Our old pals in Balto recently shot and released a stirring and thought-provoking video for “Airplanes” from their excellent Monuments EP. Frontman Dan Sheron wrote to call my attention to the release, and here’s how he describes the video:
Way back in September, Daniel Sheron of Balto wrote to announce the arrival of Monuments, the band’s follow-up to 2011’s October’s Road. In his letters, Daniel stressed that the album was a new direction for Balto – a step forward for him and the band. Given how much I loved October’s Road, this was certainly intriguing. In one e-mail, he wrote:
I’m going to jump right to it with this one: Balto’s October’s Road is gorgeous. Goosebump-inducing gorgeous. The album, which is available on Bandcamp, is the work of Daniel Sheron and five of his friends (including Philippe Bronchtein of Hip Hatchet), and comes attached to a truly excellent origin story:
Balto came into being when Daniel Sheron abandoned his life in Moscow, Russia and went alone into Siberia. Against an ever shifting backdrop of railways and desolate wastes, he wrote a cycle of songs to tell the story of what had happened in that strange country, why he had exiled himself, and why he thought it mattered. In train cars and crumbling cities he encountered PEOPLE, and they inhabited the songs he was writing and the notes he was taking. In the fall, Daniel brought Balto back to America and called his friends to record an album in one day. On December 15, 2010, six people entered a basement in Brooklyn, New York and emerged that night with an album that no one had expected. October’s Road.