Certain images come to mind when I imagine a "bedroom electronic musician." Some people might think of some beady-eyed chain smoker in a darkened room, opening and closing folder windows on a Powerbook in some kind of trance state. But I always like to picture bedroom musicians as generally happy types, because they've found the thing they truly love to do and have found the time to do it. I picture a warm room with wooden floors and a good light coming in through the window-- a mood somehow consistent with the idea of making something funny or aggressive or beautiful.

That's the kind of scene I picture in Jeremy Ballard's bedroom. He's a guy from Dallas that makes music alone as Inkblot, and, I would wager, loves what he's doing. It's not that all the tracks on The Language Game are upbeat, or that there's a consistently jolly tone. But there's something very human about the record, the way it engages emotions in such a direct way. It's a nice change of pace from music that sounds based on some vague theory. The fourth track here is called "I Thought I Was Something Else." It's got a meek little tick-tock Casio rhythm, a cool loop of processed distortion, and a lead guitar picking out a three-note pattern. And that's enough if you pick the right three notes.

Ballard knows how to craft something straightforward and pretty, but that's only part of the story. He also has a talent for conjuring the organic machine vibes. The bass on "And Here We Are" sounds like it's coming from something with scales, which works well next to the light piano melody that plays lead. "Even Now with These Robot Arms" actually recalls Labradford at 45 RPM, using electric guitar, piano and nervous digital buzzing to peel open space like a banana.

There's guitar all over The Language Game, but it's always either processed to the point where it becomes just another electronic element, or it seems to flaunt its obvious tone source. But in both cases, it's used as just another sound in the sequencer. And for a while, I found myself occasionally irritated by the loop-heavy production. Too many tracks seemed to consist of a half-dozen sounds, each set to run its own pattern on the same grid.

But the simplicity and repetition are the best things about this record. It's nice to hear a record using this kind of sound palate to make something so listenable. It seems like it's coming from a good place, even when the sound itself is unsettling. "Greyscaled" starts with a bit of downcast singing, like Looper's Stuart David after a bad day at the girlfriend's. The rest of the track is instrumental, though-- a lovely, dark, swaying thing with guitars, organs and distant playground voices. Enough to make it worth hanging out in the bedroom a little longer.

-Mark Richard-San