James Blackshaw - The Glass Bead Game (2009) [Re-up]

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James Blackshaw - The Glass Bead Game (2009) [Re-up]

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2009 release from the British 12-string guitar virtuoso. James started his music career by playing in UK Punk bands, but soon branched off into more introspective guitar recordings. James is joined on this record by Joolie Wood (Current 93 on violin, clarinet and flute plus John Contreras (Baby Dee and C93) on cello. Lavinia Blackwall (Directing Hand) is a classically trained singer and contributed vocals Beautiful six-panel fold-out digipak with original art by Nicole Boitos.

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James Blackshaw - The Glass Bead Game (2009) [Re-up]

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In five short years, 12-string guitarist and composer James Blackshaw has not only been prolific, he's created for himself a musical catalog that is dazzling in its range, complexity, and mystery. In addition to releasing his own recordings, he's collaborated with vanguard lute master Jozef Van Wissem in the Brethren of the Free Spirit, and has appeared on Current 93's 2009 album Aleph at Hallucinatory Mountain. In 2008, the venerable Tompkins Square indie re-released his previous catalog in the United States – some of it was originally privately issued in very limited and/or vinyl-only editions. The label also released a then new effort, the beautiful Litany of Echoes, in the same year. The Glass Bead Game, issued on Michael Gira's Young God, named no doubt for the Hermann Hesse novel of the same name, is another step – in fact, a leap – forward. In addition to his own gorgeous 12-string playing, he has employed the talents of vocalist Lavinia Blackwell, and Current 93 members John Contreras on cello and Joolie Wood on violin. Blackshaw also plays harmonium and piano here. The pieces on this set are ambiguously titled with single words. The opener, "Cross," is among the most startlingly beautiful pieces he's written. A reverbed 12-string plays a series of repetitive phrases as the strings play harmonic drones in the backdrop, propelling the sense of motion on until the guitar begins its melodic journey through the foreground, repeating the original phrase often enough to keep the listener grounded even as the lyric nature of the overdubbed guitars drones and pines away at a complex and haunting yet springlike melody. "Bled" is a sparser piece. The guitar, kissed with reverb and in places overdubbed, is accompanied by a harmonium playing a single chord as it begins a slow but methodical journey toward the center of a maelstrom that embodies everything from rags and blues to even Eastern folk styles in its complex, contrapuntal melody.

A lilting chamber piece for piano and strings that is full of space and delicate textures and seems to portray stillness as a place, "Fix" is followed by "Key," a guitar journey that seems to answer the former piece by tracing movement from a single place to a wide-open field of possibilities and directions. It is songlike rather than simply atmospheric. The final track – and also the longest at nearly 20 minutes – is "Arc," which begins as a solo piano piece. The piano is once again caressed in reverb, playing what seems like the halting beginning of a nearly forgotten melody. As the strings enter, they do so in single-note drones and begin very slowly to emerge in harmony, creating their own melodic frames while holding a series of chromatic changes very closely. The piece begins to evolve from its snail-like tempo into something beautifully pastoral and then pronounced; it's an open space of possibility for engagement between the three instruments and, eventually, Blackwell's beautiful contralto. The control by Contreras and Wood is exceptional here. Blackshaw is working out his melody very purposefully, repetitively, and in controlled bits and pieces. That said, by the time the piece reaches its center, the density of melody, sound, and texture is one of almost unbearable beauty and the release of tension is full to the breaking point of bliss itself. The Glass Bead Game is the most forward-thinking and sublimely executed of James Blackshaw's releases to date. It is a work that will hopefully introduce him to an entirely new audience who can appreciate the depth, sensitivity, and vision he brings to modern acoustic music.

Review by Thom Jurek, Allmusic.com

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James Blackshaw - The Glass Bead Game (2009) [Re-up]

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A brilliant and innovative 12-string guitar player, James Blackshaw was born in 1981 in London, where he continues to make his home. Another in a long string of amazing British acoustic guitar wizards, Blackshaw has been compared at various times to Bert Jansch, Davy Graham, Robbie Basho, John Fahey, Glenn Jones, Jack Rose, and Leo Kottke, among others, but his sound, often modal and based on improvising across set themes, is entirely his own. Blackshaw released several limited CD-R albums as he began his career, including 2004's Celeste and Lost Prayers and Motionless Dancers, 2005's Sunshrine, and the live Waking into Sleep in 2006. Important Records issued O True Believers in 2006, after which Blackshaw moved to Tompkins Square Records, which released The Cloud of Unknowing in 2007 and began reissuing his black catalog (Celeste and Sunshrine both reappeared from Tompkins Square in 2008). A second Tompkins Square CD of new material, Litany of Echoes, was also issued in 2008. Released in 2010, All Is Falling featured Blackshaw working in the studio with electric 12-string guitar for the first time.

Biography by Steve Leggett, Allmusic.com

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James Blackshaw - The Glass Bead Game (2009) [Re-up]

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James Blackshaw - The Glass Bead Game (2009) [Re-up]

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