In Atlantic Cable's eerie twist on alt-country, splashes of accordion, echoing trumpets and distorted electric guitars fill the breaks where one might expect to hear a pedal steel guitar. But as Atlantic Cable founder Tyson Cosby notes, alt-country "is just country music done new."

Cosby draws parallels to other genres: "Like blues, [country] is being made new over and over again, just like punk rock is being made new over and over again. They are all types of subcultures, and all come from a source. And because those sources are real and valuable to people, they renew them in order that they stay alive. There have always been country bands, and I suspect there always will be, no matter what prefix you put on it."

Cosby's rural Saskatchewan farm upbringing helps explain the simple, elegant expanse of his acoustic guitar style that drives Atlantic Cable's sound. It's a bit harder, though, to figure out where his songs about ray guns, radioactivity, astronomy and space stations come from. Asked what could possibly have inspired him to sing about the space station Mir, he says, "Growing up on a farm in the middle of the prairie is not unlike being in a space capsule in the middle of space. Life seems far, far away. You see all kinds of weird things in the sky if you live away from heavily populated areas. Things that make no sound and are big, like the Hindenburg [blimp] lit up with hundreds of lights, and make the cows stampede during the night for no apparent reason. I guess [the song] 'Station Mir' is nostalgia for when you could actually say to people with a straight face, 'I want to be an astronaut when I grow up,' and they wouldn't laugh at you."

Atlantic Cable's sound does carry a bit of the baggage of Squall, Cosby's previous Prague-based noise-rock band. Squall was a trio founded in 2001 that held a strong regional following and released a dense and mesmerizing CD, How Things Work, on Prague's Silver Rocket label. Both Atlantic Cable and the now disbanded Squall are part of a Central European music community that assembles in some unlikely places.

Is there something distinctive about the scene? According to Cosby, yes and no. "Form a band, practice, make a poster, play a gig, meet the other band, do a show in their town, etc. — in that sense, no. What is unique is the architecture and cuisine. In Helsinki, they have shows in an old firehall from the 19th century. In Wroclaw, shows are in an old iron works. Rostock is on a fishing boat. Yverdonne you play in a barn. In Barcelona, you play in an abandoned botanical garden. The three best squats for food in Europe are Leipzig, Potsdam and Zurich. And always the toilets are worse for wear."

After four years of recording and road work with Squall, Cosby wasted no time in getting Atlantic Cable on the road. As for the reactions to his new band so far, he says, "In Barcelona they were puzzled. Northern Finland gave the Cable a warm welcome. In southern France some wonderful girls liked the vocals. The punks at Divadlo Stoka in Bratislava sat in candlelight and clapped politely and enthusiastically. The Japanese watchmaker in Yverdone, Switzerland, danced ecstatically. In Sweden they enjoyed the story about the moose."