Danger Mouse, Sparklehorse & David Lynch, "Star Eyes (I Can't Catch It)"

Listen to the whole album

...and thus we are all broken saints

For those of us who got to watch it unfold, the flash animation epic, Broken Saints, became an avuncular presence as Brooke and the Boys struggled to meet deadlines and pay for bandwidth. The story took almost two years to spin out with one serialized chapter at a time. The entire story is online now, and they are unveiling a gorgeous DVD set, which will be sold at Broken Saints.com at a much lower price than when it goes to retail stores.

Though the writing was uneven, and the ending just a little bit frustrating, there was such a gloriously dark and mysterious tone to this series that it's no wonder it won an audience award at Sundance. When the creators fell on hard times, I would have readily subscribed if they decided to charge for the story they were creating for free, but they took the high road, much to their credit, and came up with some killer merchandise. For fans like me, that allowed us to pick up a copy of one of the most important parts of the saga: Tobias Tinker's soundtrack.

The Broken Saints soundtrack is a rambling odyssey of musical styles. The refrain that kept haunting me after watching the latest chapter in my darkened office was "Jaisalmer".



The saintly struggles of the saga's quartet makes me think of Hildegard von Bingen, who was one of history's greatest broken saints. Never formally canonized, Hildegard was regarded as a saint by several popes and church scholars. Her struggle with her gifts is at the heart of the Broken Saints saga. She wrote when she was a teenager, "Frequently, in my conversation, I would relate future things, which I saw as if present, but, noting the amazement of my listeners, I became more reticent."

Her music is a wonder of antiquity. In the height of her late-90's rennaissance, Jocelyn Montgomery and David Lynch produced some broken remixes of her music. I've got a soft spot for good ideas which suffer somewhat in their execution, like their track "Point of View".