Fans of West Coast style - THC strength character, brainy arrangements, episodic movement, game loving bounce - are put on immediate need-to-know basis with two new releases by Melbourne's Aoi. Available free, source direct from the author, Low Tracks Era and Spotwelders Vol. 1. pack production clout and musicality enough to empty whole shelves of industry-sanctioned hip-hop; both literally - by repurposing the good stuff as samples - and retroactively - by showing up so much conventionally released, Kangaroo-hop as BS.

Hybridizing the dope-chamber nod and sunny rolls of Stones Throw, an ear for nimble electronica and atmospheric, fanboy feel of games and horror movies, Low Tracks Era is 50 minutes of seamless, instrumental jams moving across psych-chug landscapes, dark funk, spaced-out synths, vinyl crackle and dusted beat collage. 'Skruffle' is an MDMA desert drive, 'Decades of Rust' beats Caribou's next move and 'Tin Crown' is gas-masked harpsicord freakbeat.

Spotwelders Vol. 1 is different altogether - a mix disc of known emcees over Aoi beats that's more party-orientated. Checkout both at Aoi's complimentary beats emporium and travel goods. FRESH.

By Mark Gomes

Release: Album

To Cure: Hypertension

Here's something that annoys me about interesting stuff: as soon as it gets juicy, it's all over. This truth I apply across the board to relationships, independent publishing, acne, everything. But especially to zombie movies. So many questions are still left unanswered in this, the greatest of genres.

For instance: What happens? Do zombies just eventually starve? 28 Days Later would have us believe so. But Romero's zombies keep on going until they've learnt how to use tools and facilitate minority uprisings. And will the humans eventually rebuild their lives? In the malls and housing estates they have colonised? Or will their own murderous ids take over to the point that they're spearing Joe Schmoe for not putting the toilet seat down? Robert Kirkman answers these questions and more in his genius comic The Walking Dead.

At the outset, he says, "Good zombie movies show us how messed up we are ...The Walking Dead will be the zombie movie that never ends." The only thing I can tell you about these comics without spoiling anything is that there are many amputations. Perhaps too many. But, as they say, better to live one-legged than die undead.

By Penny Modra

Format: Comics

Motivation: Kill twenty minutes dead

Keywords: Comics, Zombies

If you need something to wash the Big Apple clean after its tawdry affair with Sex and The City, ACMI has a treat this weekend: 1928's Speedy, the final silent film of Harold Lloyd, famously called "one of the enduring valentines to New York from Hollywood."

This isn't just a love letter - it's an instruction manual. (Where else will you learn how to use a dollar bill on a string to get yourself a seat on public transport?) Like all slapstick heroes, Lloyd's Speedy oscillates between inventive genius and clueless buffoon, and his urban tactics play like a prototype of John McClane's in Die Hard 3.

Speedy won't make your jaw drop like the elaborately conceptual gags of Buster Keaton will. It feels more contemporary even as it works as a time machine. The charming indulgent digression to Coney Island will make you wonder how anyone survived the insanely dangerous rides on display.

When Speedy - playing house with a stranger's furniture, in the back of a moving van that's actually moving - looks out at the streetlights of 1920s New York, it's magic.

By Martyn Pedler

Format: Cinema

Mood: Nostalgic

Keywords: ACMI

Got a score to settle with your Nan? Need to deodorise your car? Why not get a bottle of Hotel Slut? Etat Libre D'Orange perfumes are either cashed-up punk like Vivienne Westwood, or try-hard punk like Richard Branson when he reminds people how he used to hang out with Malcolm McLaren.

Choose from aromas such as ‘Don't Get Me Wrong Baby, I Don't Swallow' and ‘Jasmine and Cigarette' - which receives the ThreeThousand prize for best Frenglish blurb. "The slightly ‘jasminey' smell of a woman's skin when she exposes her freshness to the dark seduction of night...Nicotine woman or heroine, she is an icon, the woman one longs for."

Maybe they should make ‘McLaren pisse sur le tapis de Branson'. Anyway, watch out for me in the street, I will be exposing my freshness all weekend.

By Penny Modra

Product: Accessories

Theft: Theft is a risk

Keywords: Perfume, Punk, France

Heave open the wrought iron doors of Friperie and the collection will cause bladder-tickling, cross-legged excitement. The Smith Street emporium is rustling with full skirted, off the shoulder, boned through the waist and shoulder padded cocktail dresses with lines projecting the bosom and hourglass silhouettes; these pieces must have been whipped off set of Gilda.

Laid out on the floor, in several rows, is the footwear: Buckled, strappy leather flats, weaponly gold-capped heels and fur-lined ankle boots. The floor-length fur coats are a tribute to primal fashions while the bejewelled blouses make you look into your purse and think, "What would Rita do?" The result is usually three dresses, up-to-the-elbow leather gloves and a chain mail purse tucked under your arm, humming ‘Amado Mio'.

Friperie (French for second hand store) is the cream that's risen to the top after a decade-long vintage retail obsession. Like its northern-suburbs sisters Clara Fox and Circa, it's a cherry-picked collection of dusty treasures.

By Isabel Dunstan

Product: Fashion

Anatomy: Whole body

Keywords: Fashion, Fitzroy, Dresses

Lonely Planet writers have set the precedent for fictional travel writing - who needs to visit a country when the chick you're dating has been there? (His travel guide was probably way better than the usual fact-bogged ones anyway.)

In a natural extension of this logic, nine artists including Dylan Martorell, Nathan Gray, Tai Snaith and Amber Wallis come together for Thank god we died together eating a burrito on the bus to Baghdad, putting a creative spin on what travel means to them. Aware of the difficulty of conveying the experience gained through travel, these artists are documenting their own tales through sound, installation, video, photography and illustration.

Various Australian writers, including everyone's checked-shirt hero Robert Cook, and Amanda Maxwell, have contributed postcards contemplating ideas from metaphysical travel, to space. Their postcards, along with twelve others from noteworthy local writers, will feature in the Thank god we died together eating a burrito on the bus to Baghdad zine. It's launching at the exhibition, so make sure you get there before they sell out. Or send your girlfriend. Apples and oranges.

By Robbie Coleman

Medium: Mixed

Drink: Bottle of red

Keywords: TCB

Are you familiar with the simultaneously glorious and dismaying feeling that results in the sudden realisation that you are just never going to be as talented as someone you admire, but, goddamn it, you are going to love them all the same? A dissonance compounded by a distinct lack of social graces, attractiveness or general hygiene on the part of the admired figure? Woody Allen should be a pretty good point of reference. This distills my feelings about You Look Nice Today.

The podcast comprises Merlin Mann, who already has pretty established internet nerd credentials, Scott Simpson and Adam Lisagor. There is no particular topic or seeming goal to the podcast, the three just run their mouths about poop and potential business ideas, an apropos example of which would be a store targeted to hipsters specialising in geriatric clothes and accoutrement. I cannot find any tangible, logical reason why listening to three geeks amusing themselves with dick jokes and non sequiturs should be so funny but it is. You Look Nice Today, I don't know whether to fight you or fuck you.

By Kane Daniel

Release: Compilation

To Cure: A broken heart

Keywords: dick jokes, Podcast

You don't have to be full of steroids, speak with a moronic drawl, and share your first name with a cartoon cat to do the rock climbing thing. Beneath a section of the Monash Freeway in Richmond hide three walls just off the Main Yarra Trail, which are open to anyone who ever considered telling gravity to ‘go shove it'.

When power-walking or pedalling between Church Street Bridge and MacRobertson Bridge, you'll spot these three walls just next to the trail (opposite Herring Island), and each is a different level of difficulty. Don't stress about getting altitude sickness or bringing along on some of those really uncomfortable harnesses that are tight in all the wrong places though, because the walls aren't high at all. It's about clambering left to right, and doing so whilst listening to the haunting vibrations of the many automobiles above. Nothing is needed, but a Stallone-like grimace on your face.

This little outdoor adventure site is brought to you by the hard-working hippies at Parks Victoria and The Victorian Climbing Club (who, apparently, like climbing).

By Seb Neylan

Ambience: Outdoor

Difficulty: Start training like, last month

Keywords: rock climbing, Richmond

Apparently this laundrette is where all the hookers from St Kilda hang out in the evenings. It's not hard to see why. The furniture is comfortable, there are plenty of magazines scattered around, there's a vending machine on hand and two computer terminals with net access. As far as laundry mats go, it's a very comfortable set-up.

It's also an ideal business hub for the modern hooker. Not only can they update their Facebook accounts and level up their World of Warcraft characters on the computer kiosks, drugs can be readily purchased from the shady dudes across the street. It's like a vice supermarket. With onsite dry cleaners for those ‘hard to remove' stains.

Speaking of which, the owners have decorated the premises with large (framed) photos of Indian peasants wearing the laundry mats promo T-shirts. Apparently the previous owner travelled to India and made the locals hold up promo posters and wear the shirts and stuff while he took photos. Presumably, this was an attempt to claim an overseas holiday as a legitimate tax deduction. Or maybe it's some weird kink? The hookers could probably answer that question.

By Mikolai Napieralski

Ambience: Indoor

Difficulty: Exertion will pay off

Keywords: Laundry Mat, St Kilda

Description:
How much bang can you get for five bucks? A colossal wave of feathers, jewels, leathers and fur; a nerve-rattling audio explosion of kazoos, melodicas, vacuums and strings; a few hot minutes rolling around in warm mud with a stranger; a hypnotic, harmonious gathering of friends and lovers, performers and punters; foxy women boasting retina-singeing pink tights; chesty men wearing y-fronts and nothing else; Love is Science Fiction, Ships Piano, The Strange Attractions and a microphone - all of the above, on stage, every Wednesday night at The Tote. - ID

By Isabel Dunstan

Event: Bands

Stimulus: A

Keywords: Collingwood, The Tote, Bands

Description:
Following the release of her second album Fireproof earlier this year, singer-songwriter and recording engineer Dawn Landes has left New York to travel around and grace others with her gentle ballads in the flesh. ‘Bodyguard' has been receiving the most radio play of late and has proven itself far easier on the ears than the eardrum-piercing theme song from that film with Whitney Houston.

With a sound similar to that of Cat Power, her lyrics demonstrate a strong connection to the folk traditionalism of Woody Guthrie. In the past this Kentucky native has supported softies like Jose Gonzales and Feist, so you can assume that the NSC is more likely to be full of calm-headed hipsters tomorrow night than crooked-toothed hillbillies (no offence Woody!) - SN

By Seb Neylan

Event: Bands

Stimulus: W

Keywords: Northcote Social Club, Folk

Description:
Paris Wells eschews similarity to Orson Welles. What she does represent, with Somersault-meets-Abbie Cornish strawberry blonde bangs, is sexually-adrenalized funk, soul and pop-hotness. Paris's Roxanne residency this month promises all the things you'd expect from a lady who supported Señor Timberlake last November, plus primal urges. "It's a sexual liberation song if you want to get philosophical about it," she claims of the new single ‘Dat Du Dat'. But why over-intellectualise something so suggestive there should be pics of arched eyebrows in the liner notes? - KM

By Kirk Marshall

Event: DJs

Stimulus: E

Keywords: Paris, Roxanne, DJs

Description:
Having emerged effulgent and golden from the launch of their why-so-serious second LP, The Horse, The Rat And The Swan, Snowman assemble on stage, supported by local sonic assassins Baseball, to bring the basement screams, and the Nick Cave circa 1997 (post-Polly Harvey bust-up) sobriety.

Expect a privileged audience of beer-swilling aficionados, and music to soundtrack the doom of modern romance, heady with the furious boom of guitars like the thrashing of the eponymous menagerie in their album title. Like their latest record: brimstone, dead swans and dark lyrics. And it's on Swan Street, too. Weird... - KM

By Kirk Marshall

Event: Bands

Stimulus: C

Keywords: Snowman, Corner Hotel

Description:
We wrote about Womb last week, because we were excited, which is always a risk because probably heaps of people turned up to Geddes Lane last Saturday dressed as genitals and got confused and disappointed. That's why we're running it again today. Womb party: Trough Faggot is back for one women (and watersports) -themed reprise. It's Andie's going away party too. Image this:
Andie's Dad - have you got your passport yet?
Andie - Don't you know I'm in Coburg shopping for rubber to make a giant vagina? Jeez.

By Penny Modra

Event: Party

Stimulus: E

Keywords: Trough, Gay/Lesbian

Description:
You wouldn't be indulging an undiagnosed bout of disassociation disorder when first looking at the promo picture for HOOP DJs  and mistaking them for The Veronicas with newly equipped turntable skillz. But linger on the double-take. HOOPS DJs - as we have attested - are three ladiez who've graced the Sydney club scene bedecked in bling to ransom a king, and the heartfelt appreciation for what it takes to engineer hip-hop with bounce.

Divinely manifest in hoop earrings to rival the rings of Saturn, the fair mistresses HOOP are producing exactly the crunk funk you'd expect from babes wishing to escape the negative G-force of Planet Sydney. Perhaps a better way to do this, though, might be to reconsider forging a Faustian pact with Seven Nightclub. HOOPS have the acuity of mind to revolutionise hip-hop as we see it, but whoever's managing the trio requires a stringent strategy redraft. -KM

By Kirk Marshall

Event: DJs

Stimulus: E

Keywords: Sydney, South Melbourne, DJs

Description:
St Jerome's may have an aura of perpetual youth, but believe it or not, this laneway lad is turning five. Oh how times fly. Times filled with filthy toilets, milk crates, unstable tables, longnecks, cigarette-filled ash trays (and cigarette-filled people), thrashed skinny jeans, thrashed bar staff and a collection of loose adventure stories to rival Keith Moon's.

Stumble or stroll down Caledonian Lane on Sunday arvo to the place "where everybody knows you're name", and reintroduce yourself in case the brain cells storing your name have been wiped already. There'll be DJs throughout the day, a free BBQ, and possibly some form of cake. Here's to five more years of St J's frivolity! Hip hip...soireé! - SN

By Seb Neylan

Event: Party

Stimulus: C

Keywords: Party, Melbourne, St Jeromes