Soundcheck

Thursday morning, millions of people made a frantic dash to the iTunes store, and, for once, it wasn’t for Beyoncé. It was for the final episode of the unlikely hit podcast, Serial. The re-investigation of a 1999 murder case in Baltimore, Maryland became one of the most unexpected cultural sensations of 2014. Serial was a legit phenomenon: Every new episode brought another chance for fans to obsessively pore over the latest facts laid out, write detailed analyses in blog posts and Reddit threads, and offer theories of their own in other recap podcasts. It even inspired a few spoofs, remixes and mashups. And if you’re one of the nearly 2 million listeners who downloaded each week’s episode, you know that the moody and gently suggestive music that percolates throughout the narrative plays a key role in the show’s appeal. As the final episode of the series drops today, Soundcheck host John Schaefer talks with two musicians who created Serial's soundtrack. Nick Thorburn is the songwriter behind the bands Islands and The Unicorns; he was tapped to write Serial's catchy theme song. Mark Henry Phillips has a long relationship with public radio, and has provided scores for This American Life and other podcasts. Both musicians talk about the pitfalls of providing emotional cues through music; the need to create distinctive themes for the story's narrative cycles; and how to find and score the most important moments with minimal production time. Interview Highlights Nick Thorburn, on setting the mood of Serial through music: Music from SERIAL by Nick Thorburn I was sent the first episode and was told just to score where I saw fit. Right away the true crime nature of the show dictated where it was going to go and what kind of mood and tone was appropriate. Twin Peaks is an obvious touchstone and Angelo Badalamenti’s work -- that kind of moody twangy guitar and atmospheric synthesis. Thorburn, on an alternate version of theme song, “Still Dreaming”: Music from SERIAL by Nick Thorburn I replaced the piano stabs with guitar, so I basically kept the same progression and structure [as "Bad Dream"], but put the the main thrust with the guitar. I think that’s where that’s where I guess I get off the train at that point. There are certain motifs that I handed over, certain cues that can still be used here and there. When Mark sees fit he can drop them in. As far as going forward it is pretty hard to score something that doesn’t yet exist. I did what I could with that. Mark Henry Phillips, on scoring specific moments:  It’s really hard when there are these specific moments to score to. Some tracks I’ll do four different versions. I work really closely with Julie Snyder, the executive producer, who’s this amazing editorial force. Sometimes she’ll be like, “Eh it’s a little too ominous, too sad.” In the story there’s so much mystery and ambivalence. If the music just goes one inch too far in the direction, you’re telling the listener, don't believe this person, they’re lying or this person is wrongly accused. It’s really delicate. it takes a lot of fine tuning and throwing stuff out that’s a fine track but not coloring it the right way. Phillips, on scoring the moment when Sarah Koenig and Dana Chivvis try to recreate the murder timeline: Sarah Koenig, the host and her producer, [and] Dana tried to reenact the prosecution's timeline that said that Adnan had to leave school and get a ride from Hae -- he’s the accused killer. They basically created a timeline that he had to get to school, Best Buy, kill her and then call his friend to be picked up in 21 minutes. They tried to recreate that because current day Adnan is saying that’s impossible, there’s no way with the school buses and traffic, it’s impossible. I guess I was going for a “the clock is ticking” type thing. It’s score, so it’s not really meant to be listened without the talking and great story on top. On Anan’s recurring theme “Adnan”: Music from SERIAL by Nick Thorburn Thorburn: I was working off the first episode. But that was definitely the idea -- to create specific moods for these specific characters and create these based on everything I knew was based on the first episode and that he was in jail for a crime that he claims he didn't commit. I wanted that to inform the sinister and kind of sort of uncertainty in that piece. Phillips: That piece is amazing and we use it pretty much every week. It’s always hard to find a piece that really fits in. That one really seems to work after a new piece of information is given that you kind of need to think on.  Phillips, on the challenge of mixing a weekly show: We have one day to fit music in and do all the mixing. It’s a mad dash and it’s really hard to find the right tone. My trick is to focus on Sarah’s emotion. No matter where you fall on whether Adnan did it or not, there’s a few things that are undeniable and that is -- Sarah is unsure, she goes back and forth and that’s something I can focus on. When Adnan talks about his family whether he did it or not, I think people still have emotions for caring for your family. But I'm really trying to score the ambivalence, and when you think of it -- What does ambivalence sound like? It's really hard to think of the sound of it ... to come up with that sound for each scene. On the songwriting process: Phillips: This is one of those classic moments, where the more Sarah learns the less sure she is. It’s kind of the opposite of what you would think. The sound of uncertainty and ambivalence is what I was going for. To me I was thinking, I try to picture a scene. I was picturing clouds, a foggy scene at night you’re not sure where you are. It has this drone and ominous pulsating synthesizer that comes in through the end and high harmonic strings that add a mystery to it. Thorburn: To be frank, I listened to the pilot episode in the rough mix one and a half times. I did what I always do. I come from the world from songwriting and a recording artist who I write and produce my own stuff. let that intuition be the guide. Definitely, I trade in lyrics but that was definitely no room for more words. I think it’s highly possible to be influence by this in the future. It was definitely getting the blood flowing by working on this and having this process. Phillips, on scoring "The Search": That’s classic again. It’s like that could be colored so differently if the music was threatening and ominous. Later on, Sarah says something later “Eh I don’t think it’s a big deal. It’s too Agatha Christie novel.” I didn’t want it to make it seem like a big deal but also that it’s not inconsequential. It’s more driving the story forward, we’re learning more, we’re getting and closer to the prosecutions case against him. Focusing in on the story rather than that piece of evidence. On the challenge of scoring a podcast rather than film:  Thorburn: When you’re scoring to picture you can see people’s expressions, or the landscape or a beautiful tracking shot. But here, you’ve got to rely on inflection and tone and voice and obviously the host, the narrator who’s guiding the story and weaving and bobbing through it. It’s a different process but it’s a really fun challenge. When I sit and write things for Islands it’s a very similar thing. I’m just sitting and staring in the middle distance. Phillips: It was pretty similar to film work that I’ve done. That was sort of my approach. there are a lot of radio shows like This American Life, before Serial, a lot of the times it’s just a song. But what if we create it just like a score where a single piano note creeps in? It’s hard to do unless you're creating custom thing. I used to work in public radio -- now I do mixing and sound design. But I really wanted to treat it like a film. In film, we do a lot more restoration and EQ for tiny patches. In film, I don’t know why we do, but we get so tedious. I tried to apply that to the show and make it a mix that could stand up in a theatre.

Carefully plucked guitar melodies and slow vocals make Elephant Micah's Americana folk songs gently sleepy with an underlying intensity. It's the project of Indiana songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Joseph O'Connell, who has been making music for over 14 years with that moniker Elephant Micah, but during the day works as a folklorist. O'Connell documents culture in southern Indiana and throughout the Midwest region. That background cannot help but influence his rich story songs, with which he creates his own folklore. That continues on Elephant Micah's latest, and 12th album, Where In Our Woods, a collection that showcases O'Connell's cultural observations. It's fantastic music steeped in mystique and fable-like quality.  Set List: "By The Canal" "Albino Animals" "Demise Of The Bible Birds"

The members of We Were Promised Jetpacks were only 19-year-old University students in Glasgow when they released their moody and emo-ish debut These Four Walls in 2009.  The Scotland band's third record, Unravelling, reveals substantial maturity amid the diamond-sharp hooks. Recorded in Glasgow with Paul Savage (Teenage Fanclub, Franz Ferdinand, Mogwai), it features the acute angles of that producer's past work and also a fuller array of sounds, courtesy of the band's new multi-instrumentalist, Stuart McGachan. His addition comes nearly ten years after the original formation of Adam Thompson (vocals, guitar), Michael Palmer (guitar), Sean Smith (bass), and Darren Lackie (drums / backing vocals). The new record doubles down on the band's cathartic choruses and slab-like hooks, nowhere more in evidence than on the massive "I Keep It Composed." The band visits the Soundcheck studio to show off how these anthemic sounds translate live.

The music industry has been drowning in a sea of digital files and online streams. I would have added the phrase “through no fault of its own” in that first sentence, but let’s face it - this is in large measure the industry’s own fault. But that’s a sad story, and the holidays are supposed to be a happy time, so let’s talk for the moment about the life preserver the record labels are currently clinging to: namely, the box set. At a time when convenience and portability trump the old pleasures of owning a physical recording, the box set is a glorious, low-overhead, high-profit-margin exception. Box sets sell because they can be seen as collectibles, as objets d’art, or as a kind of proof of the serious nature of your fandom. For any of these reasons, they make great gifts too. Here are three that are out now that you might consider for this holiday season. REMTV All of the REM stuff that MTV (and other Viacom properties, including Comedy Central) can put into a box set of 6 DVDs; and featuring the new documentary called REM by MTV. There are some wonderful things here: the 1991 session for MTV’s Unplugged series remains a touchstone. And three DVDs of complete concert performances reveal a lot of unexpected deep tracks and covers, which are fun to hear and give a good sense of the band’s broad musical tastes. For completists, it’s a must-have; for everyone else, it might be a little overwhelming. It’ll be interesting to see if the documentary is released separately, because I found that the film REM by MTV was perhaps inadvertently brilliant in how it followed the arc of REM’s career. The first hour is awesome: choice bits from the MTV vaults of live performances, interviews with the four friends who comprised the band, and the nostalgia of hearing everything from “Orange Crush” to “Losing My Religion” as part of a steady stream of invention and surprise. It really makes you want to dive into all those other DVDs in the box set. Get More: R.E.M., Losing My Religion (Unplugged), Music, More Music Videos Then drummer Bill Berry nearly dies from a ruptured aneurysm in his brain, and soon leaves the group. They soldier on, and the movie begins to trudge along too. Interview clips begin to sound repetitive - a recurring theme about how no one can understand singer Michael Stipes’ lyrics is fine for a while, but by the time we finally get to Eddie Vedder’s truly hilarious line about that as he’s inducting the band into the Rock N Roll Hall Of Fame, the comedy is slightly muted. There is only a passing acknowledgment of the perception that the band had lost its edge; this comes when Stephen Colbert fires off a wickedly funny question that has the band cracking up in 2008 (it's at 2:16 in the clip below). The Colbert Report Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,The Colbert Report on Facebook,Video Archive And as the band finally decides to call it quits, so does the film; and only then can you take a breath and look back and really consider REM’s legacy. Which turns out to be even more central than most of us might have thought beforehand. BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: THE ALBUM COLLECTION VOL. 1, 1973-1984 It’s his first 7 albums, from Greetings From Asbury Park to Born In the USA. So you may know all the songs, and you may have all the records, but let’s face it: if you know all the songs and have all the records, you will buy anything Springsteen puts out. He is still The Boss, and here you finally get a chance to hear some of his classic albums remastered for CD, so they’ll actually sound good. Unlike the early CD reissues you may have already bought. But I suspect the real target here are those of us who are not Springsteen fanatics, but are fans to some degree, and realize his importance and the way his songs have seeped into the fabric of our country, and now, seeing this box set, are thinking, “oh, I should really own this record. And that one. And the one with “Thunder Road” on it. And look, here they all are.” THE RISE AND FALL OF PA

Adjacency is what makes The Barr Brothers tick. In the most literal sense, it was the act of moving in next door to harpist Sara Page that catalyzed Brad and Andrew Barr into a new band. The brothers had moved to Montreal in the wake of the demise of their New England-based avant-rock trio The Slip. Folding Sara's intricate harp runs into their sound, and adding multi-instrumentalist Andrew Vial, the newly consolidated The Barr Brothers created a lush and eclectic folk rock that earned them a Polaris Prize nomination on their first outing. Their sound is in the adjacency of polyrhythmic drums, delicate accents, and sprawling guitars -- a melange that would swamp less capable groups.   The band's latest album, Sleeping Operator, develops beyond that gentle, earthy feeling, but calls upon deeper R&B influences -- demonstrated in the song "Half Crazy." 

The British pop star reflects on making her latest album, Tough Love -- from writing a song with Ed Sheeran in 30 minutes, to hanging out with Benny Blanco's bulldog.

Idan Raichel met Malian guitar virtuoso Vieux Farka Touré in a chance encounter in 2008. Raichel, one of Israeli top-selling pop stars and keyboard player, was already an admirer of Touré's music -- as well as the work of his father, the late Ali Farka Touré -- for many years before they crossed paths at a German airport. And when Touré performed a concert in Tel Aviv, Raichel sat in. Soon thereafter, the two met up in studio for a jam session, recording for three hours, and kindling a strong collaboration that became the Touré-Raichel Collective.  On its first album, 2012's The Tel Aviv Sessions, the duo showcased aspects from both cultures -- mixing Malian rhythms with Israeli melodies -- yet both Touré and Raichel eschewed elements from their own music for something far more intimate and spare. Quickly the project grew in size, adding additional members to create full-fledged band featuring Jewish Israelis and Muslim Africans. Now, with the recently-released follow-up, The Paris Sessions, Touré and Raichel continue to build on their unique musical relationship and transcendent globe-spanning songs. Set List: "Hodu" "Tidhar" "Philipa" Watch the Touré-Raichel Collective's previous performance on Soundcheck in 2012:

Most of us got to know New Zealand singer and guitarist Kimbra from her 2012 duet with the Belgian-Australian singer Gotye, called "Somebody That I Used to Know." In addition to becoming a chart-topping hit, the song also won Grammy Awards for Record of the Year and Best Pop Duo/Group Performance, and was accompanied by a highly-viewed stop-motion music video that featured both singers' bodies being covered with patterns of paint.  While the duet was still riding high on the charts, Kimbra released her R&B and jazz-influenced debut solo album, Vows, here in the States. She joined us on Soundcheck to play songs from that album and blew us away with her powerful vocals and expressive performance. And we weren't the only ones who were impressed: Her performance of "Settle Down" in the Soundcheck studio quickly became the most viewed video on WNYC's YouTube channel. Now, Kimbra has returned with her second solo album, The Golden Echo. It's an expansive pop performance, drawing on influences ranging from '70s R&B and '80s disco to '90s pop and modern day electronica. It covers a lot of ground -- but all together, its various ingredients combine to create a smart, joyful and danceable record that at times isn't afraid to get a little weird. Set List: "Miracle" "Love In High Places" "90s Music"

When you've lived as a rock god for as long as Jimmy Page has, it's useful to have a camera handy. Instead of spilling ever more ink on Led Zeppelin's famous journeys to the land of black magic and sexual excess, Page decided to create a photographic autobiography -- the result of which is his new book, Jimmy Page by Jimmy Page. The guitarist curated more than 600 rare and never-before-seen photos from before, during and after his time with Led Zeppelin, and added his own notes (for example, a picture of a bottle-swilling Page is simply captioned "homeopathic remedy.") In his extensive conversation with Soundcheck host John Schaefer, Page talks about his attempt to play the most-heard guitar solo in the world, how he somehow still has his hearing, and why he never throws anything away. Also, hear Soundcheck's interview with Robert Plant. Interview Highlights Jimmy Page on putting together his book Jimmy Page By Jimmy Page: The idea of it was to actually present a musical career in a lifetime in photographs. So it’s an autobiographical book. It starts off when I’m about 12 and finishes off about when I’m 70. It’s just a complete run of photographs of my life all the way through and the various incarnations that I made. I was bit of a visionary really, I saved things so they wouldn't appear on Ebay later. I fortunately had a small number of photographs from the early stages, the pre-Beatles era, in my own collection. On his classic one-knee pose: Something that was rather interesting with some of the early photographs -- I’m about 15 and I'm playing in a cinema on a rock and roll tour with a band called Neil Christian & the Crusaders. And I’m down on one knee, and the weird thing is it’s exactly the same body language in the photographs in 1977 of the Led Zeppelin tour. Those sort of things were fascinating to find. I chose everything very carefully to chart this voyage. On taking a selfie in the Bron-Yr-Aur Cottage in 1970: I didn't invent the selfie but it’s interesting to have a selfie in there. It’s taken at the house which was my home which I lived at in the time of The Yardbirds. I’m actually taking a selfie. It’s more or less a goodbye shot. This is the house where Led Zeppelin gets routined. We rehearse the whole of the album, material and the set we’re going to go out and play in Scandinavia before we record. The same house is where we rehearsed “Whole Lotta Love” and “What is and What Should Never Be.” It’s quite a magical place. On incorporating technology and using the first fuzz box: The fuzz box is like an overdrive, it was really revolutionary at that time. I worked with someone from the Admiralty on it, he was in the electronic department. He worked in the area where he was doing top secret stuff. He approached me and said that this is the only way we can combine electronics with music. So I took him to my house, and I played him some music with overdriven guitar and he came up with this thing. I obviously got the first one because I was working with him. I was a studio musician. When I took it in there, everybody just freaked. They couldn’t believe the sound of it. I made sure Jeff Beck got the second one, and then everybody got them after that. Not just in studios but outside. On the closing ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics and playing “Whole Lotta Love” with Leona Lewis: Absolutely it was a high point. Leona Lewis was just in the last stages of the X-Factor, which she won hands down. I had been following her on that with my family, I had young kids. They all got Leona Lewis. I thought, this is going to be really wonderful. I had so much respect for this lady. She’s really plucky. Because she went from the X-Factor and just the audience there. This is the first time she’s going out solo, to millions of people. It was a really sultry approach. It was going to go in the Guinness Book of Records for the most listened to guitar solo, but it didn’t. But it was a really challenging thing, and it was fun. The p

Until The Ribbon Breaks has yet to put much music out there, but it's clear even in its few singles and five-song EP, A Taste Of Silver, that the U.K. electronic pop trio has arrived practically fully-formed. There's a dark quality in the music of Until The Ribbon Breaks; it's spare and elusive, yet visually stimulating. You can hear it in songs like "Pressure," which evokes the pulpiness of Tarantino flicks and the eerie cinematic tone of David Lynch films. In fact, singer Peter Lawrie Winfield cut together his own music video for that song using footage from Lynch's 1997 film, Lost Highway. Throughout its songs, the programmed electronic beats are sparse, yet are bass heavy and danceable enough to propel the grinding synths and robotic samples which serve as the bed for singer Winfield's soulful voice. Until The Ribbon Breaks is set to release its full-length album, A Lesson Unlearnt, in January 2015. And after a long tour opening for Lorde, and the latest single "Revolution Indifference" -- a collaboration with Run The Jewels, the hip-hop duo of El-P and Killer Mike -- the young band seems primed to find even greater success. Set List: "Perspective" "Goldfish" "A Taste Of Silver"

Zoe Howe's 'The Jesus & Mary Chain: Barbed Wire Kisses' is out now. (Courtesy of the publisher) As the 1980s became the '90s, a new sound from the UK began to rumble across the Atlantic: Built around countless layers of heavily distorted guitars and fuzzed out, yet melodic vocals, the music made by bands like My Bloody Valentine and Slowdive was eventually dubbed "shoegaze." But anyone who traced that sound back to the source would know The Jesus And Mary Chain, and its groundbreaking album Psychocandy, which is considered by many to be the first and finest in the genre. While The Jesus And Mary Chain is mostly known in the States for those radio-friendly, poppier songs like "Sometimes Always" and "Just Like Honey," the band had a far grittier reputation back in the U.K. "When the Mary Chain were finding their feet and doing regional gigs around London, they were very much associated with absolute white noise, lots of distortion, quite a lot of on-stage violence, and a lot of violence in the crowds," says Zoe Howe, author of the book The Jesus and Mary Chain: Barbed Wire Kisses. "There'd be riots, and a lot of stirring up of the hype of what would happen at a Mary Chain gig. And it was always very unpredictable and, you know, trouble." In a conversation with Soundcheck host John Schaefer, Howe explains how the brothers William and Jim Reid started the band in suburban Glasgow, the decades of public bickering that persisted through the entire duration of their career, and why 30 years after Pyschocandy, it remains such a seminal and influential album for young bands today. The Jesus And Mary Chain is now reuniting for a series of 30th anniversary concerts, and will performing the whole album straight through.  

Most don't immediately associate the blues with blonde-haired, alabaster-skinned Scandinavian women. But Duke Ellington, Count Basie, and Ray Charles all agreed that when Peggy Lee sang, they heard an unmistakable quality, a tone we've come to call "softly, with feeling." They heard the blues.  "Peggy had this air of strangeness and mystery about her that you couldn't quite identify when you heard her sing," James Gavin, author of the biography Is That All There Is? The Strange Life Of Peggy Lee, says in a conversation with Soundcheck host John Schaefer. "But there was just something askew about Peggy Lee when you heard her sing that set the imagination awhirl."  Yet Lee was more than just an alluring voice. As a composer, she wrote a huge breadth of work, including "Manana (Is Soon Enough For Me)," "What More Can A Woman Do?" and music for the Disney animated film The Lady And The Tramp, in which, she voiced a dog, two cats, and a human. And at a time when women faced serious discrimination in the music industry, Lee won hard-fought legal battles to hold onto the royalties from her work.  As an actress, she received an Oscar nomination for her role in Pete Kelly's Blues. Unfortunately, her role in the film was not too far off from the real-life Lee. "Deeply depressed and alcoholic," Gavin says that Lee's turbulence took many forms: drinking, prescription drugs, and both real and imagined illnesses. Lee died in 2002, and left behind a huge legacy including dozens of Billboard hits, three Grammy Awards, and an induction into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.  Interview Highlights: James Gavin, on what made Peggy Lee’s life “strange”: Peggy Lee lived in a dream world. She created her own reality in order to escape terrible conditions that she was growing up in and anything else that seemed distasteful to her. As I was writing this book I realized that Peggy Lee’s bio as she told it was largely a myth and in fact it was largely a myth drawn along the lines of Cinderella. If someone successfully lives in a dream world life is very happy. If you pull it off 100 percent there is nothing to be upset about -- most of the time you do not and that is the monster that nips at your heels throughout life and drives you to do things to try and blot out the truth. The remarkable thing about Peggy as an artist is that when you saw her perform you sensed all of this turbulence behind a very placid mask. On how Peggy Lee crossed racial borders: In the 1940s Peggy Lee’s Capitol singles were being sold in Harlem record stores amid records by Duke Ellington and Count Basie. Peggy Lee was galvanized by the feeling in between the lines of that exciting bluesy swing of Count Basie. She identified with it because she felt that she identified deeply with black-struggle and black-pain and as the years went on Duke Ellington, and Basie, and Ray Charles and all of those great masters felt that she was right. They heard that authentic sound of the blues in her voice… In spite of the fact that she was an alabaster-skinned, very fair, blond Scandinavian girl -- it was unmistakable. That sound in the universe of swingier singers who were usually girls-next-door, who sang on the beat, who had a very “white, clean” sound. There was Peggy with just enough of a dash of something else to make her stand out. On the real and imagined troubles throughout her life: The lunacy of this story kept me amused from the beginning to end. Peggy Lee at her most tragic also had a great comic element… She was no Billie Holiday in terms of being identified historically as a tragic figure. I cannot think of Peggy Lee as a tragic figure, I think of her as triumphant. Happiness was hard to come by for Peggy Lee, but she had a fabulous sense of humor.

Buscabulla's name (Puerto Rican slang for troublemaker) might be rebellious, but the Puerto Rican by-way-of Brooklyn duo -- consisting of vocalist Raquel Berrios and instrumentalist Luis Del Valle -- oozes intense sophistication and innovation. Informed by a smattering of vintage Latin music, the salsa of Celia Cruz, and the '80s dreaminess of Argentinian rock band Soda Stereo, there's an inherent sensuality that runs deep within its Caribbean electro-psych songs. It's been a busy and big year for the band, and couple: Buscabulla released its first EP in October -- produced by Dev Hynes (a.k.a. Blood Orange). And they gave birth to a baby girl. Still, the EP's unique, infectious songs show a lot promise. It's a sound that blends the past and the present, creating a seamless tropical revolution with their smart, cool Caribbean groove.  For more photos, visit Soundcheck's Tumblr page. Set List: "Caer" "Temporal" "Sono"

It takes a lot to make a great horror film: creative makeup, realistic special effects, tight close ups, and passable acting. But great sound also plays a massive role in scary movies. Sonic moments are some of the most memorable parts of classic horror flicks: For example, would The Blair Witch Project be remembered as fondly without the panicked hyperventilating of a lone camera woman telling us how scared she is? Or would John Carpenter's Halloween franchise scare us as much without the creepy score he wrote for the films?  We wanted to dive a little deeper into frightening sounds in the film industry, so we brought in Kristin Meinzer and Rafer Guzman, co-hosts of The Takeaway’s Movie Date podcast, for some of their favorite scary movie audio.  Interview Highlights   Kristen Meinzer, on creepy children and “Carol Ann’s Theme” from Poltergeist: Children are so creepy. They have those high, kind of screechy voices that are out of control. Who knows where those voices are going? And then the kids are so easily possessed by evil. You can possess a kid no matter what you do. In The Omen, in The Exorcist — just possess a kid. And then finally, they look so small and innocent…. That innocence can belie the truth, which is: They can get away with murder if they want to.     Rafer Guzman, on David Lynch’s use of Roy Orbison’s “In Dreams” in Blue Velvet: Kyle MacLachlan and Isabella Rossellini have just been caught by Dennis Hopper, who plays her psychotic, monstrous lover/tormenter. And of course, as people like that do, he decides to take them to a “party,” where the evening’s entertainment is Dean Stockwell in this weird drag 60’s lounge singer costume. And he’s going to do a karaoke version of “In Dreams” singing into a lamplight. And I just find it a completely horrifying, dreadful scene.   Kristen Meinzer, on the Oscar-winning soundtrack to The Omen: It’s so creepy. And that scene, if you watch it without the music — let’s say you put on a song by the Beatles over that — it’s really just a priest running through the churchyard while there’s a windstorm. But if you put that music on, it’s not a churchyard anymore. It’s a scary, hellish place, suddenly. I don’t even know what those voices are saying, but they’re terrifying, whatever they’re saying. It’s totally scary.  

For more than 25 years, Primus has honed its distinct weirdo sensibility and earned fans with its funny lyrics and high-octane instrumental prowess. At the center of the group is Les Claypool, the band's slap-happy bassist and spirit animal, whose absurdist musical whims and avant prog rock experiments have led the band from underground success to cult popularity.  Now, with their latest album, Primus' original members -- Claypool, Larry LaLonde, and Tim “Herb” Alexander -- have deployed their inventive and darkly comedic skills to re-imagine the score to the classic 1971 Mel Stuart-directed, Gene Wilder-starring film Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory. Claypool describes the new tunes as sounding like “one of the early Peter Gabriel records meets Dark Side Of The Moon meets the Residents.”  Primus' performs the music of Willy Wonka live on Soundcheck in the Greene Space. (Matthew Septimus for WNYC) So just in time for Halloween, Soundcheck and Primus threw an intimate Wonka-inspired concert and costume party at WNYC's Greene Space, performing material from the new Wonka record -- and a few surprises. Plus, the band judges the audience's best costumes. It was a truly wild afternoon full of musical oddities and candy-fueled fun.