James Blackshaw - Fingerpicking for dreamlike ecstasy

James Blackshaw is a gift from God. I don't know if you understand what I mean: one of those rare, precious gifts that has the power to reconcile you with music. A quiet force in the guise of a twenty-five-year-old lad. Young James plays guitar – a twelve-string, to be precise – at a level that represents the state of the art in fingerpicking, folk primitivism and the like, so that when that sound flows harmoniously, it feels as though you're lifting off the ground, entering a colorful world where every reference to the materiality of things is dissolved. Yes, music to dream to.

James is young, as we were saying, yet he already handles his craft like a veteran, and brings a hefty dose of genius to it. Of course, the challenge ahead is a steep one. Renewing stylistic canons carved in stone by the virtuosos of the Takoma School is a complicated business, and besides, almost no one has managed it in recent years. Almost. It may be that this isn't even his goal, isn't part of what he wants as an artist, and in any case only time will tell.

He doesn't deny the influence of Fahey and Basho, on whose records he says he was formed, but at the same time he claims to be inspired by contemporary composition and Carnatic music, by that sense of ascetic religiosity found in the music of Arvo Pärt as much as in players of the Rudra Veena. Not to mention minimalism, with Reich and Palestine in his head and heart. And it's precisely here that Blackshaw's music proves fascinating, if not exactly original: in the syncretism of languages that are certainly adjacent to one another, but that have rarely found such a euphonious blend.

Ah, I almost forgot, the lad was born in England, in Bromley (just outside London) to be precise — a detail that matters, since Steffen Basho-Junghans isn't American either... his “Waters In Azure” is unquestionably one of the masterpieces of the genre. Could it be that the peripheral vantage point shared by the two of them is actually an advantage over the geographic/semiotic baggage that inevitably weighs on American musicians? In a sense, this is confirmed by the man himself in the chat we had with him, which you can read in the interviews section.

Be that as it may, Blackshaw starts testing himself against music fairly early, playing rock, noise, punk, until a friend hands him a revelation (at age 16): John Fahey's “The Dance Of Death And Other Plantation Favorites”. Some time passes, then further listens to Fahey's catalogue convince him once and for all that his future lies in fingerpicking, in open tunings — in two words, in folk primitivism.

Today he's rightly considered one of the greatest talents around. Proof of that comes in a string of superb records, the respect of his peers, and a touring history alongside major names of the contemporary folk scene. Suffice it to mention Sir Richard Bishop, Espers, Jack Rose, Glenn Jones, Sharron Kraus, Simon Finn, Marissa Nadler, Alexander Tucker, Josephine Foster.

It seems Campbell Kneale of Birchville Cat Motel was literally blown away upon hearing the young prodigy. So his first release, Celeste (August 2004), came out on CD-R, 80 copies, on Celebrate Psi Phenomenon, later reissued by Barl Fire Recordings in June 2005, in just 100 copies. A shame (because of the tiny run, obviously), because the record is a genuine epiphany. You listen, your eyes light up at the sheer beauty of it, and you're astonished that someone so young — twenty-one at the time — could play in such a heavenly way. The album consists of two pieces of around 14 minutes each. The first draws on the classic Fahey idiom — the Fahey of “America” — in a spasmodic rise and fall of intensity. The second composition introduces what would become the most important new element in Blackshaw's style: a kind of experimentation with drone music, or rather its integration into folk-oriented grammars.

Not long after comes Lost Prayers & Motionless Dances, which picks up where “Celeste part 2” left off. The record consists of a single long, progressive suite, alternating minimalist constructions and assorted noise, always elevated by Blackshaw's delicate touch, here conveying a more meditative mood. Also a limited edition, 200 copies, Lost Prayers & Motionless Dances came out on Digitalis Industries.

The next step is the 2005 release of a split with the Davenport collective, in which our man works in forms much closer to improvisation. In November of the same year, again on Digitalis Industries, came Sunshrine, to this day perhaps his least convincing work, though no less enjoyable for it. What's missing, perhaps, is that drive to push further, which we'd found, for better or worse, in the three previous records. True, the long title track shows several facets, moving through harmonium sounds, farfisa and more, while Blackshaw's impeccable technique papers over a momentary creative lull, churning out crystalline melodies all the same.

But the time for consecration arrives right on schedule in 2006 with the gorgeous O True Believers, which in this writer's opinion is as good as fingerpicking gets right now. The lad shows he's developed a formidable command of his instrument; the tracks flow into one another almost as a single piece, one indistinguishable mass of celestial notes. Despite James himself saying otherwise, O True Believers strikes us as a melancholy-sounding work, at times even subdued, as if the Bashoian spleen had fully and permanently seeped into the English guitarist's soul. It's an album that lives on progressive additions, as in the remarkable title track, which grows richer and richer with almost floral arrangements as it goes. The same goes for the second track, “The Elk With Jade Wyes”, spiced up with a proper Indian raga.

And then? And then came the latest arrival, The Cloud Of Unknowing, which you'll find covered in more or less depth in the reviews section, and which once again stays at an extremely high level. Could it be that revolution within the furrow of tradition also runs through James Blackshaw's talent?

A year later Blackshaw returns with Litany Of Echoes, but this time it's a partial disappointment.

Between a piano-led “Gate Of Ivory” and “Gate Of Horn”, which draw on nothing less than Lubomyr Melnyk's “continuous music” and give hope for something different from the usual, Blackshaw, for the rest of the tracks, settles for going through the motions. Because there's a none-too-hidden liaison between the English guitarist's music and repetitive and/or minimalist music, and so, having heard the aforementioned compositions, I honestly hoped for a shift toward those sounds and those compositional methods, whereas “Echo And Abyss”, “Infinite Circle” and “Shroud”, enjoyable as they are, don't stray far from what we can by now call the “Blackshaw canon”.

So “Litany Of Echoes” is a wasted chance to move beyond what we've already heard. A “minor” album, but an enjoyable one nonetheless, especially if you approach it uncritically and let yourself be carried away by the emotions it's still able to deliver. Because at the end of the day, not everyone is capable of writing a “Past Has Not Passed”.

The latest bold move, the introduction of string instruments and minimalist piano on Litany Of Echoes (2008), is the direct forerunner of Glass Bead Game. Blackshaw now plays in an increasingly orchestral register, to the point that “Cross” is a concerto for guitar and avant-garde accompaniment, “Fix” and especially the 19 minutes of “Arc” flirt with post-Romantic chamber lieder, and “Bled” comes within a hair's breadth of a Bach-like prelude-and-fugue.

Making his debut for a highly regarded label (Young God, run by guru Michael Gira), London's own Blackshaw (born 1981) raises the stakes. The approach here is that of a major occasion: he doesn't just improvise this time, he also conducts, loads up the accents, arranges things grandiosely. The risk of making a mess of it all with neo-classical pomposity dogs him throughout the record, “Key” included, with a not-entirely-intentional touch of the tragicomic.

Following directly in that vein is his next release, All Is Falling, more an elegy than an album in the strict sense: a forty-five-minute piece split into eight untitled parts, each marking a distinct moment within a sonic flow that is cohesive overall yet shaped by multiple facets.

Built around an “apocalyptic” theme, consistent with his recent Tibetan collaboration, All Is Falling presents a continuum of mood and compositional identity, in which Blackshaw indulges in some virtuoso playing at tight tempos, apparently made easier by lower string tension and a different finger position that lets him make the strings sing with mastery. Once again, though, the English artist shows not mere technique for its own sake, but an inspiration that both traces compelling arpeggios and instrumental interlocking and widens a sonic spectrum revealing the complexity of the puzzle of instrumental pivots and attitudes underlying the transitions between the piece's various parts. It's a further step along the path of artistic completion for a musician now increasingly oriented toward being a full-fledged composer, a role next to which his status as a crystalline twelve-string performer now looks merely accessory and altogether reductive.

Love Is The Plan, The Plan Is Death dates back to 2012. Inspired – at least in their titles – by the stories of Alice B. Sheldon, the science-fiction writer who published under the multifaceted pseudonym James Tiptree Jr., the songs on the record also upend expectations of Blackshaw, who in his most recent work seemed intent on abandoning the instrument altogether to focus on composition in a broader sense.

Marking a renewed partnership with Important Records dating back to O True Believers, our man sets aside the acoustic twelve-string for a classical six-string, painting an existential unease with broad, warm brushstrokes that grows tirelessly romantic on “We Who Stole The Dream”.

Perhaps the record's greatest merit – certainly owed to the new instrument, which may have steered Blackshaw toward a more viscerally emotional inspiration – lies precisely in its departure from the diaphanous ritual quality of O True Believers, arriving at a passionate portrait of the soul by way of more reassuring, bucolic landscapes (“A Momentary Taste Of Being”). Somewhat less comprehensible within the album's overall economy are the piano-based pieces: the medieval jazz of “And I Have Come Upon This Place By Lost Ways” (which also features a vocal contribution from Geneviéve Bealieu of Menace Ruin) and the glossy elegance of “The Snows Are Melted, The Snows Are Gone”.

On the whole, it's not a wholly successful record, perhaps all too easy to decode for an artist from whom one expects constant suggestion, an overflowing musical deluge rather than a polite little sketch.

To mark the centenary of French director Louis Feuillade's “Fantômas” serial, celebrated composer Yann Tiersen invites the English guitarist to score the final installment of the series, Le Faux Magistrat (1914). With this record we go back to the evening of October 31, 2013, when Blackshaw's score was performed for the first time at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, with an ensemble made up of multi-instrumentalists Charlotte Glasson and Duane Pitre alongside Simon Scott, drummer of Slowdive.

But even from the very first sections, clear shortcomings in the writing emerge: the music composed for “Le Faux Magistrat” is rather colorless ambient fare that, in restating its main themes – with a few borrowings from Philip Glass for the piano parts – reaches an almost unbearable degree of redundancy. An unprecedented listlessness seems to afflict even the arpeggios of his trusty acoustic guitar, and by extension spreads to the whole ensemble: violin, saxophone and flute take their turns with no emotional jolt whatsoever, delivering phrasing that is at times disarmingly flat, on a par with a barely-more-than-amateur band.

These are all rather discouraging elements which, even if they had worked in the context of a screening, lose any evocative potential once presented in album form. A risky gamble that, sadly, finds no reason to exist on record.

A growing drive to renew his own expressive language has accompanied Blackshaw for several years now, and setting aside the uncertain detour of the Fantômas score, it's easy to trace the stages of a *palpable* evolution: with Summoning Suns, our man tries his hand at song form for the first time, with a mood more radiant than ever.

The original tracks making up his tenth record are infused with a luminous springtime spirit that, after an intro in the style of the breeziest Sigur Rós, draws on the idyllic pop hues of Brent Cash (“Confetti”). References to a seventies-steeped imagery abound, though here nostalgia is only a passing nuance, amid Crimson-esque cornucopias (“Failure's Flame”) and clouds of strings worthy of “Bryter Layter” – the central section of the Japanese-tinged detour “Towa No Yume”.

The poetic instrumental postlude “Winter Flies” – again in the style of Love Is The Plan... – holds the album's core essence, while the extended edition adds two lengthy instrumental bonus tracks: a coda that doesn't so much round out the record as serve as a genuine “B-side,” almost a reinterpretation by Blackshaw's more traditionalist side, as he strides ever more decisively down new paths of artistic growth.

Contributions by Michele Saran (“The Glass Bead Game”), Raffaello Russo (“All Is Falling”), Lorenzo Righetto (“Love Is The Plan, The Plan Is Death”) and Michele Palozzo (“Fantômas: Le Faux Magistrat”, “Summoning Suns”).

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