Over the past decade the great tradition of instrumental solo acoustic guitar music pioneered in the 60s by the likes of John Fahey, Sandy Bull, Peter Walker and Robbie Basho has been revived by an increasing number of artists. To name some of the booming scene's greatest recent contributors, Steffen Basho-Junghans, Pelt's Jack Rose (who died of a heart attack last month, aged 38), Six Organs of Admittance's Ben Chasny, Sun City Girls's Sir Richard Bishop, and Harris Newman have each pushed the genre into new directions. Though his career is still very young, it is hardly controversial to claim that the same goes for 28-year-old James Blackshaw, who over the past six years has built up an impressive body of work.
Title: Celeste
Label: Celebrate Psi Phenomenon
Release date: August 2004
Recording date: December 11th 2003
Tracklist: 1. Celeste, Part 1 14:44 2. Celeste, Part 2 13:45
He debuted with Celeste, a 28-minute composition for 12-string guitar, divided into two parts. It was first released in an edition of 80 CDrs on Campbell Kneale's Celebrate Psi Phenomenon label. The first part reveals a natural heir to John Fahey's metaphysical fingerpicking suites, weaving a mesmerizing lattice of fast-flowing melodies. The second part opens with four minutes of otherworldly shimmering tones and drones before delving into a solemn concluding 10-minute solo, gradually picking up pace and intensity as it moves towards its stately final moments.
8.3/10
Title: Lost Prayers and Motionless Dances
Label: Digitalis
Release date: December 2004
Recording date: October 13th 2004
Tracklist: 1. Lost Prayers and Motionless Dances 34:32
The lone 34-minute track of Lost Prayers and Motionless Dances, his second album, is a different beast altogether, employing a harmonium, whose melody gradually turns into a single droning tone, before it is joined by the guitar, unfolding a plethora of raga patterns while the harmonium retains the piece's hypnotic quality. After twenty-one minutes, the harmonium and guitar are replaced by a hissing radio, bells, a cymbal, and a floor tom, temporarily moving the piece into more avant-garde territory. The final movement reinstates the guitar and harmonium for five minutes of forceful exulted counterpoint.
7.5/10
Title: Sunshrine
Label: Digitalis
Release date: November 2005
Recording date: February 16th 2005
Tracklist: 1. Sunshrine 26:28 2. Skylark Herald's Dawn 3:21
He then returned to the style of his first album with the title track of Sunshrine, another lengthy composition for solo 12-string guitar. The 26-minute piece is opened by a multitude of cattle bells, invoking a pastoral landscape before the guitar takes over, at first employing sparse, dilated chords but soon displaying a gentle and effervescent fingerpicking technique. As the piece evolves, the mood becomes less playful and ever more meditative and brooding, until after about thirteen minutes it has transformed into a song of sorrow and existential anguish, only to find redemption several minutes later when a jubilant crescendo is intoned, taking the piece to its conclusion with the return of the cattle bells, which are this time around joined by an ominous, intensifying drone. The album is closed by the brief impressionistic vignette "Skylark Herald's Dawn".
8.0/10
Title: O True Believers
Label: Important
Release date: February 28th 2006
Recording date: September 2005
Tracklist: 1. Transient Life In Twilight 11:38 2. The Elk With Jade Eyes 18:15 3. Spiralling Skeleton Memorial 7:33 4. O True Believers 5:46
O True Believers marks a change in compositional style, as Blackshaw abandons his 30-minute juggernaut policy in favor of four medium-length compostions, ranging from six to eighteen minutes. Another novelty is found in the exotic arrangement of "The Elk with Jade Eyes", the album's longest, most rewarding composition, adding Indian tambura (a fretless sitar-like instrument tuned in a higher register) and cymbala (a type of dulcimer) to its instrumentation. In the final seven minutes of this piece, these two team up for an otherworldly psychedelic duet. The 11-minute "Transient Life in Twilight" is a pensive, slow-moving piece that occasionally gains momentum as it unfurls in a typical Fahey-ian country crescendo. The other two tracks are quite short by Blackshaw's standards, the title track probably being his most accessible yet, combining guitar and harmonium in soothing, joyful counterpoint.
6.8/10
Title: The Cloud of Unknowing
Label: Tompkins Square
Release date: June 5th 2007
Recording date: August 2006
Tracklist: 1. The Cloud Of Unknowing 10:55 2. Running To The Ghost 6:16 3. Clouds Collapse 3:56 4. The Mirror Speaks 6:31 5. Stained Glass Windows 15:03
The Cloud of Unknowing boasts two of his best compositions. The 11-minute title track opens the proceedings on a dreamy note, gently lulling the listener into oblivion with its majestic, cascading soundscape of fluttering notes. And the 15-minute closer "Stained Glass Windows" is perhaps even better, patiently laying the scene with gently climbing and declining arcs of sound, before gathering momentum and delving into a wave of continuously flowing fingerpicking patterns, eventually revealing a slow and gorgeous melancholy melody. The last five minutes are taken up by noise. The album also contains three shorter tracks: "Running to the Ghost" adds glockenspiel and violin to the equation and, despite being quite a straightforward track, its sheer contrapuntal beauty and elegance unveils that Blackshaw's music still has a lot of new directions to explore in terms of arrangement. Next up is "Clouds Collapse", a little avantgarde piece consisting of dissonant musique concrète. "The Mirror Speaks", finally, is an intense, fast-paced guitar workout, gradually coming to a halt in its final minute.
7.5/10
Title: Litany of Echoes
Label: Tompkins Square
Release date: June 17th 2008
Recording date: December 2007
Tracklist: 1. Gate Of Ivory 5:20 2. Past Has Not Passed 12:38 3. Echo And Abyss 12:10 4. Infinite Circle 5:54 5. Shroud 11:44 6. Gate Of Horn 5:21
On Litany of Echoes, Blackshaw introduces the piano into his music: the album is bookended by two nearly identical 5-minute minimalist piano tracks, revealing the influences of Steve Reich and Charlemagne Palestine. Moreover, Fran Bury's violin and viola, already briefly present on the previous album, are employed on a broader scale here (She is featured on four of the six tracks). The viola's lower register is most often used in stretched harmonics, functioning as a drone to accompany the guitar (or piano), not unlike the harmonium has been employed on Blackshaw's earlier recordings. The violin's higher register is used to create ever rising and falling arcs, a few minutes into "Past Has Not Passed", a stunning piece that later on aptly fuses the pretty melody of the 12-string with the wavering and soaring sounds of the strings. "Echo and Abyss" and "Shroud", the two solo guitar tracks, both clocking in around the 12-minute mark, are classic Blackshaw, displaying virtuoso fingerpicking, emotional depth, and moments of pure aural bliss. "Infinite Circle" is the shortest and most straightforward piece, but nevertheless abounds in beauty, well augmented by the strings.
6.8/10
Title: The Glass Bead Game
Label: Young God
Release date: May 26th 2009
Recording date: November 2008
Tracklist: 1. Cross 8:38 2. Bled 10:26 3. Fix 5:39 4. Key 6:03 5. Arc 18:49
The Glass Bead Game shows an artist continually probing new directions. The (rather uneventful) 6-minute "Fix" is veritable chamber music for piano and cello. And "Cross" (of which a shorter solo version is featured in the video below) even employs female vocals (though used in a merely instrumental way). "Bled" and "Key" are the solo guitar pieces, which sadly do more to display Blackshaw's skills than to stimulate the listener either emotionally or aesthetically. The opening of "Arc", eighteen minutes long, is reminiscent of Brian Eno's Music for Airports, employing languid, repetitive piano notes before plunging into a long dense cloud of cascading tones, as if Blackshaw were actually fingerpicking his piano. Here we can clearly hear the mindset of a guitarist transposed into piano music.
5.8/10
Having trimmed down the size of his 12-string reveries in recent years, it becomes ever clearer that the lengthy meditation is still the best vehicle for his art to truly shine. Turning his attention to new arrangements, techniques and experiments, Blackshaw sometimes seems to have forgotten how to achieve the emotional depth of outpourings such as Celeste and Sunshrine.
Title: All Is FallingLabel: Young God
Release date: August 24th 2010
Recording date: December 2009-January 2010
Tracklist: 1. Part 1 4:13 2. Part 2 5:18 3. Part 3 4:45 4. Part 4 4:30 5. Part 5 3:09 6. Part 6 2:43 7. Part 7 11:51 8. Part 8 8:19
Blackshaw returned with an ambitious 45-minute suite in eight parts, continuing his transition from humble solo-guitarist to full-fledged ensemble composer. Not only has he replaced his acoustic 12-string for an electric one, but its role in the proceedings is also less dominant, giving leeway for his chamber ensemble to truly shine. For example, on the longest track, "Part 7", Blackshaw contents himself with very basic supporting guitar work, allowing the strings to delve into a whirlpool of sonic bliss, until after eight minutes they gradually tear the piece down in ever descending scales. The 8-minute "Part 8" is a cryptic coda of reverberating guitar-feedback. This is definitely a very aesthetically pleasing work (the finale of "Part 3" actually sounds like it came straight off a Yann Tiersen soundtrack), though his quest for formal perfection in his contrapuntal fantasias tends to diminish the emotional impact.
7.0/10
Best albums:
1. Celeste 8.3/10
2. Sunshrine 8.0/10
3. Lost Prayers & Motionless Dances 7.5/10
3. The Cloud of Unknowing 7.5/10
Reactions are always very welcome!
A truly inspiring artist - brilliant.
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