James Blackshaw

Event information

Buried Bones present:

James Blackshaw

plus Special Guests Directorsound & Ex-Easter Island Head

James Blackshaw 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.


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.

Multi instrumentalist Nicholas Palmer (aka Directorsound) has come a long way since his critically acclaimed 2003 Geographic/Domino debut Redemptive Strikes. The 7 years that followed saw Palmer alternatively amass then disregard a wealth of recordings while retreating ever further into seclusion and his art. Two Years Today represents the fruits of these unheard yet prolific years, interwoven with the sounds of his native Dorset. Since the release of Two Years Today on Swedish label Tona Serenad, Nick last year collaborated with psychedelic folk musician Mark Fry under the guise of the A Lords, releasing the well received I Lived in Trees on the Second Language label. With new work to be released this year, Directorsound will be inviting Manchester into his whimsical musical world for the very first time.

Ex-Easter Island Head are a Liverpool-based ensemble composing and performing music for solid-body electric guitar, percussion and other instruments. Their debut record Mallet Guitars One was released by Low Point records.

"Precise and Pulsing rhythmic minimalism...a three chord punk mission statement turned into a neo-classical manifesto"
THE WIRE

"Somewhere between the minimalist disciplines of Steve Reich and the more avant-garde inclinations of performers such as Bang On A Can or So Percussion"
BOOMKAT

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