James Blackshaw: The Glass Bead Game

I recently caved in and bought an MP3 player. What do I mean caved in? Well, I like personal CD players. I like only taking two or three well chosen discs with me, an avowed enemy of too much choice. But I have already batted out one atavistic rant recently so I won’t go further into it.  

It was on this little hole-plugging memory stick that I took The Glass Bead Game downstairs, connected it to the kitchen stereo and listened to it, while washing up last night's dishes. This might not be the best way to listen to James Blackshaw’s regal twelve strung fingerpicking and ivory pressings. Bad smells, clanking, the occasional rushing burst from the tap, while bad speakers play files that have already had the life compressed out of them, the “juice drink” of the audio world. My housemate had just put the washing machine on, the bearings of which are getting pretty knackered. This is the kind of music that makes you wish you knew some classical music obsessed audiophile with an immense sound system rigged up in a big parquet floored room with a conservatory that smells of geraniums… 

I can’t remember exactly what I was thinking about while I washed up. Something about English mysticism, coffee mornings, rhododendrons and the Church of England. They weren’t thoughts I felt that I could properly explain to you readers because they would unintentionally come off as a backhanded swipe at Mr Blackshaw. I just didn’t want to fall back on some limp William Blake analogies. What is it then? Despite the high-fallutin’ titles of his albums and songs, the insanely precise renditions (which must be a hell of an experience for the man, chock full of all manner of psycho-spiritual tricks, left turns and doubt, or maybe not….), the grandiose emotional tone of nigh all of his music and the endless attempts to categorise him as some mongrel descendant of Philip Glass and John Fahey, he draws his inspiration from the mundane (there was a “despite” back there). 

He’s not a shambolic drug rambler; he’s not peddling hippie transcendence, concept over form or radical outsiderisms. He’s finding beauty and connectivity in the terra, flora, fauna and beings around him. There is a queer lack of guilt in his music, if you consider his music to be representative of the man I might go as far to say that there is an underlying acceptance of what he is and where he is. He expresses all of this like a mute monk dancing to illustrate some breakthrough. From time to time it makes real sense. 

We’re all trying to force the world to fit our tailored view on each and every day, so I don’t knock the man for occasionally over emphasising the marvel on The Glass Bead Game. It creates a slightly stodgy feeling now and then and draws attention away from the music and the view beyond, leaving the composition naked; looking a little pedantic and fussy now and then. I would say that this stumbling block arises more often on The Glass Bead Game than it has on his last two solo releases The Cloud of Unknowing and Litany of Echoes. On those two you got the occasional dose of confusion and maybe even some anger and depression on Litany, the constructive type of both that is.  

To me those two records were equal halves of a summation of Blackshaw’s young work. This is an attempt to find a new way and it often sounds bolder than it is at heart. It sounds to me that a lot of these songs are re-treading the work on those two phenomenal albums, as well as looking further back to ‘O True Believers’. The first track is called ‘Cross’ and I liked it until the Enya meets Kate Bush vocals kicked in. 

This isn’t the first time that Blackshaw has named his work after philosophical (or theosophical) texts. I tried reading Herman Hesse’s The Glass Bead Game once and it was too much of a head trip for me. I wanted to read about people doing stuff at the time. Unfortunately that led me to the gimcrack nonsense of Kerouac. Perhaps one day I will break through the early section of that mammoth and get to the meat. The Cloud of Unknowing took its name from a 14th century book of spiritual considerations, believed to be written by a Carthusian monk. Rather than give a hamfisted rundown of it I will copy and paste this quote:

"Our intense need to understand will always be a powerful stumbling block to our attempts to reach God in simple love [...] and must always be overcome. For if you do not overcome this need to understand, it will undermine your quest. It will replace the darkness which you have pierced to reach God with clear images of something which, however good, however beautiful, however Godlike, is not God." 

Now I can relate with that! It’s like Carlos Castaneda and Buddhism but without all the fashionista shtick! And it’s polite and mild and English! But I am a vicar’s boy from the countryside… It’s a theme that Hesse himself re-iterates in his work, giving me the impression that Blackshaw’s got the fever good and proper; thankfully he hasn’t gone and bought a yurt full of Indian classical instruments. Instead he is continuing the piano work he began on Litany of Echoes, alongside his always impressive guitar playing, and to good effect too. Both piano pieces are compelling. I was going to pose some “but what would today's ‘Joe Oboe’ student of classical music think of it” paragraph, but then I remembered that a lot of those people hate music and should be stopped.  

There I was washing up and thinking: yes James, you can plug out any number of “achingly beautiful” compositions but where has the fragility gone? Pieces on the twelve string acoustic like ‘Key’ seem superfluous after what you’ve achieved on record. But who knows, to him they might represent some sudden fourth finger triumph, some new fingerpicking pattern that he has been working on for years that just this once didn’t break one of his long nails and send it cart-wheeling onto the parquet floor….  

But that kind of thing doesn’t cross over to a strummer like me. The melody seems to grab the same organs without squeezing out the same toxins. Like going to see a regular masseuse and wondering if they’re not slightly bored or repelled by some new hairy mole on your back. I’ve never had a massage, but these are the kind of things that worry me…  

Then, as the washing machine hit high revs the eighteen minutes of ‘Arc’ began to take hold of me, even over such horrible sonic obstacles, truly captivating me. Built around cascading glory pedal piano (that’s what I call the pedal that makes everything reverberate forever when you hold it down, me and those black keys have had some good times in that magical land) translating his flurried guitar style to the keys surrounded by what I am guessing is the viola of Fran Bury (who has appeared on previous releases) and some subtle vocals. The piece holds its ground for a very long time. Long enough to beat down any resistance to it. Like when you think you’re going mad and then you realise that you can’t really, then you get disappointed and then it all seems kind of funny and beautiful. Whoops… No-one else? Damn… 

It is immensely soothing and human. It gives me the feeling that one day this young gent might be able to crank out something as beautiful as Vaughn Williams ‘The Lark Ascending’. Someone give this boy an orchestra! It’s good to listen to some anti rock and roll worth its salt: aware of its aloneness and devoid of indie and classical credentials. I thank James Blackshaw for it. But I have to rate this alongside his other works. To someone who had never heard his music this pastoral dream might be a real and vibrant discovery, but as someone who has already had numerous powerful experiences with his music I am left interested and occasionally touched (again right now on the piano led ‘Fix’), despite the lack of emotional context. Big words eh? What did that Carthusian feller say?