Sam Jones, the man behind The Balky Mule, will write songs with whatever he can get his hands on. The initial inspiration for the songs on The Length of the Rail, his second under the name The Balky Mule, came from rescuing odd instruments from boot sales and recording snippets and vignettes, which he would later cobble together into a sort of mishmash singer/songwriter style.

Jones did time in the infamous Bristol shoegazer scene of the early ‘90s, contributing to bands such as Flying Saucer Attack, Crescent, and Movietone, and perhaps it was with those psychedelic noisemongers where he learned such interesting and eccentric arrangement techniques. He strings together bleepy analog synths, woozy organs, claptrap ramshackle percussion, and intermittent guitar strums to create a dense and fascinating tapestry.

Take, for instance, opening track “Dust Bath Birds” which features a bouncy latin jazz flavor, but feathered with the fluttering of a flock of birds, and a surprising distorted guitar solo out of nowhere, which reminds me of recent Mt. Eerie records, and sounds like the future of folk music.

It is all these interesting frills, bells, and whistles that makes The Length of the Rail such a beguiling listening experience that rewards repeat listens as you are drawn further and further into the world of Sam Jones. But all the bric-a-brac serves to draw the listener in, to listen closer, to Jones’ lyrics, which read more like shards of short stories, subjective and dreamy, which seem to place you behind the eyes of the songwriter. This is all shade and suggestion, nothing heavy-handed here, hardly even a rhyme scheme. Rather, what you get is a non-stop barrage of text and images, surreal and psychedelic, that makes “Blinking”, the instrumental track five songs in, come as a welcome relief.

The Balky Mule have garnered some comparison to Syd Barrett, the Madcap himself, and I can see the similarities. The disjointed rhythms, making music with whatever material lie at hand; the sing-song barrage of lyrics with a nursery rhyme quality—there is a an experimental British pastoralness here, like Barrett, Julian Cope, Nick Drake, and The Incredible String Band, with mentions of gardens and forests, mountains and seas. O, how the British seem to so dearly love the countryside!

It is a hallucinatory world of miniature trains and raspberry lemonade that is evoked, with a transistor radio playing crackling songs from your childhood as you skim along like a kite. It can make for a rather exhausting listening experience, like reading a really weird short story collection, but it pays off in seeing the world in a new, fresh way. Also, the broken down thrift store machinery provides some interesting loops and textures, and I find the loose structure of these songs occasionally brilliant, and always interesting and different.

Sam Jones was in the process of leaving his home, and moving halfway across the globe to Australia, during the process of making this album. The music was recorded in Bristol, with the lyrics added, after the fact, in Australia. What we are left with is an interesting scrapbook of a transitional period in a talented musician’s life, who has the skills and the wit to capture the flying carpet sensation of everything changing.

The Balky Mule takes risks, he challenges his audience. He doesn’t spoonfeed singalong anthems. But the oddity is tempered with a tuneful ear—“Wireless” is a rather poppy number, with a pretty insidious hook—and the whole thing seems to hang together by its own internal logic.

I am excited and inspired to hear someone doing something unique and adventurousness in the folk/singer-songwriter idiom, which is too often safe, boring, and uninspiring. The amount of care and detail is evident, if you pay attention, and obviously a labor of love. If you are a fan of Broadcast or Stereolab, with their soulful analog somnambulism, or perhaps M. Ward’s soporific strumming, then this might be for you. You might not get it, at first, but it is worth the effort, and you may hear and see things a little differently after the fact.

Written by J Simpson

It’s doubtful Solomon had Xbox 360s in mind when he wrote Proverbs 22:6, but who knows?! He was a very wise man…

Presumably it will also be a bit more magical? Have a stronger fairytale vibe?

It is in many ways just what you enjoy in the book. You enjoy an almost chamber piece, like when the stone trolls talk about cooking the dwarves.

It’s such a small piece but at the same time it’s magical and it’s almost a comedy, that you have these enormous creatures talking about cooking these dwarves!

It wouldn’t be a Guillermo del Toro movie unless it possessed a poetic quality, surely?

There is a lot of magic in the film. Peter has the eye of a strong historian, in the sense that the trilogy is incredibly accurate to a world that was created. He’s like an archaeologist who’s digging something that existed. I think that The Hobbit has a little bit more poetic licence.

It has… How can I say it? It has a little bit more flamboyance.

There are directors that I trust so completely as Guillermo del Toro, and this interview does nothing to change that opinion.

The Hobbit will be released as two movies in December 2011 and December 2012.

And just for the record, Josh Dooley is one of the best guitarists and songwriters you’ve never heard. Via

When I posted a lyric from “There Is A Light That Never Goes Out” as my Facebook status, the response was immediate from friends (four “likes this” and 8 comments). This is truly a perfect of perfect songs—nothing is wrong. The tune is slightly uptempo with a perfectly complimentary sound for Morrissey’s tale of utterly complicated deep love. The words are hopelessly romantic, darkly comedic, and heart-wrenchingly poignant—just pick any line, and your stomach will cave and be filled with a sad gooeyness.

And here’s a little something for your Friday night mopey viewing pleasure.

For nearly ten years, Jon DeRosa has been producing music with the goal of capturing the sounds that exist inside his head. That may be the goal for all musicians, but in DeRosa’s case, there’s a bit more to it than that. You see, DeRosa is deaf in one ear and as a result, has had to live with aural distortions and hallucinations (not to mention the effects of painkillers)—all of which have served as inspiration for his music.

Originally, his attempts consisted of drone-oriented ambient recordings such as 2000’s No Solace In Sleep. Subsequent albums—e.g., 2003’s Pure Tone Audiometry, 2005’s Bleeding Light—saw DeRosa eschewing his earlier, pure ambient approach for a more structured, song-oriented sound.

Those later recordings contained memorable moments, but I’ve always found Aarktica’s music most affecting and involving when DeRosa is truly immersed in his dronework, however ominous and unsettling it might be. So it shouldn’t come as any surprise that I like In Sea so much, as Aarktica’s latest finds DeRosa returning to the noisier drones and atmospherics that first typified Aarktica.

Well… almost.

Don’t get me wrong: In Sea ranks up there with No Solace In Sleep when it comes to atmospherics, but they’re cleaner and more polished this time. The result, I’m sure, of both recording in a real, honest-to-God studio (by contrast, No Solace In Sleep was recorded in a dorm room on a dying 4-track) and DeRosa’s decade of experience coaxing all manner of sounds from his gear.

This is best seen in the album’s opening track, “I Am (The Ice)”, where DeRosa sets off slowly revolving tundra drones while a band of sparkling, crystalline guitar notes arcs high overhead. It’s a gorgeous and rather affecting piece that evokes an Arctic sunrise as much as the most glorious moments of Flying Saucer Attack’s career. Later, on the title track, DeRosa picks out a gentle guitar melody then sets it adrift amidst a sea of guitar effects and noise swells—meanwhile, the reverbed sounds of his hands sliding along the guitar strings adds a human feel to the otherwise otherworldly music. And finally, on “When We’re Ghosts”, DeRosa wraps the listener in tight guitar loops before lashing out with violent, ragged bursts of noise, which results in the album’s most gripping moments.

But even though In Sea is a return to Aarktica’s roots, there are some surprises, most notably in the vocals. DeRosa’s voice has always been Aarktica’s weakest element for me: his music is strongest when he steps back and lets his atmospherics do the singing. But DeRosa’s voice appears on two of In Sea‘s tracks, and they turn out to be two of the album’s finest moments.

The first is “Hollow Earth Theory”, which gets my vote for DeRosa’s best vocal performance to date: here he sings “We will wait and we will see/If it’s right to put our faith all/In this hollow earth theory” over building layers of guitar. It’s a simple enough approach, and yet the song’s longing-filled lyrics and surging melodies combine to have quite an emotional effect.

The second is a cover of Danzig’s “Am I Demon”. At first, it seems like a joke—I think I did a double take when I read the press release—but as DeRosa distantly sings “Am I beast or am I human/Am I just like you?/Power seething, really reeling, reaching out for you/Am I demon? Need to know” while surrounded by murky, ominous tones and somber guitar lines, he achieves a sense of foreboding that far outshines Danzig’s original version.

T.S. Eliot’s famous quote—“We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time”—strikes me as an appropriate description of In Sea. After ten year of sonic exploration, In Sea is a return to where DeRosa began, the result being an album that represents a deeper exploration and knowledge of his familiar sounds. As such, it’s probably replaced No Solace In Sleep as my favorite Aarktica recording—no longer can I say “I liked their earlier stuff better” in good conscience—and I hope it sets the stage for Aarktica’s next ten years.

...I hate it when people cheapen Christmas by doing stupid “Save Christmas” campaigns. If Christmas needs us to save it by having bumper stickers, listening to Bill O’Reiley’s [sic] rants, or boycott business’ who use “Happy Holidays”, then Christmas is not worth saving. It will have become one more useless idol. An idol that would have us participate in it’s rituals by buying as much crap as we can from retailers who obviously care about Jesus because they put Merry Christmas in their advertisements.

Travis Schmeisser—one of Structure’s creators—has provided a nice, thorough write-up of Structure on EE Insider that explains some of its basic concepts, how it can make life easier for developers and clients, and also addresses some Structure-related misconceptions.

Mass Effect 2 will be released on January 26, 2010. Which, just for the record, coincides with the birth of my second son. Needless to say, I’ll have to wait awhile before I can catch up with the further adventures of Commander Shepard.

“Once I Was Pretty” is on the band’s latest album, Islands, which came out this week. You already have a copy, right?