One of the most versatile music writers in the city starts his newest gig buying talent for the Cobalt this month. Alan Ranta—a regular and impressively eclectic contributor to Exclaim! and PopMatters—joins the booking team of Bryan Sea and Tim Clapp at the Main Street venue.

“Basically, anything goes,” Ranta told the Straight. “[Cobalt manager] Patryk [Drozd] is excited about pretty much anything as long as it’ll sell the place, and I’ve got really broad tastes myself. I’m into everything.”

Ranta caught the curating bug after helping with communications and social media at last year’s New Forms Festival, and he was similarly impressed with the risks taken by Waldorf Productions in booking a diverse and sometimes challenging array of acts. The voracious appetite for music, meanwhile, was always there. “If I could just sit at home and listen to records all day, that’s what I’d be doing,” he said.

Ranta added that he’s still looking for local openers for his first two bookings. On June 1, he’s bringing in abstract IDM hero Lusine, followed by retro futurists AM and Shawn Lee, who’ll be touring their second album, La Musique Numerique, later the same month.