Following on from its inaugural year in 2008, Un-convention returns in June to bring independent music debate and performance to the Sacred Trinity Church  in Salford.

Last year’s event complemented the more mainstream In The City conference – but with its early summer slot this time around, the event is even more tempting. Here’s what’s on offer panels-wise (click on each for more information):

• The Artists Panel
• ‘Outside the Box’
• The Modern Role Of Collection Agencies
• ‘Music as Culture’
• Bands As Enterprise
• It’s Easier to Ask For Forgiveness

And the music programme isn’t bad either, with Everything Everything, The Loose Salute, Arthur Delaney, Magic Arm, Jake Flowers and I Am Kloot among the potential highlights.

Plenty of familiar names are signed up: Peter Hook, John Robb, Jay Taylor, Howard Monk from The Local… plus BBC DJ Tom Robinson is lending his support in the form of an Introducing show featuring 22 tracks from artists involved, and sessions with Kyte, Sisters of Transistors and Gallops.

Un-convention 2009 kicks off next Thursday, 4 June, and continues throughout Friday and Saturday. A full pass costs £40 and live music tickets cost £7.50 per night or £18 for all three nights. Check out the Un-convention site for more details, and follow the event on Twitter.

This is shaping up to be the busiest musical weekend in Manchester, with more and more events coming to our attention. Here’s what we’ve spotted:

• The previously mentioned Hungry Pigeon festival, which will have an outdoor stage in Piccadilly Gardens. Friday-Sunday, £19.50 weekend or £10 per day. Tickets
• The Eurocultured street festival, with two outdoor stages and five venues around New Wakefield Street. Sunday-Monday £3/2 each day. Website
• Friends of Manchester summer party, which features 11 bands on two stages in the Chorlton Irish Club. Friday, 7pm-1am. £7. Facebook
• Hedge at St Margaret’s Church in Whalley Range, with John Smith and Denis Jones. Sunday. £8. Myspace
• A Switchflicker night at the Deaf Institute, with three bands plus DJs until 3am. Saturday. £5. Website
• Strummercamp, which brings the likes of Billy Bragg, the Damned, the Alarm and Goldblade to the Manchester Rugby Club in Cheadle Hulme. Friday-Sunday. £59.50 weekend or £30 per day. Website
• John Cooper Clarke will be DJing and ‘taking to the mic to tell us what the tracks mean to him with his comical and intelligent verse’ at South. Friday. £5. Facebook
• And of course Hey! Manchester’s own celebration of folk music at – where else? – Chorlton’s folk bar Dulcimer. Sunday, 6pm-midnight. £10. Website

Plus there are some more straight-up gigs by the likes of Morrissey, Black Lips, Akron/Family, Inspector Tapehead and Jean Michel Jarre. Good luck planning your weekend!

May’s in full flow right now and so far this month we’ve enjoyed shows by Soap&Skin, Philip Glass, Murcof, Johann Johannsson, Jeffrey Lewis, the Broken Family Band and Melt-Banana. This week looks set to be no different…

Tomorrow, Tuesday, Canada’s Great Lake Swimmers are playing for us at Dulcimer in Chorlton. This show’s pretty much sold out now, which was predictable as it’s a great lineup with New York’s Sharon van Etten and Manchester’s own Last Harbour also playing.

Deerhunter, meanwhile, are doing something quite unusual – they’re playing two shows at the Deaf Institute tomorrow. The early show starts at 3pm, with the band on at 6pm, and the late show is from 8pm. Looks like the evening performance has sold out. And on Wednesday, the much-tipped Telepathe play another Now Wave night at the same venue. More info and tickets for both here.

Also on Wednesday, Chorlton-based label Broken Horse are promoting a rare performance by AC Newman (of New Pornographers  fame) at Retro Bar. He’s playing with his band, and Andrew Morgan is supporting. Tickets from here.

There’s nothing much happening on Thursday, but on Friday there’s the debut appearance by The Pains of Being Pure at Heart. They’re from New York, they’re into Sarah Records-era c86 and we love them. This one’s a Friends of Mine night, at the Chorlton Irish Club. Tickets are here. Or local female-fronted Norweigan folkies Kalbakken are playing an intimate show upstairs in Briton’s Protection.

On Saturday, you’ve got a choice between Manchester’s Magic Arm, who’s launching his album with a full band show at the Deaf Institute, or Akron/Family at the Ruby Lounge. Both have their merits – the latter being one of the most fun bands we’ve put on, while the former has excellent support from Homelife and Beth Jean Houghton.

Finally, make the most of the bank holiday weekend with a Sunday show. We’ve pulled together some of the best folk talent in Manchester including Denis Jones, John Stammers, Starless & Bible Black and Sparky Deathcap – plus Drag City-signed headliner Alasdair Roberts – for an all-evening event at Dulcimer. There’ll also be barbecue (if the weather’s fine) and DJs playing. More info and tickets are here.

Hey! Manchester first got to know Little Red Rabbit through Last Harbour – we put them on at our monthly Kro bar night alongside LRR’s Crazy Man Michael who did a great job of filling in a short notice. We invited them to play at our stage during last May’s Sounds From The Other City, and they’ll also be supporting Great Lake Swimmers for us at Dulcimer on 19 May.

The Little Red Rabbit roster also contains familiar local faces Anna Kashfi, Kalbakken and Cambridge’s Fuzzy Lights. Below we speak to LRR’s David Armes and showcase tracks from the label’s artists.

First up, when was the label launched and who’s involved?

About a year or so I guess. We did a couple of home-made tour-only EPs for Last Harbour in 2005 and 2006, and gave them the Little Red Rabbit name, but it only really became a functioning label in early 2008. There’s a small collective of us involved – between us we cover working with each artist, sorting out the manufacturing, art and design, doing the press, working with our excellent distributor (that would be Forte), looking after the website, paperwork etc. The broad idea though is that, being a collective, the people behind each release also work hard on it. There’s meant to be exchange of ideas and not just a rigidly defined ‘band makes music’/'label releases music’ dynamic – it all crosses over.

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We just heard about a gig at Salford’s Islington Mill tomorrow night and, rather than trying to sound all knowledgeable about it, we thought we’d pass on details word for word:

Thursday 7 May gives us the second in the Salford Concert Series – Claus Van Bebber. This German-based artist of longstanding comes directly out of and is contemporary to the late 70s Milan Knizak ‘Broken Music’ school of playing physically ruined records. In 1982 he co-founded the artists’ collective Heinrich Mucken, an intermedia platform animated by a handful of experimental musicians, visual and performance artists. Joining in will be Mick Beck, Ben Gwilliam, Sonic Pleasure, and Matt Wand, whose many talents are far too lengthy to list here, you will just have to come along and witness for yourselves, concert starts 7.30 pm on Thursday 7 May and costs £5.

The mill is just off Chapel Street in Salford – a leisurely 15-minute walk from Deansgate.