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Talk about a “merger.” Secretly Group, the indie label group whose companies include Dead Oceans, Secretly Canadian and Jagjaguwar, has acquired a 50 percent stake in fellow influential indie label Merge Records, the companies announced on Tuesday. Financial details of the new deal weren’t disclosed.

Secretly’s co-founders Ben Swanson, Chris Swanson, Darius Van Arman and Phil Waldorf purchased the stake, while Mac McCaughan, also a member of beloved indie band Superchunk, is expected to remain in his role as label president and head of A&r. Christina Rentz, Merge’s label director, will maintain her current role, the companies said, along with Merge marketing director Jamie Beck and head of digital Wilson Fuller. Merge’s co-founder and co-president Laura Ballance, also bass player in Superchunk, is leaving the music business.

Ballance and McCaughan first founded Merge Records in 1989, and the label became the home of beloved indie classics like...

In Rolling Stone‘s weekly series At Work, we go behind the curtain with decision-makers across the fast-changing music business — exploring a range of responsibilities, burgeoning ideas, advice for industry newcomers, and more. Read earlier interviews here.

“Major” and “independent” are normally contradictions in the music industry — but Darius Van Arman’s job is to toe the line. Van Arman is the co-ceo of Secretly, an indie label network that’s home to some of music’s most critically acclaimed alternative acts in the U.S., including Bon Iver, Angel Olsen,...

It may be too early to call him an American cousin akin to the quasi-dark humor of Roy Andersson and Aki Kaurismäki, but is third film showcased a unique, well-developed, wry-tinged funny-bone. When you throw in his previous dramatic pair of films in The Builder (2010) and New Jerusalem (2011), it makes for an early filmography that would surely receive an unflattering grade of next to no bags of popcorn from the On Cinema at the Cinema critic duo. This is a good thing. Filmmaker by day, musician by night, Rick Alverson’s third feature film The Comedy, was among the best items of 2012′s Sundance Film Festival, suffice it to say that his fourth film, Entertainment, which was shot midway in the year, might contain more of that DNA. Gregg Turkington who co-wrote with Alverson toplines the pic which was photographed by cinematographer Lorenzo Hagerman (look for his stylistic flourishes in...

“Tracking Shot” is a monthly featurette here on Ioncinema.com that looks at a dozen or so projects that are moments away from lensing (or in a couple of titles below have been shooting since July). This August we’ve got a good number of projects that will start surfacing as early as next year’s Sundance, Rotterdam and Berlin Film Fests. With Dakota Johnson having been just announced, we’ve got Luca Guadagnino’s long awaited (remake) A Bigger Splash, getting ready for a poolside shoot. Gus Van Sant comes out of the woodworks to move into the woods for Sea of Trees. Sundance alumni Rick Alverson is wrapping up Entertainment, Reed Morano is set to make her directorial debut this mid-August with Meadowland, while Douchebag, Like Crazy, Breathe In‘s Drake Doremus is stationed in Japan for a weighty cast and futuristic tale in Equals. Here are some...

Brooke Bernard, Ryan Zacarias, and Ryan Lough’s Nomadic Independence announced that Rick Alverson’s Entertainment is officially in greenlight mode and cast alongside the already pegged Gregg Turkington and Tim Heidecker we have now have Michael Cera, Tye Sheridan and veteran Dean Stockwell filling out the supporting cast with Angeliki Papoulia rejoining her The Lobster co-star John C. Reilly. Jagjaguwar’s Chris & Ben Swanson, Electric Dynamite’s Jack Black (yes the actor) will Executive Produce while George Rush (Ping Pong Summer), and Epic Pictures Group’ Patrick Ewald and Shaked Berenson will co-Executive Produce.

Gist: Written by Rick Alverson, Gregg Turkington and Tim Heidecker, this is set in the Mojave Desert, the film follows a broken-down comedian (Turkington) playing clubs across the Southwest, working his way to Los Angeles to meet his estranged daughter (Kalia Prescott). Along the way, his identity begins to deteriorate amid a series of encounters with...

Factory 25 has acquired worldwide rights to the Rick Alverson-directed drama "New Jerusalem," which has played at the Rotterdam and SXSW film festivals this year. The specialty distributor will release the film digitally Nov. 30 along with a weeklong run at Brooklyn’s Videology theater followed by theatrical expansion. "New Jerusalem" stars Will Oldham and Colm O'Leary in the story of the friendship between an Irish immigrant coming to America after fighting in Afghanistan and an Evangelical Christian who tries to help him. Alverson co-wrote the screenplay with O'Leary and produced with Courtney Bowles. Executive producers include Chris Swanson, Darius Van Arman, Jonathan Cargill and Ben Swanson. Read More: Factory 25 Acquires North American Digital Rights to the Melissa Leo Drama 'Francine' Brooklyn-based Factory 25 has recently released "Francine," "The Oregonian," "Wah Do Dem" and "Make out...