JAMES BLACKSHAW - The Cloud Of Unknowing

James Blackshaw's art is made of small movements, of progressive variations, gentle and never abrupt, but above all of ecstatic, crepuscular sounds that let you taste the infinite.

Nonetheless it rests on sublime melodies that chase and overlap one another, on different musical sources that find in his visionary talent an admirable synthesis. Thus the hypnotism of Indian ragas and the transcendent spirit of minimalism and contemporary music merge in symbiosis into a harmonious whole, where balance is reached naturally, without forcing. It sounds like pure, uncontaminated, ancestral music, as if some higher force had shaped it this way without regard for anything but its pantheistic essence.

No, technique isn't Blackshaw's winning card - even though he's not lacking in it - but rather his touch, a delicate, clear touch, with fingers we imagine gliding over the strings, barely grazing them, producing a sweet resonance that's like a summer breeze coming to temper the heat. It's the force of an unstoppable flow that gives emotion. It's the talent of a twenty-five-year-old who plays like a veteran.

Not content with half a dozen works in about three years, Blackshaw gives us yet another gem, which actually follows the perhaps unmatched "O True Believer" from 2006. Yes, the unsurpassable "O True Believer", steeped in a moving melancholy, even though our man doesn't identify with that feeling, embracing instead the idea of grey areas where feelings mix without giving rise to clearly definable boundaries. But the present is here, in this moment, and it's bright once again.

Because "Running To The Ghost" is as close to the idea of an earthly paradise as anything heard in recent times. Barely six minutes or so, but you'd wish it lasted twice, three times as long, you'd wish to surrender forever to that unstoppable current of intertwined melodies, to walk on roads made of air, to stroll in the rain without getting wet. And that's what you feel with "The Cloud Of Unknowing", or in the closing "Stained Glass Windows", which open and close the album under the banner of an overflowing emotional surge, rising toward an almost epic emotional climax. And if the desert-like, psychedelic experiment of "Clouds Collapse" makes us fall off the rainbow for a moment, the harmonic clarity of "The Mirror Speaks" sets things right again, projecting us into a new dream house with colourful walls.

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03/07/2007