James Blackshaw - Love Is the Plan, the Plan Is Death - CD/LP
James Blackshaw - Love Is the Plan, the Plan Is Death - CD/LP
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"One of the best and most original instrumentalists in the new, acoustic renaissance." ~ David Fricke, Rolling Stone
Yellow and/or white vinyl available for the first 200 mailorder customers.
Important is proud to welcome back James Blackshaw for his first full length on Important since his breakthrough album O True Believers was released in 2006. James has since forged a remarkable career achieving critical praise for his dexterity, his deep, connected songwriting and his beautiful arrangement. Love Is the Plan, the Plan Is Death is available on CD & LP. The LP pressed in a on a color vinyl limited edition of 1000 for mailorder customers.
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 to date.
TRACK LISTING
1. Love Is the Plan, the Plan Is Death
2. Her Smoke Rose Up Forever
3. And I Have Come Upon This Place By Lost Ways
4. A Momentary Taste of Being
5. We Who Stole the Dream
6. The Snows Are Melted, the Snows Are Gone
REVIEWS
Pitchfork 7.9
"Blackshaw is one of the most interesting modern composers, one who leaps and bounds with every release. On this new one, he continues his flirtation with piano but mainly lets his masterful John Fahey-styled finger-picking do the talking. His glistening arpeggios are technically brilliant, but Blackshaw forgoes the guitar pyrotechnics and instead highlights his compositional skill. Menace Ruine's Geneviève Beaulieu provides vocals on 'And I Have Come Upon This Place by Lost Ways,' which fits Blackshaw's ivory-tickling like a glove." 9/10 ~ Montreal Mirror
