James Blackshaw - Litany of Echoes

http://www.myspace.com/jamesblackshaw

this new one is his best, i think, even better than Cloud of Unknowing. More ambitious arrangements, a little more varied without losing focus. i don't really give a shit about technical ability, but uhhh, he is pretty stunning in that area isn't he?

OTM, there's a reason I listen to Blackshaw's albums way more than Jack Rose or Stefan Basho-Junghans' albums

Ha ha ha this is madness. You have Pitchfork-itis.

i dunno, i really wouldn't even compare Rose and Blackshaw -- at least the stuff I've heard from the two of them. Rose seems way more Americana, folk/blues influenced, whereas Blackshaw has more eastern-y sounds mixed with a definite minimalist vibe. There might be some crossover, but it seems to me they're not really doing the same thing.

I appreciate him for finding his own space but I don't think he's put anything really decent together yet. It's too woolly, needs to harden and slim down.

hey, the new one's pretty good. A couple of absolutely breathtaking tracks on it, had heard them a couple of times live in the last few months, but really given wings here. Have to say though, I'm not a big fan on the piano stuff, sounds a bit too stuck in the drawing room for me, a little bit on the polite side, maybe a bit Rachels-y.

That makes me excited to hear this, especially since I don't consider "Rachels-y" to be a bad thing. I was a latecomer to Litany of Echoes, but it is beautiful.

its great

Dunno how he got on there, but there was a piece on Blackshaw on the Today programme on Radio 4 yesterday morning:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8020000/8020106.stm

the new one, the glass bead game, is really, really lovely

yup it really is. i like how blackshaw didn't just stop at being a decent takoma wannabe but has just kept expanding his sound, the vocal bits on the new one for example are grand.

whoa what? i dont think there are vocals on what i've got...

O_______O this dude is 28 years old O______O

;_; this isnt out until may 26

has he read/referenced Hesse's novel of the same name? or did I completely miss him openly talking about it in interviews

the guy's sick.

check out WALKING INTO SLEEP CD.

listening to this for the fourth fucking time today, and "cross" is just about my favorite song in the world right now. the mood it creates--this complacent, drunken longing--just about formfits how i feel right now. i really needed this

also thank you whiney g for pointing me toward this via twitter<3

Cross is the first track isn't it? The one with the Steve Reich-esque singing on it? Yeah, that's gorgeous for sure. First time I heard that live and that main theme kicked in, I was so on the verge of losing my shit and blubbing like a baby. Stuff like that totally melts me.

Was wondering how big an influence Black Sabbath might have been on him. Would not be surprised at all if it was the folky interludes on the Sabbath albums that initially set him off on the path he's travelling.

Oh, here's Cross as a solo. SO AWESOME.

Fuck that's a great video. Hypnotizing.

What's amazing to me is how effortless he makes it look.

I love the spider-y movements as he's sliding back-and-forth across the fretboard.

bloody hell where did theo come from? Got bored over at DFFD?

I love the spider-y movements as he's sliding back-and-forth across the fretboard

Yeah he makes it look deceptively easy but it's all about that crazy right hand really isn't it? Did you check out the size of the man's fingernails? Jeebs!

Yeah. It's what he's doing with the right-hand thumb that seems mind-boggling to me. I think the other fingers are following a (complicated, hard-to-play) pattern, but the thumb looks like it's doing even more -- and more difficult -- work, since it keeps returning to a "homebase" position that starts on different strings. It must take incredible concentration, touch and intuition to get that pattern right.

^^^ lots of scarey right hand close-ups on that. Is it just two fingers and a thumb he plays with?

Anyhow, as much as I'm amazed by his chops, I'm totally going misty-eyed at the expressiveness of his music.

Some of the comments under that video are hilarious, even by YouTube standards. Great guitarist, saw him last year in Bristol (UK) and he was staggering.

Cross is the first track isn't it? The one with the Steve Reich-esque singing on it?

alright e, what the hell. the mp3s i have do not have vocals!! although i really dont think i want "cross" to have any vocals, there's no way it could add anything for me. could you message me the mp3 you've got?

So fucking good:

The Glass Bead Game is probably the best I've heard from him. This is a serious contender for album of the year, for me at least. Really, the technical stuff on here (while amazing) doesn't even register for me. Its all about this deep sense of peace that the music emits. So fucking good.

he must love that shirt a lot, like a lot.

Hahaha I was thinking the same thing!

The Glass Bead Game is probably the best I've heard from him. This is a serious contender for album of the year, for me at least. Really, the technical stuff on here (while amazing) doesn't even register for me. Its all about this deep sense of peace that the music emits. So fucking good.

― jonathan - stl, Friday, May 8, 2009 2:36 PM (1 hour ago)

yeah i've had this for about a day and a half and it's probably my second favorite record this year, after six+ plays (lol). i think we're having pretty different visceral reactions to it, but i can see where your sense of "peace" and the overwhelming despair i draw from this may overlap

"fix", for example, is like five and a half minutes of how charlie brown feels when he realizes lucy's never going to let him kick that football

Sometimes it is pretty much like staring into the fire and seeing your own personal stuff in the embers.

^yeah that's a great way of putting it!

This is the other song off the new one that's really killing me at the moment - 'Key'.

Did that even work?

Shirt looks familiar BTW, shirt fans.

Thanks so much to J0rdan for telling me about this stuff, it's so beautiful and cinematic

I've been telling people about james blackshaw for years. *throws tantrum* why does no-one ever listen to me!

Saw him live at the weekend & was totally blown away. What a beautiful sound.

I've been telling people about james blackshaw for years. *throws tantrum* why does no-one ever listen to me him!

Fixed!

Come now, Herman. Don't be so self centered. ;-)

Picking up the new one today. High expectations, very excited.

it's out today?

Nevermind... my mistake, it's next week.

yeah does anyone know of somewhere i can preorder this? the young gods site says it's not available yet :(

Via Pfork:

James Blackshaw: All Is Falling

http://cdn.pitchfork.com/media/Blackshaw.jpg

Release Date: August 24
Label: Young God

Tracklist:

01 Part 1
02 Part 2
03 Part 3
04 Part 4
05 Part 5
06 Part 6
07 Part 7
08 Part 8

He's supporting Swans on their European tour.

nice! didn't like litany of echoes quite as much as the previous couple records, but it was still fab.

yeah i've been meaning to get that one, thanks for the reminder. i've liked what i've heard of nugent in the past.

another one tangentially related to Blackshaw, without his own thread, sadly... really really good album.

new one: http://www.tinymixtapes.com/chocolate-grinder/listen-james-blackshaw-boo-forever

haha, another new one. interesting that he's switched over to nylon string guitar now.

James Blackshaw

‘Love Is The Plan, The Plan Is Death’

New Album available on CD/LP, Important Records, April 2012

Written at a time of great emotional disquiet, the hauntingly beautiful and bittersweet ninth full-length studio album, ‘Love Is The Plan, The Plan Is Death’, from British guitarist-composer James Blackshaw was recorded at Soma Electronic Music Studios, Chicago in December 2011 by engineer Andrew Hernandez (Balmorhea). The six original pieces contained on the album (whose titles are lovingly misappropriated from those of short stories by the late, great science fiction author James Tiptree Jr AKA Alice B. Sheldon,) are based alternately around nylon-string classical guitar and grand piano, with spare and subtle vibraphone and B3 organ parts overdubbed by Blackshaw himself. Geneviève Beaulieu (Menace Ruine/Preterite) adds her stunning and powerful voice and words to track ‘And I Have Come Upon This Place By Lost Ways’. ‘Love Is The Plan’ is an incredibly warm and intimate recording and perhaps Blackshaw’s most concise, consistent and overtly melodic work to date.

that description sounds great. rereading this thread, I appear to not own several of his best albums. I have Litany, All is Falling, and Glass Bead. The last is my favorite--should I check out any earlier ones?

cloud of unknowing is great, as is celeste. there might be a law of diminishing returns w/ some of the earlier stuff -- it sort of mines the same vibe. but if you like Litany, All is Falling, and Glass Bead, you'd definitely do well to explore the other ones.

I love the idea of him on classical guitar.

yeah i *think* he's playing that on a song from that boo forever EP from last year
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AASuAIU691s&feature=related
little bit hard to tell because he's being doubled by something -- which makes it sound kinda like a 12 string!

that sounds great. Funny cos just a couple nights ago I listened to this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhxlYkjpj6k
and thought to myself that James Blackshaw should do an album with nylon strings. That intro and then drop into the main repeating riff is one of my favorite understated music moments.

Ah, that Sun Kil Moon record was the first thing I thought of after reading this.

Stoked about this!

http://jamesblackshaw.tumblr.com/post/16837292015/collaboration-with-lubomyr-melnyk

I am absolutely thrilled to announce that I recently worked on some recordings with composer/pianist, Lubomyr Melnyk, whose music I have been a fan of for a long time and is a big source of inspiration to my own playing. This is something that we’ve been talking about for around three years now and was recently made possible with the kind help of the folks at Cafe Oto. Watch this space for more news regarding the recordings soon.

review of the new one in dusted today strikes me as kind of clueless:
British composer James Blackshaw’s early albums on 12-string guitar always felt more like love letters to guitarists like John Fahey, Sandy Bull, Robbie Basho and Sir Richard Bishop than applications for admittance to the “American Primitive” canon. He is British, after all, but more importantly, Sunshrine and O True Believers covered well-trodden trails instead of blazing their own. An argument could be made that the aforementioned innovators left little room for improvement, but Ben Chasny has done pretty well mutating it into a dark psychedelia. Anyway, Blackshaw is nonetheless a very gifted musician and, since 2008, he has gradually moved away from aping Fahey and towards a form of restrained modern composition. As such, Love is the Plan, the Plan is Death, the latest installment in this intriguing new direction, seems far-removed from the primitivism of The Cloud of Unknowing.

has this dude ever listened to john fahey? blackshaw really doesn't sound much like him. Basho, sure, but Blackshaw's stuff sounds far removed from Fahey, Bull, Bishop etc.

Yeah, unlike Fahey, there's very little blues in his playing and much more of a medievalist thing going on. They do both have a certain plaintiveness to their music though.

there's very little blues in his playing

I could be wrong though, cos I only know a few of his records.

for the most part there's zero blues in there, which makes "aping" fahey impossible. oh well! new one is very nice.

http://www.stereogum.com/1870656/james-blackshaw-is-quitting-his-music-career/news/

He should get tea with Robert Fripp and figure something out.

a bunch of us are doing this

my friends are i guess you can say pitchfork darlings and they're looking into this

that's too bad, but i hope he gets in a better place -- his twitter account occasionally seems very tortured.
and yeah, i mean, i find it hard to amazing that anyone making any kind of even slightly left of mainstream music can make a decent living at it.

bummer. all is falling is a classic to me.

it ain't easy out there i'd imagine.

yeah, with people like him i get a skewed idea of their popularity, since we talk about them all the time on the ilx brigade thread. but then i go to a show and there's like a dozen people showing up. they'd probably make more cash staying home and teaching Black Keys songs to 11 year olds or something.

that's too bad, but i hope he gets in a better place -- his twitter account occasionally seems very tortured.

True. Now he seems to have deleted his account. Must be very recent.

Bummer indeed.

then i go to a show and there's like a dozen people showing up

that was quite possibly the precise attendance last time I saw Blackshaw play, maybe in 2014. my city of residence is infamously useless at actually turning out for anything good, that said

not to downplay a situation which is presumably a real wrench for him but I assumed he already had a dayjob tbh

The negative spiral he was getting into on twitter has been glum reading, glad he's taking some time away.

I interviewed him back in the day and he was a lovely fella. Sad to see how wrong things have gone. He'll be back, hopefully.

Have things gone so "wrong"? Or is he simply just looking to shift his priorities towards happiness (which doesn't even exclude making new music!)? TBF I haven't seen these twitter posts.

The tweets that stick in my mind were quite bitter-sounding abuse directed at the Wire magazine account

Your help needed!

Dear all,

As I mentioned before, some of my older albums are currently unavailable to stream/download digitally. These will soon be available again and in some cases reissued on vinyl via a new label.

The albums are:

Celeste, Lost Prayers & Motionless Dances, Sunshrine, The Cloud of Unknowing and Litany Of Echoes

However, unfortuntely some of the original artwork is missing.

If you have any of these albums on CD or LP in good condition and can scan the covers at a minimum of 1400 x 1400 at 300 DPI, I would be immensely grateful if you could send the artwork files to me at shoryob✧✧✧@hotm✧✧✧.c✧✧

Many thanks and best wishes,

James

original post with the actual e-mail address: http://jamesblackshaw.tumblr.com/post/156101738083/your-help-needed

It's ugly to contemplate, but he's not well, is he?

He posted this on Tumblr a couple weeks ago:

End of hiatus

It’s been a while. After three years of not performing live and nearly five years since my last solo album, I feel a new energy and desire to record again and return to the stage. I never meant to be particularly dramatic about announcing my hiatus from music. I never knew if I’d feel this way again, but I’m genuinely happy I do.

I hope to have some news regarding new recordings shortly.

In the meantime, if you’d like to book me to play a show, in any town or city in any country, please contact me directly at: shoryobuni AT hotmail DOT com

I’m also selling some guitars to help and finance the new album. And pay bills. You know how it goes.

Much love and hope to see you soon,

James

https://jamesblackshaw.tumblr.com/post/186607395763/end-of-hiatus#notes

ok, this is great news

nice, that is good to hear ...

So glad to hear he's okay, new music is just a bonus really

Wasn't he run down by the lack of money/record sales? I'm glad to have him back, his music is beautiful.

yeah, good news all round

https://jamesblackshaw.bandcamp.com/album/new-album-2023

sounds like he's had a tough few years

yeah, wow. I wonder how viable a career doing. what he does actually is even in the best of times.

Dammit---I know I once wrote a show preview that started out,

James Blackshaw started out in punk rock, but soon hit the harder stuff. Harder to get right, that is.

James Blackshaw, Fantomas: Le Faux Magistrat: new soundtrack 4 classic antihero, performed live by JB & fellow multi-instrumentalists, iron in the flow.

I just listened to Cloud of Unknowing again a few months ago and was wondering what happened to him. Really like that new track he shared.