Music
Press
ROSS CLELLAND:
The Maple Trail is more correctly the parallel-rather-than-side project of Belles Will Ring's guitarist/singer Aidan Roberts. And although the 'Trail shares a beholding to some of the principles of that now expansively broad church known as 'psychedelic', there is a slightly different feel to this.
While Belles chimes at you with its glistening guitars, the 'Trail tends to tug at you with more gentle swirls of sound. The bio calls it 'electric folk epics' and while there are a number of contradictions in terms in that description, it will do to pigeonhole at least some of the music herein.
It does keep some of the touchstones of the form; some 'found' radio or TV noises, a plaintive trumpet full-stops the thoughts of the jangling but catchy Crackdown, some strings leak in here and there. The loose collective nature of the brand name allows people to put their distinctive marks to it, including Belles' other focus point, Liam Judson, who adds his voice to the hazy Goodnight at the Alpine.
The album also includes the splendid centrepiece of the band's debut EP, New York. It's a thing of beauty in its own right; it even makes the metropolis of the title sound like a pastoral dream as it washes over you. There are other flourishes, sometimes giving the whole enterprise an almost '60s feel - the just-off-kilter-enough handclap breakdown of A Cat Over The Shoulder, the Eastern European Valium folk-dance of Chandelier - though it mostly all keeps its slightly rough-hewn, done in the loungeroom quality. Unassumingly very good. - Drum Media, NSW
ROSS CLELLAND:
The Maple Trail is more correctly the parallel-rather-than-side project of Belles Will Ring's guitarist/singer Aidan Roberts. And although the 'Trail shares a beholding to some of the principles of that now expansively broad church known as 'psychedelic', there is a slightly different feel to this.
While Belles chimes at you with its glistening guitars, the 'Trail tends to tug at you with more gentle swirls of sound. The bio calls it 'electric folk epics' and while there are a number of contradictions in terms in that description, it will do to pigeonhole at least some of the music herein.
It does keep some of the touchstones of the form; some 'found' radio or TV noises, a plaintive trumpet full-stops the thoughts of the jangling but catchy Crackdown, some strings leak in here and there. The loose collective nature of the brand name allows people to put their distinctive marks to it, including Belles' other focus point, Liam Judson, who adds his voice to the hazy Goodnight at the Alpine.
The album also includes the splendid centrepiece of the band's debut EP, New York. It's a thing of beauty in its own right; it even makes the metropolis of the title sound like a pastoral dream as it washes over you. There are other flourishes, sometimes giving the whole enterprise an almost '60s feel - the just-off-kilter-enough handclap breakdown of A Cat Over The Shoulder, the Eastern European Valium folk-dance of Chandelier - though it mostly all keeps its slightly rough-hewn, done in the loungeroom quality. Unassumingly very good. - Drum Media, NSW
Trippy 1970s-style soft rock meets contemporary indie in this vivid debut from Belles Will Ring guitarist Aidan Roberts' pet project The Maple Trail. Recorded on the tape machine in Roberts' lounge room with an impressive selection of his musical compatriots, he uses a unique range of instruments - including mandolins, guitars, pianos, xylophones and trumpets - to create an album that sounds kind of like a mellower, less psychedelic version of Belles. It's a collection of lush, layered folk rock epics so complex you can lose yourself inside them.
Kicking off the album with the one-minute intro 'Flight,' Roberts and his crew take us on an hour-long journey through an ethereal netherworld that's sometimes haunting, sometimes gloriously rainbow-coloured. The dream-like single 'New York', with its Brian Wilson-esque vocal harmonies, manages to tell an evocative story with (literally) very few words. 'Rabbit' starts off sounding like a more restrained Polyphonic Spree, before quickly launching into a guitar riff reminiscent of Pink Floyd's 'Breath', and exploding into a swirling soundscape. 'Chandelier', with its strange lyrics and menacing guitar, is a detour into darker territory. 'Dead Sea Lullaby' is a beautiful xylophone-tinged acoustic ballad, while 'A Cat Over The Shoulder' is a quirky, catchy and memorable pop track.
With musical influences as diverse as Broken Social Scene, Grizzly Bear and War of The Worlds, The Maple Trail are making music that sounds both retro and nostalgic and fresh and original. With their exceptional songwriting talent and solid musical skill, they may just bring ambient, spaced-out slightly hippie-ish folk rock back into vogue in these cyncial modern times. Dirty Echo Spark is an album to bliss out to - sit back, close your eyes and let it carry you away. - Time Off Magazine
Trippy 1970s-style soft rock meets contemporary indie in this vivid debut from Belles Will Ring guitarist Aidan Roberts' pet project The Maple Trail. Recorded on the tape machine in Roberts' lounge room with an impressive selection of his musical compatriots, he uses a unique range of instruments - including mandolins, guitars, pianos, xylophones and trumpets - to create an album that sounds kind of like a mellower, less psychedelic version of Belles. It's a collection of lush, layered folk rock epics so complex you can lose yourself inside them.
Kicking off the album with the one-minute intro 'Flight,' Roberts and his crew take us on an hour-long journey through an ethereal netherworld that's sometimes haunting, sometimes gloriously rainbow-coloured. The dream-like single 'New York', with its Brian Wilson-esque vocal harmonies, manages to tell an evocative story with (literally) very few words. 'Rabbit' starts off sounding like a more restrained Polyphonic Spree, before quickly launching into a guitar riff reminiscent of Pink Floyd's 'Breath', and exploding into a swirling soundscape. 'Chandelier', with its strange lyrics and menacing guitar, is a detour into darker territory. 'Dead Sea Lullaby' is a beautiful xylophone-tinged acoustic ballad, while 'A Cat Over The Shoulder' is a quirky, catchy and memorable pop track.
With musical influences as diverse as Broken Social Scene, Grizzly Bear and War of The Worlds, The Maple Trail are making music that sounds both retro and nostalgic and fresh and original. With their exceptional songwriting talent and solid musical skill, they may just bring ambient, spaced-out slightly hippie-ish folk rock back into vogue in these cyncial modern times. Dirty Echo Spark is an album to bliss out to - sit back, close your eyes and let it carry you away. - Time Off Magazine
Aidan Roberts, the lively lead guitarist of Belles Will Ring, pulls out a loose leaf of paper from his worn diary. It is a list of titles for one of two records he will be releasing this July. He tells me he can’t decide on a title. I tell him I really like the sound of Radio Twilight Lost and he nods and decides that it will be the title of the record. Writing the words down in his journal, sitting right in front of me, I feel like we’re making history out in the empty courtyard of some cafe.
Roberts will be releasing two solo albums in July under the moniker The Maple Trail. The first, Dirty Echo Spark, will be the more conventional of the two, with the lead single New York already getting airplay on radio stations Australia wide. The second, the freshly christened Radio Twilight Lost, will be released in a limited run with handmade, screen printed covers, and will be the more experimental and slower record of the two.
The Maple Trail sees Roberts working in a more traditional folk vein than his other outfit, Sydney based band Belles Will Ring. He compares the Maple Trail instead to American bands such as Grizzly Bear and Canada’s Broken Social Scene. He seems particularly enamored by Broken Social Scene, who Belles Will Ring toured with earlier in the year.
“The band I’ve put together for the live shows for The Maple Trail is made up of very talented friends. It’s going to be a six piece and I hope that it will have a Broken Social Scene vibe, where everyone swaps around instruments. Hopefully it will blossom into this thing where people come and go, and other people can contribute to the song writing.”
“Like a revolving door?” I ask.
“Yeah, exactly that. I think I’ve used that term before myself – revolving door ... but, it’s very important that this band is not just Aidan’s world.”
Roberts is originally from the Blue Mountains and still visits there regularly to get away from the chaos of the city. That is something which, being from the Central Coast of NSW, I find myself identifying with. Roberts muses on his origins, saying, almost in passing, that “harsh climates force you indoors to create better stuff. You think about records like Nashville Skyline. They were snowed in on that record. I’d like to record an album like that one day, somewhere quite isolated, maybe the south of New Zealand.”
Somewhat surprisingly, The Maple Trail dates back to before Belles Will Ring. Roberts joined the latter after it had already been formed by childhood friend Liam Judson. Roberts and Judson had started making music together at the age of ten. They even recorded hip hop together, a forty second snippet of which appears on Radio Twilight Lost. Roberts originally intended to release any of his solo material on cassette tape only, but somewhere along the line more people got involved and it turned into “this big, complicated record, one hour long” and then somehow it became two records. For now, we can only be thankful that it did. - Rave Magazine
Aidan Roberts, the lively lead guitarist of Belles Will Ring, pulls out a loose leaf of paper from his worn diary. It is a list of titles for one of two records he will be releasing this July. He tells me he can’t decide on a title. I tell him I really like the sound of Radio Twilight Lost and he nods and decides that it will be the title of the record. Writing the words down in his journal, sitting right in front of me, I feel like we’re making history out in the empty courtyard of some cafe.
Roberts will be releasing two solo albums in July under the moniker The Maple Trail. The first, Dirty Echo Spark, will be the more conventional of the two, with the lead single New York already getting airplay on radio stations Australia wide. The second, the freshly christened Radio Twilight Lost, will be released in a limited run with handmade, screen printed covers, and will be the more experimental and slower record of the two.
The Maple Trail sees Roberts working in a more traditional folk vein than his other outfit, Sydney based band Belles Will Ring. He compares the Maple Trail instead to American bands such as Grizzly Bear and Canada’s Broken Social Scene. He seems particularly enamored by Broken Social Scene, who Belles Will Ring toured with earlier in the year.
“The band I’ve put together for the live shows for The Maple Trail is made up of very talented friends. It’s going to be a six piece and I hope that it will have a Broken Social Scene vibe, where everyone swaps around instruments. Hopefully it will blossom into this thing where people come and go, and other people can contribute to the song writing.”
“Like a revolving door?” I ask.
“Yeah, exactly that. I think I’ve used that term before myself – revolving door ... but, it’s very important that this band is not just Aidan’s world.”
Roberts is originally from the Blue Mountains and still visits there regularly to get away from the chaos of the city. That is something which, being from the Central Coast of NSW, I find myself identifying with. Roberts muses on his origins, saying, almost in passing, that “harsh climates force you indoors to create better stuff. You think about records like Nashville Skyline. They were snowed in on that record. I’d like to record an album like that one day, somewhere quite isolated, maybe the south of New Zealand.”
Somewhat surprisingly, The Maple Trail dates back to before Belles Will Ring. Roberts joined the latter after it had already been formed by childhood friend Liam Judson. Roberts and Judson had started making music together at the age of ten. They even recorded hip hop together, a forty second snippet of which appears on Radio Twilight Lost. Roberts originally intended to release any of his solo material on cassette tape only, but somewhere along the line more people got involved and it turned into “this big, complicated record, one hour long” and then somehow it became two records. For now, we can only be thankful that it did. - Rave Magazine
Discography
Cable Mount Warning (due for release June 2011)
Highwire EP (2011)
Radio Twilight Lost EP (2008) BSR006 - Broken Stone Records
Dirty Echo Spark LP (2008) BSR005 - Broken Stone Records
New York EP (2007) BSR004 - Broken Stone Records
The Blue EP (2006) - Independent
Photos
Bio
Born in the winter of 1979, Aidan seems most at home, creatively, during the colder months. For years he has made something of a pattern of writing and recording songs through the Autumn and Winter months.
“I like the dark time, the cold climates,” Aidan says. “I think the cold weather wakes my brain up, and that's when your thoughts run wild, when your brain is really active and there's a lot of lone time, you know, down-time. That's when the ideas come, and it feels more natural to work away in your books and with your instruments. It's also the time when you take in a lot more stuff – reading, writing, research, listening to records.
The Blue Mountains is home to a vivid, if quietly slow-burning, music scene. A small network of bands and songwriters, largely friends amongst themselves, have given rise to records of high acclaim recently from bands like Cloud Control, The Holy Soul, and the psychedelic folk-rock quartet Belles Will Ring, for whom Aidan is also a contributing songwriter and lead guitarist.
Recorded at Aidan's home throughout the winter and spring of 2007, Dirty Echo Spark began as a semi-improvised multi-track jam. Having recently returned from a short stay in New York City, Aidan set about creating songs in a new way – taking one simple idea for each song and simply playing for several minutes with the tape rolling. As thematic ideas emerged while playing the guitar, Aidan began to lay down more instruments, weaving between the tape machine and lyric book, soon assembling a core collection of 5 or 6 songs from which he planned to build an album, attempting to distill the emotional and musical climate of this particular time.
“When I got back from New York I bought this great old 1950’s no-name acoustic guitar from a crazy shop in Katoomba for 250 dollars,” he says, “which I fixed up a bit and got it going; it was kind of hard to play but I liked that – you had to work with it. It had the most beautiful boxy old-fashioned sound, I would play it all the time simply because I loved hearing it. All of these songs were born out of me just playing patterns on this guitar, rolling tape. I then started to marry the musical ideas with lyrics I'd written on the New York trip, and it started building from there – it felt like an album.
The songs that eventually grew into the material of Dirty Echo Spark could be described as electric-folk epics; ragged and joyous, at times elegiac. The eclectic sounds that populate the songs are as much a part of the instruments used (Aidan having experimented with various forms of piano, mandolin, electric instruments, weird percussion and random household objects such as the barrel of a washing machine – recognizably thumping away in 'New York') as they are a result of experimental recording techniques.
A majority of the instrumentation on Dirty Echo Spark was recorded in odd and varied locations; both in and outside. In doing so, Aidan welcomed uninvited sounds into the songwriting; much of which became integrated into the final mix of the record. Aeroplanes, traffic, wildlife, rain, wind, fire, footsteps and television sets weave their own music in and out of the songs; drawing lines between the landscape of Aidan’s existence, and his restless internal musical monologue. To fully bring these strains and experimentations to life, Aidan drew on his musical peers, friends and loved ones to help fill out the album instrumentally. Songwriters, friends and associates including Liam Judson (also of Belles Will Ring), Daniel Holdsworth, Des Miller, Sam Worrad, Mike Lloyd and Pip Smith came to the tape machine nestled in Aidans lounge room amongst records, instruments and carpet, to contribute to the record's vocal and instrumental soundscapes, further augmenting Aidan's initial recordings and transforming the group of songs into a dynamic unit with its own life and direction.
When asked about his influences Aidan points out that his varied musical diet has led his brain down many paths from alternative-country to avant-garde film scores. He grew up listening to Simon & Garfunkel, Bread, and “all that folky singer-songwriter stuff that mum & dad used to play led me to explore that side of music, which is where I get the melody and storytelling air from. I mean, you'll likely hear remnants of On The Beach, Nashville Skyline, Tapestry etc in there; but also Tubular Bells, War of the Worlds and all that shameless 70's mucking around stuff. I love that free-spirited approach to rock music. It has its boundaries I suppose; but early on that's what inspired me.”
Aidan has worked for the theatre composing incidental scores and soundscapes for many plays including King Lear, Some Voices, Traitors, and Hotel Sorrento, and he is a self-professed film music nut. Does some of this music inform his more traditional songwriting?
“Of course, I've learned a lot from playing with instruments that are unfamiliar to me, and blending that with the piano
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