare Krishna rock band? Hell yes. Prince Rama are Brooklyn hippiester types who were raised on a Hare Krishna commune in Florida. These guys are the real deal but without too much of the real, chanty, repetitive deal (ahem, this stuff) that sticks in your head for days. Prince Rama's music is drowned in so much delay and distortion that you forget which god they are clanging for anyway. Two gigs over twice nights: Tusk, Carbuncle and Salamander bring the Rama-lama-ding-dong to Mojo's; whilst Usurpers of Modern Medicine, Gulls and Erasers deliver a lovin' spoonful as Prince Rama's city sidekicks.

Nowadays, there is a bounty of Donnas, Jamies and Annas that parents can choose cake recipes for their kids' parties from (heck, kids just make their own cakes now) but back in the 80s, there was but one Holy Grail in the pantry: The Australian Women’s Weekly Children's Birthday Cake Book. Who doesn't remember being handed the book to flick through as B-day approached? I know my sixth birthday wouldn't have been the same without the upturned icecream cone princess' castle cake. Boyish comedian Josh Earl is all over the blue jelly swimming pools and marshmellow dolly skirts in his Fringe World show, that capitalises on the Australian Gen Y nostalgia surrounding the book. Head along and watch Josh flick his floppy fringe to and fro, make the funnies and sing the daggies.

Under the cover of his alter-ego, one of our favourite local voyeurs is bringing his portable photo booth to Fringe World. If you liked the general seediness of his infamous 'Single' show, but missed out on being the one at the big end of the lens, this is your chance to get discovered, or at least take a peak at the best beard in Perth through Jason Earon's slightly-creepy take on the analogue photobooth.

Film buffs put Fritz Lang’s 1927 cult sci-fi classic Metropolis way up there in the ‘greatest films of all time’ stakes. The grandiose orchestral score, however, has not aged so well. But Miles Phillip has sorted it – he’s replacing the Wagner and Strauss inspired composition with his own electro-synth stylings! Phillip’s music fits Lang’s imaginings of a robot inhabited, dystopian future to a tee while his sharp techno beats pull the film firmly into the 21^st century. Can one man replace an entire orchestra? The answer is at the heart of Perth's own metropolis!

A few nights ago I had a dream about Lee "Scratch" Perry. Weird, right? I mean, I don't spend much of my waking life thinking about troubled dub pioneers from days gone by. It got even weirder when I overheard his name in a conversation the following day. What does this mean?! I shouted at the sky. You know who could probably tell me? The Freudian Dream Girls: psychoanalysts with a performance fixation. Book a two person show and spill the beans about your dreams.

Music got pretty spacey last year.  And whatever, that's cool.  But what's also cool is a little precision percussion to reel you back in from those beatless dreamscapes.  Runner dig this and balance out their ethereal vocal harmonies with enough righteous rock sensibility to keep your head attached firmly to your neck.  Join them for the launch of 'Outlines & Colours' from their forthcoming EP and get a free single with your door fee. Support from local Laneway heroes Cow Parade Cow and a turntable battle between two inscrutable mystery DJs.

An astral plane exists, to some people, between Heaven and Earth. It is occupied by angels and dead people and Jonathan Richman. The Astral Plane, however, exists in Australia and is populated by two dudes, Daniel Oliver and Damien Horan (of The Villainares), and their most awesome line of printed tees, button ups, denim and swim shorts.

The Astral Plane radiates slow summers and vagabond spirit. They've got a knack for rendering vintage ideas via laid-back street wear and are especially good at hallucinated prints and patterns.

Their latest collection is impressive. Psychedelic palms, wild stallions, water crafts, and the hottest city in the world NYC make printed appearances on tees. Have a look for yourself at these stockists. We particularly like the 'Islands' swim shorts, which are patchworked with all of your favourite parts of summer - palm trees, flowers and Aztec patterns - and have a bonus pocket which is 'handy if you're craving a coconut water?'

We liked them so much that we got you some. To enter, just answer the following question.