As a component of Tiny Movements by Swedish conceptual artist Johanna Billing, the performance piece, You Don’t Love Me Yet, has been presented in over twenty countries since its conception in 2002. Scheduled for August 16, Billing has invited a diverse and exciting collection of Melbourne bands to reinterpret the ever-hopeful tearjerker which was originally recorded by Roky Erikson in 1984. Among those taking part in the event are Beaches, Henry Wagons, Super Wild Horses, Fabulous Diamonds, Tic Toc Tokyo, Francis Plagne, and Teeth and Tongue, each challenged with the task of making something familiar, unique.

The event is being held in conjunction with the ongoing series, You Don’t Have To Call It Music, curated by Melbourne musician and artist Marco Fusinato.

Tiny Movements is opening at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art in Melbourne Friday, August 14 and is Billing’s first solo show in Australia. Often focused on ideas of community, Billing’s work dissects social politics by ritualising and repeating banal everyday interactions and forcing human connection.

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More often than not, internet-only hip hop mix tapes are released by wannabe rappers whose lyrics and delivery are derivative and uninspired, and who’ll never get enough weight behind them for a full length release. 24 year-old Washington MC Wale Folarin is different. Mixed by one of New York’s best hip hop DJs, Nick Catchdubs, and produced by 9th Wonder and Mark Ronson (who signed Wale in 2007 to his Allido label), his latest offering Back To The Feature solidifies Wale as a confident, engaging lyricist with a true talent for cross-genre appropriations.

A third of the way through ‘Back To…’, Wale recalls the hype surrounding his previous release, saying he never intended to make what critics named “the mix tape of the year … the monumental mix tape of the moment”, but just wanted to release his raps. By borrowing other musician’s tunes and making them his own, Wale’s post-modern approach celebrates the wonderful immediacy of online mix tape culture, being the best method for fans to access their favourite artists’ music as quickly as possible without costing anyone a cent.

After collaborations with Jean Grae and Lady Ga Ga, sponsorship deals with Nike, Stussy and 10 Deep, and praise from everyone Rolling Stone Magazine to The New York Times, Wale is one of the shining stars of contemporary independent hip hop whose talent and crossover appeal is sure to rocket him to superstardom.

For the next fortnight, independent Sydney publishing collective Rainoff Books has set up a temporary curated bookstore in Surry Hills. The store launched last week with a party celebrating the release of Pretty Telling I Suppose, the new photographic collection by Sydney artist Samuel Hodge. Hodge’s photography allows us short glimpses into his subject’s most intimate experiences, enabling us to experience life as someone else. But only for a moment. Hodge renders permanent those everyday fleeting moments often forgotten: a lover’s admiring glance, a sibling’s warm touch, grandfather’s knowing look.

Your book is called Pretty Telling I Suppose. Do the pictures tell a specific story?
‘The photos are all pretty simple. I don’t really think about it or want to force an emotion on someone, the subject or the viewer. When I talk about the photos, I like to do it individually like in a slideshow event or something like that – That way I can tell the actual story behind each individual photo!’

Do you have a favourite image in the book you can tell us the story behind?
‘Favourite images are probably the ones that make me terribly nostalgic, like a photograph of an ex’s birth mark, for example. I know it’s not very cool to be sentimental, but I can’t help it! I’m going to be one of those annoying old people.’

How did you start out as a photographer?
‘I used to think my passion in life was to be a film maker but while working in film I realised it wasn’t really for me. I was given the job of taking screen shots from movies I had been working on; that’s how I discovered the still image. Then someone gave me an old camera from 1967 and the rest is history. I still use that camera today’.

Rainoff Books ‘Curated Temporary Bookstore’ is located at 25/114 Burton Street, Darlinghurst, Sydney, and will feature hand-picked works by Australian and International publishers.

We checked in with Andy Meecham, one half of Staffordshire duo Chicken Lips, about his latest side project, The Emperor Machine and why he prefers using vintage equipment wherever he can: ‘I like the feel and touch of vintage equipment — if that doesn’t sound weird. I like the hands-on approach and get a lot of inspiration from buying new, old vintage equipment. I have nothing against computer software — it is getting to the stage now where you can’t tell the difference — but for me, it’s just not the way I prefer to work’.

After Bizarre Inc and Chicken Lips, was The Emperor Machine your attempt at a more underground sound?
‘Chicken Lips have produced more of an underground sound with Big 200 and Zeefungk but Emperor Machine started as my outlet, a side hobby, ‘a dirty love child’ that I really didn’t expect anyone to be nuts enough to release. Fortunately, squirrel loving James Dyer of DC saw the light’.

There are hordes of bands and producers channelling the dub disco sound at the moment. How do you feel about the popularity of that sound now?
‘I think it’s great! It’s not really what I’m doing now, but when a sound gets too popular, usually time is ripe for another wave. As long as I’m riding the new wave, I don’t mind’.

Casio Keyboard Brooklyn trio Au Revoir Simone are about to release a collection of remixes and covers their musical friends have recorded of songs found on their second album, The Bird Of Music. Titled Reverse Migration, the record features re-workings by Best Fwends, Teenagers, Darkel, and more. We caught up with them recently. Why and when did you decide to release a remix album? Annie: ‘Our friends were making so many wonderful versions of our songs we wanted to share them with the world’. How did you select the artists? Annie: ‘Mostly they were friends who told us they wanted to do remixes! Very fun and easy’. Reverse Migration is out November 11 through the band’s own label, Our Secret Record Company. Listen to Ruff & Jam by Au Revoir Simone.

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Curious what had happened to the band Hail Social earlier this year, I started trawling the internet and excitedly uncovered signs of a Dayve Hawke side project – Weird Tapes. Here is what the Philly producer, and only constant member of the Hail Social family, had to say about his new endeavor. How did you team up with Memory Cassette for the mini-EP? ‘We have always known each other and a lot of that music is from a long time ago. I only recently convinced Memory to let people hear it’.

You are leaking loads of material online through blogs. Any plans for an official Weird Tapes release?
‘It’s possible. To be honest it’s more fun to make tracks and get them out to people immediately. I would like to press up some vinyl eventually though…. and I don’t mean like a dance 12″ EP sort of thing, I want to do a full-length LP. I’ve had offers so I’d say it’s probably gonna happen. There is definitely an official Memory Cassette vinyl release coming soon’.

Weird Tapes is ambient, pop, psyche, and disco rolled into one. What do you listen to at home? And what inspires you?
‘I probably listen to old pop music like The Beatles, Motown, Girl Groups etc. more than anything. But I touch on everything at some point, Black Sabbath, Cocteau Twins, Boards Of Canada, Prince, Wire, The Congos, Incredible String Band … I hate to be a grumpy old man, but I really don’t listen to anything new’.

What does Weird Tapes mean?
‘It was the name of a series of Hawkwind bootlegs and is I guess a play on Weird Tales, the old pulp sci-fi/horror journal that spawned HP Lovecraft, and so on, and as I started out with a tape deck, it seemed to fit’.

Listen to the Weird Tapes track, My Babe Walk

Verbs, the second album from Portland band AU (pronounced ‘ay you’), is surprising, and excitingly ahead of its time. Moving through 20-person chorus cries, subtle lullabies, whispered melodies, and screeching and scratched guitars, you never know where the journey will end. Psche-folk, freak-folk, electro-folk-noise, or whatever you want to call it, AU’s genre sprawling music paves the way for a wider breadth of experimentation in folk-inspired electronic production. We interviewed the group’s front man and founder, multi-instrumentalist Lyke Wyland.

Why did you bring on a full band for this new album? ‘I’ve been fortunate enough to be a part of a very generous and amazing community of players here in Portland. The first album was made while I was transitioning from my time as an art student in Boston to moving back to Portland and the project was pretty much a solo one. Once I was firmly back in Portland, Au became a live band. Everyone who took part in the album are great friends and collaborators in other settings. It was a celebration of sorts of the community here and my hope was to somehow document it’.

How did parenthetical girls, Sarah Winchester and Becky Dawson, become involved?
‘Sarah Winchester and I have been old friends from our time at the Massachussetts College of Art in Boston. She was actually the first person to teach me how to sing, as I would back her up on banjo and accordion. Becky Dawson is a relatively new friend and incredible collaborator that I met about a year ago after seeing one of her other bands, Ah Holly Family. I instantly fell in love with her voice and asked her if she’d like to sing with me. The Parenthetical Girls are good friends that we’ve toured with in the past and by far one of my favorite bands in Portland’.

Sydney band Seekae started playing together at the beginning of 2007. Initially Commander Keen, they changed their name after they noticed a band in Aberdeen who used that same moniker and ‘who played really nice music’, says one third of the group, George Nicholas. They obviously didn’t think they needed the competition. In their early 20s and relatively new to the Sydney music scene, Nicholas and bandmates, John Hassell and Alex Cameron, have an accomplished and mature sound, making Gameboy inspired ambient electronica similar to Electric President and Prefuse 73. Currently they’re writing and recording a new album titled The Sound Of Trees Falling on People and plan to release it at the end of this month.

Where do you place yourselves in the Sydney music scene?
‘At the very top, looking down at all the other bands and artists, who look like ants from up here. Umm I don’t know, I sort of feel we are halfway between the Sydney electronica scene — which is small but mighty — and the indie and the psychedelic scenes’.

Have you have any problems performing your music live?
‘It can often be difficult to make songs with a significant production element work live because we use a lot of different types of software like Pro Tools, Ableton Live and Reason, which I don’t really think excites your average punter. On stage we use a fair amount of instruments and hardware though, which makes things more exciting. Recently we have been playing with more acoustic instruments, like flute, cello, xylophone and melodica, which is fun. I guess DJing would be fun and easy, but also kinda lame playing pre-recorded tracks’.

How many bands can you name who’ve formed over drunken conversations at parties? Add another to the list. Vito De Luca and Stephen Fasano of Belgian duo Aeroplane met around six years ago at a party, and decided to work together after discovering a shared appreciation for 60s and 70s psychedelic pop, Fleetwood Mac, Brian Wilson and 80s synth pop pioneers Brian Eno and Giorgio Moroder. ‘At the beginning Vito made me listen to the demos which he made and I found it very interesting!’, Fasano says. ‘I wanted to do disco-rock-electro music with my influences, and after several working years, we both found our own sound’.

At home in Brussels, the spaced out Ital-disco of Aeroplane is a little displaced, the nightclub scene dominated by minimal-tech and commercial house parties, and ‘not very exciting’ Fasano confides. For a time, Fasano ran a club night called Discolor in an attempt to introduce the sounds he and Luca love to his peers, but the night didn’t prove profitable.

Luckily for the pair though, the Artistic Director of Eskimo Records — Dirk De Ruyck — heard some of their demos and fell in love with them. Of their initial correspondence, Fasano recalls an incessant Ruyck. ‘He called me every day during a week to say to us, ‘Guys, it’s incredible, magic!’

With two 12″ releases out already, Aeroplane are currently writing and producing their debut full length album for Eskimo. Describing the recording process, Fasano says he and Luca ‘start to compose our melodies at the piano. After that, we make a beat and put some guitars and synths on it. Vito is the musician, he plays guitar, bass and pianos, and I try to search for sounds, effects, chords and arrangements. At the end, we do the mix together’.

They also throw guest vocalists into the mix, most recently working with UK singer Kathy Diamond after she emailed them through MySpace (who says social networking wasn’t a constructive use of time?)

Aeroplane may be using Diamond on upcoming releases, but they also mightn’t. Fasano seems to want to keep that close to his chest, gently brushing away the question by saying ‘that will be a surprise!’

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Nine months ago Sydney couple Matt Cribb and Bree Carter decided they’d take their relationship to the next level. They started making beats. After posting two home-recorded tracks on MySpace as WOW, they got the attention of New York-based independent label Metal Postcard who agreed to release the duo’s first official pressing. Since then, they’ve signed with Sydney based Levity, and are currently fine-tuning their live show for their own E.P launches and a support slot for Melbourne band (and Metal Postcard label-mates) The Emergency. I really liked WOW from first listen, but it was their live show that made me a true devotee. At first glance WOW look well rehearsed and seem dismissive of their audience but the more you watch, as they bounce ideas off one another mid song exchanging quick glances and mouthed directions, you realise that their dismissivenessis actually just sheer concentration. Having performed together for such a short period, they are still wary of each note they sing or play, but rather than afraid or embarrassed by their inexperience they seem to really enjoy it. And why not?! They have already had considerable successes. And while their dark space disco, monotone vocals and home-produced fuzzsonics might not be for everyone, they are certainly well on their way to bigger things. Let’s just hope they don’t break up!

When did you start making music together?
‘Late last year we just started messing around with all kinds of electronic stuff and computers. Even though we had always owned instruments, we had never really tried to do anything together, but for some reason when we did, it all just clicked. The songs came out really easily and a few weeks later we were playing our first show. We actually booked the show before we had even figured out if we could do it all live or not’.

Do relationship politics ever interrupt practice sessions?
(Laughs) ‘Yes, actually relationship politics DO interrupt practice sessions, recording sessions, musical ideas … actually just about every part of the whole process! But in the end that’s what makes us, us in a way. I guess the WOW sound is based around our relationship, since it’s where we started and how everything came about’.

How did the partnership with Levity come about?
‘Our manager introduced us to Mel from Levity and she liked what she heard. A few days later they came down to a show in Bondi where we got really drunk on stage and had a great show. The rest is history’.

What inspires you to write music?
‘It can be quite varied. It can be an impulsion (either musically or a particular theme) that inspires a song to start being written, or it can be a feeling or thought or opinion that needs to come out, and logically a way to express this is through music. Good times, bad times, death, destruction, rainbows, sun, sand … It can be anything and the musical process starts in a number of different ways. Sometimes it’s a simple as a kick and snare drum that ends up spiraling into a two-hour party jam and at the end there’s enough stuff recorded for a whole song’.