As all that "Balloon Boy" nonsense unfolded in the press last week, I couldn't help but be reminded of Disney's Flight of the Navigator, a thoughtful science fiction favorite of my youth. A young boy, tangled up in time travel and government intrigue by way of a mysterious silver vessel- it's the sort of magical story I feel the nation wished came of the Heene family instead of the pitiful perversion of post-Jon and Kate reality television that came to light in the days following the incident.

Watching FotN Thursday, (which some good soul has uploaded in ten parts to YouTube), I was struck by it's frightening maturity, illuminated in no small part by composer Alan Silvestri's score. The only synthesised score in his filmography, Silvestri employed NED's Synclavier System to create an outright creepy futurescape, lush with lonely tone-poems of space travel and living in a time not your own. It's music that hearkens back to a more curious time in my life, and the first thing I was reminded of upon hearing Iceland's Bloodgroup, whose latest single "My Arms" (below) stirs just as nervous a brand of unknowing in it's listener.

With the fragility of Jamie Stewart, siblings Halez, Raggi, Lilja, "and their amazing Faroese sidekick Janus" build grim pop castles, buttressing their songs with knowing lyrics like "metal heath is all we have" to create a plucky, paranoid, and desperate world all their own.

Bloodgroup will be repping CMJ this Thursday evening @ The Suffolk in NYC.

Bloodgroup "My Arms"