Building Empathy

Driving from his hometown of Swansea to Robert Reed’s studio in Porth, Steve Balsamo would look out over the green Welsh valleys he’d known all his life, and at the huge alien structures now standing across them like sentinels. “Wind turbines,” he says, his soft voice struck with hazy awe, “they loom out of the landscape. They’re scifi, proggy things. There’s been a big revival in folk horror recently–Black Mirror, Inside No.9–and a resurgence in the psychogeography movement, how the landscape plays a big part in things. All this fed into the music Rob and I were writing.”

Though you might expect it, you don’t get the usual showbiz spiel from Balsamo. The successful singer and songwriter came to prominence in the 90s through. He’s also done well with his country band The Storys and Americana duo Balsamo Deighton, and he’s worked with a slew of big names, Eric Woolfson, Jon Lord and Robert Plant among them. But to speak to Steve Balsamo is to take the red pill.