James Blackshaw

First London show in a long while from 12 string guitarist James Blackshaw... He'll be joined on the evening with sets from Jozef Van Wissem - Blackshaw's partner in Brethren of the Free Spirit - and Tony Marsh - one of London's most extraordinary percussionists.

JAMES BLACKSHAW

James Blackshaw performs celestial and spirit-lifting guitar-led compositions. Meditative in quality, cinematic in scope, his music spirals gracefully across complex patterns, motifs and harmonics. He made his name as a 12-string acoustic guitarist, and his relationship with the instrument is near perfect. With an extensive back catalogue to his name on labels like Young God Records, Tompkins Square and Important, he has developed a unique playing style that takes Takoma school finger-picking into an entirely new place. Swirling overtones, cascading notes and a thousand points of light cascade from his guitar and create ever-shifting textures that bear the influence of contemporary classical composition, post-rock dynamics and invisible soundtracks as much as the American folk guitar tradition.

Despite his transcendent state music he is a grounded and earthly fellow who has been written about with reverence and has played churches, festivals, folk clubs and large concert halls on his many travels in the US, Europe and Japan. These have included extensive touring with the reformed Swans, as well as collaborative performances with Hauschka and Nancy Elizabeth. He performs and records as a member of Current 93 and with Jozef Van Wissem as Brethren of The Free Spirit.

New album Love is The Plan, The Plan Is Death is released on Important Records in April 2012. Written at a time of great emotional disquiet, it's a beautiful and bittersweet new chamber work containing six original pieces whose titles are lovingly misappropriated from those of short stories by the great science fiction author James Tiptree Jr AKA Alice B. Sheldon. The instrumentation is more stripped back and integrated than on recent albums, allowing his impeccable nylon-string classical guitar playing to come to the fore, with small details like the scraping of his fingers on the strings and breathing patterns adding to the emotional honesty of the mix. Grand piano, vibraphone and B3 fill out the tracks, with Geneviève Beaulieu's stunning vocals featuring on the track ‘And I Have Come Upon This Place By Lost Ways’.

"...strong influences from outside the precincts of folk music: minimalist composers like Steve Reich and Terry Riley, and some of their precursors, like Erik Satie... fingerpicks his 12-string Guild with an immersive focus befitting such heady allusions... a stark and ancient feeling, like something handed down through the ages...." - NY Times

James Blackshaw Website

JOZEF VAN WISSEM

Devoted to what he terms “The Liberation of the Lute,” his compositions for the instrument have involved a dynamic mix of conceptual, minimalist, classical and improvisational strategies. Over the last two decades, he has used cut-and-paste tactics, created palindromic compositions by playing pieces forwards and then backwards and used field recordings and free improvisation to create a sound world that is at once meditative and surprising, new and arcane. He composes mirror image melodies that step up and then back down seemingly without end Van Wissem is able to bridge the language of 17th century music with that of the 21st century without compromising the timbre and resonance of traditional lute playing techniques. An incessantly touring musician, van wissem's hypnotic live shows have taken him all over the world. He has records out on Important Records and his own Incunabulum label and has collaborated with James Blackshaw, Keiji Haino and Jim Jarmusch amongst others. Van Wissem studied lute in New york with Pat O'Brien.and released a classical lute CD " A Rose By Any Other Name" consisting of anonymous lute pieces. He lectures on 'the liberation of the lute' ( At Harvard, Wesleyan University, Mills College amongst others) He was commissioned by the National Gallery of London to compose a sound piece to Hans Holbein's painting "The Ambassadors". Van Wissem's work is featured more and more in documentaries and feature films, as well as in the upcoming Sims Medieval video game.

Jozef's latest release is a duo LP with Jim Jarmusch.

“In “The Mirror of Eternal Light,” the Dutch lutist Jozef van Wissem catches his own reflection in tender, minimalist picking and gold-spray overdubs.”- -David Fricke, senior editor, Rolling Stone Magazine

Jozef Van Wissem website

Jozef van Wissem w/ Jim Jarmusch @ issue project room from bentley on Vimeo.

Buy tickets: http://www.wegottickets.com/event/154393