Hot Sugar’s Cold World, Adam Bhala Lough’s engaging new documentary, begins with the title musician/producer recording the sound of Pop Rocks candy dissolving in a young woman’s mouth. It’s as good an introduction to the iconoclastic Hot Sugar (Nick Koenig) as any: this New York-based musical alchemist creates highly atmospheric compositions out of myriad everyday sounds. His moody, multi-layered electronic music has become the main soundtrack for Comedy Central’s Broad City and has graced tracks by rappers Antwon and Heems, in addition to many other Koenig collaborators. (One of his first high-profile production credits was for the song “Sleep” from The Roots’ 2011 concept album undun.) The movie invites us to watch — and ultimately marvel at — Koenig’s unorthodox, intensely personal process.

Courtesy of Amplify Releasing

Something of a wunderkind, Koenig found his MO years ago as a young hip hop fan, when he realized that “everyone winds up using the same sounds,” so he decided to make his own. Hot Sugar’s Cold World  follows Koenig over several months as he creates his music in a variety of environments and cities; collaborates and hangs out with assorted luminaries including Jim Jarmusch, actor Martin Starr and Heems (Himanshu Kumar Suri); queries astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson about the nature of sound; and talks about his process and his life. At one point in the film, he breaks up with his girlfriend, Internet-famous rapper Kitty, seemingly due to conflicting touring schedules and the damaging effect of online commenters.

It’s clear that Koenig is driven to find and record sounds. Early in the film, he fakes interest in purchasing a $90,000 Steinway baby grand piano, mainly to record himself playing it for a future composition. At another point, he has an intern call a funeral home in hopes of recording the silence in a viewing room. (He’s turned down, but will get the opportunity later in a more personal setting).

“Recording sounds is the closest I have to having control over anything in life,” he explains. As for traditional recording, “There are no rules; the people who wrote the rules are playing it safe.”

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Koenig travels to Paris and stays in the apartment of his grandparents, Holocaust survivors whose ordeal “makes me feel like the most worthless piece of shit,” for complaining about his own problems. A brooding sort possessed of a romantically morbid streak, he visits and records sounds at their grave, as well as in the Catacombs, where his messing with skulls and bones sets off an alarm. He later plays a cathartic club show where swaying attendees are transported by his music.

Though his pronouncements (“There’s no point to drums anymore…People rely on humanity too heavily”) seem somewhat anti-human, his music is undeniably compelling. We see Koenig’s method, from recording a specific sound, to digitally manipulating it into a usable recording, to incorporating it into baroque, often haunting, compositions. There’s seemingly nothing — a dollhouse on fire, a fountain pen — that isn’t sonic fodder for him, and often these sounds hold a deeper meaning. This is “associative music,” which contains sounds that evoke certain responses in the listener, even if they don’t realize what they’re hearing.

On a visit to UCLA, Koenig visits the room where the Internet was invented, part of a project to record the silence of meaningful locations. Back in New York at the Rose Center for Earth and Space, he seems happy with Degrasse Tyson’s ideas about sound and silence. (Naturally, he later uses the renowned scientist’s recorded voice in a composition.)

Courtesy of Amplify Releasing

Hot Sugar’s Cold World is a absorbing portrait of a musician whose approach may at first come across as gimmicky and self-indulgent, but who appears to be on a genuine search for meaning. By film’s end, there is no doubt that he is a true artist with a worthwhile mission: “I want to capture the beauty of the world… I record these things to remind me, so every time you listen to music you hear the beauty.”

Viewers should pay attention to the final credits, which includes a long and varied list of sounds used in the making of the movie, i.e., “lipglossed lips kissing air,” “petting cactus,” “petting velvet” and “snails eating money.”  Definitely one of a kind.

Hot Sugar’s Cold World is available on digital platforms including iTunes, XBox, Vimeo, Amazon and Google Play.

—Marina Zogbi