ALARM

The Comedy director Rick Alverson on creating a sub-cultural soundtrack

Hitting theaters last November after a Sundance debut, The Comedy is a “hipster”-driven character study that steeps in irony, reflected first and foremost by its title. We talked to director Rick Alverson about how he chose the music for his sub-cultural soundtrack.

Fight the Amory Wars in Coheed and Cambria’s new iOS video game

Coheed and Cambria: The Afterman: Descension (Hundred Handed / Everything Evil, 2/5/13)

Coheed and Cambria’s Amory Wars might be one of the most ambitious conceptual undertakings in modern music. Spanning the majority of the group’s musical output and expanded in the form of both graphic and prose novels, it’s an epic space opera about a group of planets held together by lines of energy known as the Keywork. Conceived by front-man Claudio Sanchez, the story is also currently being adapted for a feature film by Mark Wahlberg.

Video Premiere: Ceramic Dog on the trials of physiology in “Lies My Body Told Me”

Ceramic Dog: Your Turn (Northern Spy, 4/30/13)

Guitarist Marc Ribot is a man so prolific that it’s impossible to assign him a genre. Whether rock, jazz, world, or experimental, his music always bears the mark of a master.

Ceramic Dog, his outfit with Shahzad Ismaily and Ches Smith of Secret Chiefs 3, plays a brand of guitar-driven experimental rock that speaks to the body. Your foot taps, the distortion wails, and before you know it, you’re sunk into the voodoo haze of an auditory bayou.

Bosnian Rainbows traverses the world in six minutes in video for “Turtle Neck”

Bosnian Rainbows: s/t (Sargent House, 6/25/13)

Omar Rodriguez Lopez finds it impossible to slow down. The former Mars Volta guitarist is going full blast on his new project, Bosnian Rainbows, mere months after the Mars Volta break-up announcement. The band, a collaboration with Teri Gender Bender, Deantoni Parks, and Nicci Kasper, is releasing its first album June 25.

Fugazi’s Ian MacKaye to teach Library of Congress about personal digital archiving

Ian MacKaye has been around Washington DC longer than most congresspeople. The Dischord Records co-founder has been part of two of the most celebrated groups ever to come out of the area, Minor Threat and Fugazi, and now tours with The Evens, his partnership with Amy Farina. Apart from his music and a successful label, MacKaye acts as an archivist, working with others to collect live concert material of Fugazi.

Hear Shining’s new album; watch the Crimson-jazz brutality of “21st Century Schizoid Man”

Shining: One One One (Prosthetic / Universal Norway, 5/28/13)

There are covers, and then there are covers. Shining’s version of King Crimson’s “21st Century Schizoid Man” is the latter, a roiling, screaming beast of wails, beats, and static.

Guest Spots: Georgia Anne Muldrow challenges the food system’s status quo

Georgia Anne Muldrow: Seeds (Stones Throw, 3/27/12)

“Seeds”

Georgia Anne Muldrow: “Seeds”

Global food politics didn’t crop up on many albums last year, but it featured prominently on one: Georgia Anne Muldrow’s Seeds, the title track of which became known as a “diss track” to Monsanto, the infamous multinational agriculture company. Here the Las Vegas-based songwriter and record producer talks food, farming, and our environment of fear, giving us a lot more than two cents — pretty generous for an artist who admits she’s living paycheck to paycheck.

Q&A: Gotye on weird samples, dream collaborations, and performing a mega-hit

Gotye: Making Mirrors (Universal Republic, 1/31/12)

In early 2012, Australian singer/songwriter Wally De Backer — a.k.a. Gotye — exploded across American media thanks to the pop wonderment of “Somebody That I Used to Know.” For the better part of the year, the song was impossible to miss, and for good reason. But the causeway of hooks, timbres, and samples on Making Mirrors proved that there’s more to Gotye than one hit — even if that hit always gets the crowd going.

Other than the metal fence on “Eyes Wide Open,” what’s the weirdest thing that you’ve sampled?

I sampled some antique slab spoons on a mobile that I found in an antique shop. I sampled a music box on [“Don’t Worry, We’ll Be Watching You”] — sampled the sound of winding it up and letting it spin down with the different notes, and kind of made a manual vibrato on it by opening and closing the lid as it was playing into the microphone.

Video Premiere: Polyrhythmic pop and abstract beauty in Allison Miller’s “Early Bird”

Allison Miller’s Boom Tic Boom: No Morphine, No Lilies (The Royal Potato Family, 4/16/13)

She might be best known as the drummer for Natalie Merchant and Ani DiFranco, but Allison Miller is an accomplished artist in her own right, standing out in a crowded NYC jazz scene with her compositions and skills behind the kit. Her sophomore album with Boom Tic Boom — a group that includes pianist Myra Melford, violinist Jenny Scheinman (Bill Frisell), and bassist Todd Sickafoose (Ani DiFranco) — is another such testament.

Watch The Dillinger Escape Plan’s grue-soaked “When I Lost My Bet”

The Dillinger Escape Plan: One of Us Is the Killer (Sumerian / Party Smasher, 5/14/13)

The Dillinger Escape Plan is angry. This is no surprise. However, in the video for “When I Lost My Bet,” off upcoming album One of Us Is the Killer, the metalcore vets’ rage has literally transformed them into the walls of a house, with scenes therein that put the entire Hellraiser series to shame in terms of gooey, exsanguinated depravity.

Streaming Sausages: Hear The Melvins’ 30th-anniversary covers album, catch ’em on tour

(The) Melvins: Everybody Loves Sausages (Ipecac, 4/30/13)

(The) Melvins, embarking on a 30th-anniversary tour (in both standard and Melvins Lite variations, depending on date) on July 12 alongside Honky, is releasing a covers record April 30. Entitled Everybody Loves Sausages, the album showcases the band’s many talents by covering artists as diverse as David Bowie, Queen, The Jam, and Venom. It also features myriad guest stars, including JG Thirlwell, Scott Kelly (Neurosis), Jello Biafra, and more.

Hasidic doom jazz? Meet Deveykus

Trombonist Dan Blacksberg has made a career out of reinterpreting Ashkenazic Jewish music in interesting ways. Get to know his latest project, Deveykus, which filters Hasidic sounds through the eyes of doom metal.