ALARM Magazine Archives

Interview: Salem metalcore vets Converge send home the guests for an explosive new album

This content appears in ALARM #40. Subscribe here to get your copy!

Converge: All We Love We Leave Behind (Epitaph, 10/9/12)

“Sadness Comes Home”

Being one of the most consistently devastating and innovative hardcore bands on the planet doesn’t come easy. In fact, it requires countless hours of hard work, a highly disciplined work ethic, and a level of stamina that even the youngest punks in the game can’t always muster.

For nearly 20 years, Salem, Massachusetts-based metalcore titan Converge has continually pushed its intense sound to new and progressively head-spinning extremes, hammering out 90-second explosions of speed and energy on one track, while delving into a gut-wrenching mixture of emotion and melody the next. Though expectations are best left wide open when approaching a new album from the group, two things remain constant: it’ll never be half-assed, and it most certainly won’t be boring.

Interview: Swans crafts “total experience” on double album The Seer

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Swans: The Seer (Young God, 8/28/12)

“The Apostate” (edit)

Swans: “The Apostate” (edit)

The Seer, the new double album that follows Swans’ productive 2010 reunion and studio return, is a space in which to wander in furious mediation — as songwriter Michael Gira puts it, a “total experience.” Dense without losing immediacy, the album stretches over two hours of constantly shifting aural landscapes. This is a work to be enjoyed second by second, losing your mind to its deceptive repetitions.

Interview: Dinosaur Jr.’s chemistry, formula, and pursuit of perfection intact on I Bet on Sky

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Dinosaur Jr.: I Bet On Sky (Jagjaguwar, 9/18/12)

“Watch the Corners”

Dinosaur Jr.: “Watch the Corners”

When punk hit in the 1970s, it was popular to call the prog rockers and stadium-filling FM-radio vets “dinosaurs” for their size and presumed extinction. That only made it more fun for J. Mascis and his pals to dub their thunderously loud Amherst, Massachusetts, trio Dinosaur in the mid-’80s (it added the Jr. on its second album) to confuse things a bit more.

The band dealt in volume and aggression learned in hardcore act Deep Wound, but guitarist Mascis’s laconic and numb musings and bassist Lou Barlow’s emotional wail were another planet removed from typical punk spit and anger, and Mascis’s graceful, dense guitar solos showed more than a passing knowledge of classic-rock chops. The band has always been a unique balance of aggression and cuddle — snot and bedroom blues — and few of today’s indie rockers ever think to combine both.

Interview with Tim Fite: Little-T Ain’t Stealin’ No More

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Tim Fite: Ain’t Ain’t Ain’t (Anti-, 3/2/12)

“We Are All Teenagers”

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Tim Fite has come a long way since his rap roots. Though many may recognize his face from the 2001 hit “Shaniqua” with One Track Mike, the man formerly known as Little-T has spent eight years and ten albums singlehandedly bridging rap and indie folk under his current moniker. That, however, makes his career sound much too simple: Fite’s half-rapped, half-sung delivery has paired with a massive library of samples and an alternately cut-and-paste and acoustic aesthetic to craft something unparalleled.

For the final installment of his Ain’t trilogy on Anti- Records, the aptly titled Ain’t Ain’t Ain’t, Fite reinvents his own unconventional process. He’s still sampling, but gone are the bargain-bin cuts; instead, they’re rearranged compositions by Fite and his friends. Thematically, the album’s prequels were youthful commentaries on adult topics, but Ain’t Ain’t Ain’t flips that as well — offering a mature take on the heartbreak and joy of his teenage years.

Interview: Animal Collective on the “alien rock-‘n’-roll” sounds of Centipede Hz

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Animal Collective: Centipede Hz (Domino, 9/4/12)

“Today’s Supernatural”

Animal_Collective_Today_s_Supernatural

What would it sound like if a band from another planet somehow heard early ’50s and ’60s rock and roll and covered it? This half-serious anecdote is how Animal Collective keyboardist Brian Weitz, better known as his stage name Geologist, frames his band’s ninth studio album, Centipede Hz. For as amusing as it is to imagine extraterrestrials clattering to The Hollies, Weitz’s rhetorical scenario points to the band’s creative motors at work, and how they manage to obscure influences beyond recognition.

Interview: Sigh’s lucid nightmares inform eclectic, metallic In Somniphobia

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Sigh: In Somniphobia (Candlelight, 3/13/12)

“The Transfiguration Fear Lucid Nightmares”

Sigh: “The Transfiguration Fear Lucid Nightmares”

Formed in Tokyo in 1990, Sigh isn’t like most extreme metal bands. To the uninitiated: imagine a mad scientist who has left traditional morality behind in his quest for discovery. Imagine Mr. Bungle, doubled down on metal brutality. Imagine John Zorn as a founding member of Iron Maiden. Imagine that someone left Scandinavian-style metal out on the counter overnight and that strange, hypnotic, polychromatic molds have started to grow on it. You still haven’t quite imagined the unique strangeness of Sigh, but you’re getting there.

Interview: Dan Deacon on the importance (or lack thereof) of formal music education

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Dan Deacon: America (Domino, 8/27/12)

“Lots”

Dan Deacon: “Lots”

In a police lineup of today’s most unique young composers, Dan Deacon would be easy to spot: big, red hipster glasses and a big, red half-moon beard. But despite the “charming doofus” look, Deacon’s blend of synthesizers, vocal effects, and acoustic percussion is some of the smartest electronic music around, and he owes its complexity at least in part to his time studying composition at the Conservatory of Music at SUNY Purchase. Here he discusses what his education meant to him, the enormity of student debt, and forcing musicians to study math.

Interview: Fang Island on laughter, positivity, and touring Japan

This interview appears in ALARM #40. Subscribe here to get your copy!

Fang Island: Major (Sargent House, 7/24/12)

“Seek It Out”

Fang Island: “Seek it Out”

Fang Island is laughing. Fang Island is constantly laughing. Jason Bartell and Chris Georges, the two primary songwriters for the Brooklyn-by-way-of-Rhode Island outfit, are sitting in the Greenpoint bar where they played their first show in New York. They sip Brooklyn Lagers on a muggy evening while wearing nearly identical jean jackets. The duo is discussing whether drummer Marc St. Sauveur would don the “Denim Daddy” attire on stage, ultimately deciding that he would refuse. Bartell and Georges giggle at the thought.

Connectivity and the colossus: Swedish metal mavens Meshuggah on alternate musical pathways

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Meshuggah: Koloss (Nuclear Blast, 3/27/12)

“Do Not Look Down”

Meshuggah_Do_Not_Look_Down

The average brain of an adult human has 100 to 500 trillion synapses. Each new electric impulse, each wrinkle that develops in our minds, leads to our understanding of the world around us. How this is done is still a mystery, and our experience of music is at the forefront of this complex puzzle. Somewhere between vibrations in the air hitting our eardrums and memory, we each confront and interpret the sounds of our surroundings and perceive the phenomenon of music — that which is made of rhythm, pitch, timbre, and dynamics.

Doug Stanhope on subversive comedy, NFL aesthetics, and music snobbery

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Doug Stanhope: Before Turning the Gun on Himself… (Roadrunner, 3/6/12)

Few comedians are as inspired by sociologist James Loewen as by abortion jokes. But Doug Stanhope, in case you haven’t noticed, isn’t your everyday comic. Yes, most of a set might be devoted to Japanese nether regions, odorous urine, and ripping on Dr. Drew. Underneath the sophomoric exterior, however, is an educated everyman: someone as taken with the hacktivist group Anonymous as with football-jersey aesthetics.

Following the release of his second album for the Roadrunner Comedy imprint, titled Before Turning the Gun on Himself…, we caught up with Stanhope during a massive UK tour — including a stop in Wolverhampton, ranked fifth on Lonely Planet’s “Cities You Really Hate.”

Divorcing convention: Marriages makes post-rock bliss on Kitsuné

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Marriages: Kitsuné (Sargent House, 5/1/12)

“Ride in My Place”

Marriages_Ride_in_My_Place

Emma Ruth Rundle has a belated Christmas gift for you. While most of us braved awkward reunions with relatives last winter, the guitarist/singer and her new band Marriages were cooped up in a studio, challenging the very notion of what it means to be “post-rock.”

Interview: The Magnetic Fields drops an emotional bathysphere

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[Photo by Matthew Williams taken at Hotel Americano, New York.]

The Magnetic Fields: Love at the Bottom of the Sea (Merge, 3/6/12)

“Andrew in Drag”

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Stephin Merritt must have sonar. Whether helming The Magnetic Fields or penning songs for films and musicals, he finds depth in even the shallowest of topics and creates meaning by exploring meaninglessness. The title of his new, self-produced album, Love at the Bottom of the Sea, hints at this process as it summons daydreams about mermaids, pirates, and amorous octopi.