Much of the new music from James Blackshaw sounds like old music from John Fahey, as the 25-year-old British guitarist channels the adventurous acoustic dynamic that the late Fahey dubbed "American primitive." The opening title cut lasts almost 11 minutes; the closing "Stained Glass Windows" lasts even longer, as an introspective instrumental reverie culminates in a mind-blowing (or blown) coda that threatens to extend forever. In between those two most expansively Faheyesque progressions, "Running to the Ghosts" has a hint of "Tubular Bells" and "Clouds Collapse" evokes a Chinese tea house, with exotic tunings and atmospherics. For all of Blackshaw's 12-string virtuosity, he occasionally crosses the line from the hypnotic to the merely repetitive, and some of his passages would be twice as effective with half the notes. --Don McLeese
Review by Thom Jurek
Still in his middle twenties at the time of this recording, British acoustic 12-string guitarist James Blackshaw has distinguished himself as an innovative and original voice in a very limited medium. Along with Glenn Jones, Jack Rose, and Sir Richard Bishop, Blackshaw is forging a new acoustic trail for the guitar. Comparisons between all of these guitarists are futile, as are attempts to report on their "influences." Blackshaw in particular stands out for his use solely of a 12-string; his long elegant lines and incredibly detailed methods of fingerpicking; his meld of Eastern modes alongside pastoral Western harmonics; his historical sense of Celtic folk music; and his elegant, full bodied, but nearly fluid approach to both composition and improvisation -- which are blended seamlessly in his pieces. The Cloud of Unknowing is his first recording readily available in the United States. Released by the venerable yet tiny Tompkins Square imprint (which is also working on reissuing his back catalog), this is a side of Blackshaw displayed only partially on his Celeste, Sunshrine, and O True Believers recordings. Using various tunings, Blackshaw seemingly enters the opening title track from the middle, spinning an airy narrative from a complex yet utterly accessible extrapolation of theme and variation. There are drones that actually provide a rhythmic counterpoint to his enveloping mist of ringing strings and climbing and falling scalar work. On "Running to the Ghost," Blackshaw also plays glockenspiel, and is accompanied by violinist Fran Bury (who also guests on the set's final cut, "Stained Glass Windows"). The opening rhythmic pattern established by his fingerpicking -- especially on the low strings -- is glissando-like in structure, and is given weight by the accompanying instruments. His bass strings move off indirectly from the shimmering harmonic interplay and become a series of counterpoint harmonies, offering melodic possibilities in the middle that are hinted at rather than openly stated.
The brief "Clouds Collapse" is a soundscape track that acts as the album's hinge and breaks the listener's concentration momentarily before his minor-key "The Mirror Speaks" reenters with a much more pronounced theme and architecture, where scales are improvised on a nearly country & western theme (with a Middle Eastern melody playing against and into the theme), but stretched to the breaking point. Think of "(Ghost) Riders in the Sky" alongside an oud melody played by Hamza el Din. The album's 15-plus-minute closer, "Stained Glass Windows," opens so blissfully and sparely that it feels like it doesn't fit the disc. Blackshaw's meandering scalar work appears almost haphazardly inside a very loose and deceptively simple and seemingly random thematic structure. It picks up speed quickly, however, and gently and purposely becomes a full-blown 12-string bliss-out accented by a double rhythmic counterpoint played against a pair of melodies. One feels literally as if in the presence of the Divine. This feeling is simply ratcheted up for seven minutes or so before Bury's violin, accented and textured by electronics, enters in full dissonant mode, creating a sense of the Fall. It's chaotic, harsh, and utterly ruinous in a sense, until the realization that it is in this space of freedom and dislocation that you struggle to find your ground, and its intention is to show the flip side of the lyric order of Western music (think Ornette Coleman playing violin with sound effects blurring nearly every line except his pitch frequencies), which, inexplicably, takes the track abruptly out into the void, where the listener is left wondering breathlessly about what just transpired. The Cloud of Unknowing is Blackshaw's most sophisticated and utterly engaging album yet, and offers American audiences a startling first listen to a musical visionary. Highly recommended.
James Blackshaw
The Cloud of Unknowing
[Tompkins Square; 2007]
Rating: 8.7
For fans of acoustic guitar music, James Blackshaw's The Cloud of Unknowing is a gift that's long overdue. Blackshaw's fourth album gracefully glides over the same sonic ground that his contemporaries generally tread with reverential obedience or dilettante tactics. Growing into his prodigious own at the relatively young age of 25, Blackshaw has finessed his 12-string acoustic guitar into a veritable solo symphony that's as schooled in uncommon beauty as it is in complex 20th century composition. But don't fear the esoterics: For everyone else, The Cloud of Unknowing is the gem no one expected to find. Blackshaw writes high drama into instrumental music with subtlety and charm, speaking on sentiments and stories without requiring a single lyric (or, most of the time, any accompaniment at all). A rare intersection of genre advancement and general accessibility, The Cloud of Unknowing is one of the true masterpieces of its own heralded realm.
The title The Cloud of Unknowing is lifted from an anonymous 14th century text that articulated a mystical view of Christianity which asserts that God can be better met through a continuum of experience and love than through absolute knowledge. Fittingly, the five pieces here capitalize on dramatic push and pull, alternately joyous and foreboding 12-string figures that are constantly reabsorbed into a web of sheer movement and energy. Despite his age, Blackshaw accomplishes this through profound musical erudition: Closer "Stained Glass Windows" nods to microtonality, climbing up and down an arch in the tiniest intervals, much like Rhys Chatham's gorgeous, glacial work with 400 electric guitars on A Crimson Grail. During "The Mirror Speaks", disparate melodies collide, interlock and crisscross, bending and pushing one another up or down. In his final years, Claude Debussy could pin such lines against one another with a piano in much the same way, but Blackshaw is an Englishman born nearly a decade after Bert Jansch left Pentangle and thriving in a time during which folk has found renewed currency. So here, he assimilates those past masters and, prospering from what he's learned from them, laces one technique to another.
Part of Blackshaw's success stems from his confidence. He's a beneficent host to one of the few non-technical ideals that united the great early minimalists: He fully inhabits an idea, allows it to build, and expires only when it is ready. The Cloud of Unknowing opens and closes with 11 and 15 minutes pieces, yet these long forms are as approachable as the best four-minute pop songs. Their complex frames bear lucid motifs through brisk movement, guiding the listener through thousands of notes from 10 fingers and 12 strings with purpose.
Such perfect commitment is new to this album. Earlier non-guitar excursions embedded in Blackshaw's work felt slightly apologetic or indecisive. An excessive tampoura-and-cymbala drone overran the best bits of last year's O True Believer, and a disc-closing track with heavy percussion and organ provided a simple, sour end. Blackshaw was tempering his extremist tendencies then. On The Cloud, though, Blackshaw seems fully settled, engaging his pieces and ideas with the unflinching belief of Tony Conrad in 1964 or Steve Reich in 1965. "Running to the Ghost" augments guitar with violin and glockenspiel, but those auxiliary parts are mere bells and strings highlighting how much sound Blackshaw can fit in one lithe motion. Indeed, it's his rumbling bass line (his tuning for this track starts in B) supporting a nimble, mid-range melody and the strings that weave between its notes. The glockenspiel teases from above. The only non-guitar piece is a wandering four-minute electronic token. It's long enough to serve as an intermission but short enough to feel more like a pause than a distraction.
And that's a good thing. On an album where movement, experience, and persistence mean everything, it's best to let Blackshaw's 12-string momentum have as much space as it wants. The Cloud of Unknowing carves out a new, peerless space altogether-- one that puts Blackshaw at the top of his class.
-Grayson Currin, July 02, 2007
http://www.myspace.com/jamesblackshaw
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