TLOBF Interview :: James Blackshaw

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I suddenly realized that in the language, or at any rate in the spirit of the Glass Bead Game, everything actually was all-meaningful, that every symbol and combination of symbols led not hither and yon, not to single examples, experiments, and proofs, but into the center, the mystery and innermost heart of the world, into primal knowledge. Every transition from major to minor in a sonata, every transformation of a myth or a religious cult, every classical or artistic formulation was, I realized in that flashing moment, if seen with truly a meditative mind, nothing but a direct route into the interior of the cosmic mystery, where in the alternation between inhaling and exhaling, between heaven and earth, between Yin and Yang, holiness is forever being created.

Herman Hesse – The Glass Bead Game

James Blackshaw has been prolific since he first appeared on record in 2004. There are currently at least 15 releases bearing his name – a mix of his own solo records, split recordings or collaborations, or, like last years’ The Garden of Forking Paths, where he appeared in a curatorial role. One thing that spans these releases is an astonishing level of dexterity and passion, and everything he seems to come into contact with is lit from within by his questing spirit. Blackshaw’s style – a mesmerisingly fluid and intricate study of the 12-string guitar – is one of exploration through iteration and repetition, and though a distant relative of the old Takoma school of finger picking, his recordings are more at home alongside modern composers and experimentalists such as Morton Feldman, Steve Reich and Charlemagne Palestine. His longer pieces are immersive and near architectural in there structure and at times the move into the hypnagogic -inducing a state of bliss or rapture. At times, on tracks such as ‘Stained Glass Windows’ from The Cloud of Unknowing, there is a sense of almost monkish devotion to his cause. He possesses a rare sense of grace and purpose.

Blackshaw’s new album, The Glass Bead Game – his first for Michael Gira’s label Young God – might just be his best yet. It features some of his beautiful rolling signature guitar playing but expanding on the short piano pieces on last year’s Litany of Echoes, it also moves into new territory with ‘Fix’ and ‘Arc’ – two longer piano studies. The latter is a genuinely astonishing track – 18 minutes of raw piano playing overlain with vocals from Lavinia Blackwall and, for the first time, a string section. The climax is a soul-deep vortex of sound. Michael Gira has called it “one of the most thrilling pieces of music I’ve heard in years”. Amen to that.

Matt Poacher spoke to James a month or so ago about the new album, piano-endurance tests and ah, Bromley.

TLOBF – Perhaps we could start by talking about The Glass Bead Game? When’s it out exactly? And is it out worldwide on Young God Records?

JB – I think the street date is the 26th May (though this has now been put back to the 15th June) and yes, the distribution is worldwide on Young God.

TLOBF – How did you end up signing for Michael Gira and Young God Records?

JB – It sort of dates back to late 2006 or early 2007 when I got an email from Lauren from Mi and Lau – who are on Young God and were on tour with Josephine Foster at the time. Basically a really nice email out of the blue saying that he’d heard one of my records and really loved it. We just ended up getting talking really and having an ongoing email exchange and at one point he said he was going to pass some of my stuff on to Michael. The next thing I know I get an email from Michael Gira saying that he really liked the stuff he’d heard and could he hear some more. So I sent out some cds to him. Anyway, a couple of months went past and I honestly didn’t expect to do anything for Michael and was basically just flattered to hear he liked my stuff as I’m obviously a fan of Swans and Angels of Light. Meanwhile I’d been asked to sign a deal with Tompkins Square which I agreed to; no sooner had I done so then Michael asked me to sign to Young God. I don’t regret signing with Tompkins Square at all as I’ve had a generally nice experience and I’m happy with the way the records are and it’s a good label.

I was then playing a festival in Holland and Michael was playing there as well, doing a solo set. I went to watch him play and then I was playing downstairs and – it wasn’t one of my better sets! – but after I had finished Michael came up and shook my hand and introduced himself. We got talking and had a drink, and got on really well and as it was coming to the end of my deal with Tompkins Square we spoke briefly about doing something and over the course of the next few months we came to an arrangement.

TLOBF – Gira must be a pretty interesting guy to be working with?

JB – Absolutely, I think in terms of his own music and words he’s pretty incredible and he seems like a genuine person and I trust him. He definitely has his own ideas and his own thoughts on things. It’s nice to be involved with another ‘creative’ person, for lack of a better word.

TLBOF – So where did you get the title from – it obviously comes from a Herman Hesse book, but how did you decide on it?

JB – I can’t really explain it to be honest. I was thinking about it as I though it might be something someone would ask about at some point! I don’t really know. It’s actually been a few years since I read the book but it definitely had a profound effect on me at the time. I guess I can’t really over explain it. A lot of the ways I title albums, I tend to just have some kind of association with the music I’m writing at the time and I don’t over analyze why I choose that particular title. It’s not the first time I’ve stolen a literary reference for a record! I’ve had The Garden of Forking Paths (a compilation that Blackshaw curated for Important Records) which is from Jorge Luis Borges and even some more obscure stuff like ‘Echo and Abyss’ from Litany of Echoes which is literally a couple of words I took from Fernando Pessoa’s Book of Disquiet.

TLOBF – I guess the title kind of makes sense in context of the rest of your body of work. I was thinking about The Cloud Of Unknowing and that and The Glass Bead Game, broadly speaking texts that deal with a kind of spiritual labour towards an understanding of the world.

JB – I don’t know if I could define myself as a spiritual person but there’s something about music that is religion to me – music at it’s best. I couldn’t say, for instance that a 3 minute pop song was a particularly spiritual experience. A lot of the music that I love and that inspires me feels spiritual to me – like Arvo Part and even early music like Hildegard of Bingen. – you know it’s intense, it’s religious. But even music that isn’t – take someone like Morton Feldman who isn’t explicitly religious in any way – can still have that same effect on me. To get back to the original point though, I think it makes sense not to over analyze too much and leave some things unsaid.

TLOBF – In that sense I suppose what you’re doing is setting up a kind of implicit covenant with the listener to work it out for themselves, or impute their own meanings.

JB – I do prefer to leave things ambiguous and to let people have their own interpretations. I don’t expect what I hear in my own music that other people will hear in the same way because, crudely, we’re all different people. There are things about my own music that I think are quite dark, but then perhaps I’m just transferring my own thoughts and feelings from a specific place and time.

TLOBF – But would you say that comes through naturally anyway? You’ve said before that the creative process tends to come from a relatively dark place.

JB – I think that most of the time it does, yes. The majority of my albums have been recorded in the winter and even on just a really simplistic level I do struggle with the winter – I do tend to get a little bit depressed. The albums often also seem to coincide with events in my life that are maybe not that positive I suppose. I don’t really know why that is and I don’t think that the music is necessarily totally dark music but I guess it’s kind of borne out of these periods.

TLOBF – So is the process of playing and recording cathartic for you personally?

JB – Absolutely. It feels like a process I have to go through. I’ve never been particularly casual about anything really , and when I get involved with something I’m very obsessive about it and find it hard to stop thinking about it – and when I make music I’m the same, and I think it’s kind of lucky that I don’t get that throughout the year, and that I have these concentrated periods of doing it. When I get to the other end of it, it’s like a huge weight has been shifted.

TLOBF – Do you dread it?

JB – Um, no – I don’t want to make it sound like I hate making music! I love it, but I do put myself through it when I’m making it. Not that it’s incredibly painful or anything, just that I find it hard to concentrate on anything else, and the rest of my life tends to fall by the wayside. So when I reach the other end of it, if you like, and I’m happy with what I’ve done I feel like I can get on with my life again

TLOBF – I’ve often felt with some of your music, certainly the longer pieces, that your chasing something, hunting it down – that to want to play a figure for that length of time is almost pathological. This is probably a crude way of framing the question but how do you know when you’re done, when to stop?

JB – I think with the longer tracks, I am sort of a believer that through repetition and endurance – and the longer you spend on something – something else does kind of emerge. I think I recognised that through listening to other pieces of music that inspired me. I do really like the idea of endurance and I’ve noticed that for a lot of the pieces if I were to only play for 4 or 5 minutes it wouldn’t feel long enough to me to even register what’s going on, or to get inside the music. I don’t mean that in a hippyish kind of way I just genuinely think you need that length of time to get something from it. For example the long piece ‘Arc’ from the new album – a lot of it, the timing I mean, was based on me seeing physically how long I could play for !

TLOBF – So was that track one take?

JB – That song was one take and it was the first take as well. The two piano songs were done on one take and one of the guitar songs, the other two we didn’t get straight away. With a piece like ‘Arc’ it was fortunate that I got it in one take as I think trying to redo it again and again would be an absolute nightmare; and doing something like ‘dropping in’ would have killed the idea behind it because it is an endurance piece and I wouldn’t like to hear myself cheating .

TLOBF – ‘Arc’ does sound pretty arduous both from a personal physical point of view but also in terms of what you’re asking the listener to go through. It’s an intensely emotional piece and a hard listen – does the possible effect of a piece influence the way your write at all?

JB – There’s a couple of things I’d say about that – I’d never be purposely obtuse or difficult and I see that as very important. Firstly I make music that I like, but secondly I want people to enjoy the music that I make and so I definitely don’t do things to be difficult. So it is expecting something of people listening but I wouldn’t ask for that if I didn’t think you could get something out of it.

I’ve been listening to the album a bit again recently, mainly because I know it’s coming out soon and I have to say when I’m busy or in a certain mood I can’t go through the last track myself, so I think you do have to be in a certain frame of mind. But I think it is my favourite track on the album as well.

TLOBF – I was listening to an interview the other day from 2007, and you said that you’d love to make a piano record ‘but the truth is I can’t’. So, what happened?!

JB – I think I almost threw down the gauntlet to myself with that comment . I think it was actually towards the end of 2007, my friend John Hannan who has a studio in Rayleigh in Essex and whom I’ve recorded everything with, had an old upright in his studio, and as throwaway as it makes those pieces sound that’s actually the reason that there are piano pieces on Litany of Echoes in the first place. And even though those pieces are really simple, they weren’t improvised as such but without wanting to sound pretentious or anything they were spontaneously composed and I liked the idea of bookending the album in this way. I decided then that I would like to, regardless of how technically good I am at piano – and I’m not technically good at all – I really enjoy playing it and I could imaging transposing some of the ideas I’d been having for guitar, onto piano. Which is kind of odd because it involves steps of removal because a lot of the ideas I’d been having for the guitar were based on things I’d heard on the piano – so it was a convoluted process. So I’d been practising all last year (2008) and writing these pieces but initially I didn’t know if I’d do much more with it but those two pieces (‘Fix’ and ‘Arc’) I felt were strong enough for the record.

TLOBF – So do you feel you’ve taken the guitar as far as you can? Or is it a case of wanting to spread your wings?

JB – I kind of always think I’ve taken the guitar as far as I can, certainly within the realms of my ideas I suppose. I could relearn some things and try to make a ragtime album maybe but just wouldn’t be me . So within the framework of the ideas I’ve been having for it sometimes I do feel like I’ve come to a bit of an end. But then I usually seem to find something that’s new enough so that it interests me again. Funnily enough I’ve been playing some electric guitar again and it isn’t much at the moment but I can sort of imagine myself doing something with that.

I think with mixing up the instrumentation on the new album is interesting because it works and it’s not reliant just on the guitar. I think that some people who like guitar music become kind of fetishistic about the instrument it, which is strange in itself because there are a lot of instruments people don’t do that with – when was the last time you heard someone go on about a solo violin record and asked you to hear the glissandos?! So putting the piano on there has taken the focus off of the guitar and onto the music itself. I feel like the last three albums I’ve done there is a steady progression in them – I mean they’re only made like a year or so apart – and although there is isn’t huge radical leaps between them I know what I do read of reviews, some people have said ‘well, doesn’t this sound like everything else he’s done?’ Whilst I can’t exactly say no, I think they’re kind of missing the point! I don’t think there has to be a huge leap. If I was to drop the James Blackshaw reggae album I think people would be horrified! And with a lot of the composers that I love there’s a gradual progression in their work. I’m sure people would say that about the first eight John Fahey albums or Philip Glass’s works of the last 25 years so I’m pushing it a little bit at a time.

Having said all that I am getting more and more confident with arranging for other instruments and would love to do something completely different at some point.

TLOBF – Talking of John Fahey, and the whole Takoma thing: did the comparisons to him and Robbie Basho you received early on in your career – which aren’t anyway entirely accurate – dog you at all?

JB – It’s kind of a blessing and a curse to tell you the truth and I wouldn’t say it dogged me necessarily but well… I do of course like John Fahey and Robbie Basho and both were a big influence and a part of how I came to the point of doing this, but I think there is sort of a shut off point with some people where I can’t hear the similarities – especially Fahey as I’m not really influenced by country blues and ragtime at all. I mean there was a point when people were saying I was playing raga… I think there were certain nods to that on the first four albums but on the last two and the new one there isn’t at all. It’s just some people can’t get beyond the fact that it’s somebody finger picking a guitar! Oh, it must sound like John Fahey…You might as well say it sounds like Eddie Van Halen !

TLOBF – I guess Fahey was more of an archivist at heart, certainly in the early days and you can hear the influence of the old blues and folk records he collected in his sound. Is your own sound more based around minimalist stuff? You’ve mentioned Charlemagne Palestine, Morton Feldman and Steve Reich amongst others, in the past.

JB – Although I haven’t listened to him in a long time I do really love Fahey, and he was a fascinating and interesting character but he was an archivist and the stuff he was obsessed with was part of the time he grew up and where he was living. Although I can’t really say the same thing of minimalist music and when I was growing up it’s a very different age now and you can listen to anything on the internet in seconds. The world is become less, well, geocentric – is that even a word? , what I mean is it’s less about where you are and your time. So things from lots of different places and eras inspire my music. And I think it’s made the music hard to pin down which is why I think people will grasp for the Takoma thing.

TLOBF – I’m always intrigued about what influence place has on music. Where you grew up has that affected your music at all? Did you grow up in East Sussex?

JB – No, I grew up in Bromley – in Kent, which I don’t particularly had any great affect on my music! It’s not the most scenic of places or greatly inspiring. In truth I’ve never been really been that inspired by environment or nature or landscape – which is odd because a number of people of said to me that they really associate my music with that stuff and it’s not been that way for me, it’s always been an internal thing – a state of mind or feeling. I suppose the one thing you could say about where I grew up is that I’m glad I grew up in the suburbs and I don’t come from any great musical background – my dad’s a driver and my mum works for a charity. So when I was growing up I’d meet people whose mum was a painter and their dad was a philosopher and they’d know loads about art and music just from the way they grew up. So, aside from the fact that I obviously love my family, I’m glad that I wasn’t brought up with any preconceptions or that there wasn’t any direct influence on me artistically – I just sort of found my own way. I got into Punk when I was teenager and via some weird detour got to the point where I am now .

TLOBF – So where does the talent come from? One thing John Updike talked about was ‘the talent’ ‘the thing behind’ that rarely gets discussed, or understood. I can remember seeing John Renbourne in a tent at The Green Man and being dazzled that someone could be that good at something – inhabit something so utterly. I have a similar response to some of your stuff.

JB – thank you. To be honest I don’t really know. I’ve been playing this stuff for the last 6 or 7 years and I was playing in bands before then, from my early teens and I suppose it’s a cumulative thing – partly from a love of doing it. I didn’t have lessons or anything and I think that combined with how much I loved music really kind of threw the doors open. So when I was younger I was less conscious of sounding wrong if you like and just followed it. Then when I started playing like this it was during a period when I wasn’t doing a lot else and it stuck. I don’t feel like I’m necessarily that good a guitar player, and that isn’t false modesty, but what I do have is some fairly original ideas – most of which are quite simple ideas which can sound quite nice.

Apart from that I don’t really know

TLOBF – To get back to the new record then (finally), it certainly feels and sounds like the densest thing you’ve ever done. Especially the crescendo on ‘Arc’ which utilises strings and wordless voices as well – what was behind the decision to try these things?

JB – Well the first few albums were fairly minimalistic in terms of instrumentation. I mean you can’t get more minimalistic than playing solo acoustic guitar… So it was really a case of exploring the music that inspires me – I love huge dense sonorous soundscapes. And I think the album is interesting because it has some really sparse stuff on there – like the sparse piano part and the second guitar track – but what I really wanted was to make a dynamic album and what’s interesting about ‘Arc’ is that becomes towards the end really difficult to distinguish between the instruments.

TLOBF – That was my experience of it – that you tend to lose your sense of orientation almost.

JB – That was quite intentional. We knew it was going to be a difficult track to mix because there aren’t any real rules with how you mix a track like that. It took us a whole day to mix it – whereas the whole rest of the album took a day as well. There were parts were if the piano was slightly to low in the mix the whole thing would sound totally formless and the rhtym of the piece would be lost; and if we pushed some instruments too high in the mix it would again start to sound a bit formless. I’m happy with how it turned out. Even though I was there when it was recorded and played the piano even I sometimes can’t quite make out what’s being played – if it’s Lavinia or a violin. I like that.

TLOBF – It’s certainly a very immersive track

JB – Well that’s what I was hoping for. I was a little apprehensive about that track to be honest. I knew I really liked it but was unsure what people – including Michael Gira – would think of it. It turns out it’s his favourite track on the album which is a huge relief.

It’s an odd situation to be aware, even if it’s only slight, that there is going to be people listening to your music; and you have to physically ignore that at times to make something pure and honest. You’re always aware and happy of course that people like your music and early on I didn’t have that at all whereas now there is something nagging at the back of your mind… ‘are people actually going to like this?’ .

TLOBF – I read what Michael Gira said about that track and well, he was gushing to say the least.

JB – I love the way he writes and he’s such a super enthusiastic guy with an obvious love for the music he puts out. But yes, I did blush a bit.

TLOBF – So are you going to tour The Glass Bead Game, with a piano and band?

JB – I’d love to. I think the problem at the moment is still that I make music full time, for a living and unfortunately I don’t actually make enough to be able to tour with other musicians. I think those two piano pieces, and a couple of other things I’ve written since, would work as solo pieces, so we are looking at places in the country that might work. There’s also talk of a London show in the next couple of months with an ensemble and maybe one other show. I’d love to be able to do it though it wouldn’t need to be all the time as I still love playing the solo guitar.

TLOBF – Well you’ll have to keep us informed…

Thanks to James for his time on this. It was a real pleasure.