James Blackshaw (UK/Young God Records)

"... A veritable solo symphony that's as schooled in uncommon beauty as it is in complex 20th century composition... Blackshaw writes high drama into instrumental music with subtlety and charm, speaking on sentiments and stories without requiring a single lyric... Blackshaw seems fully settled, engaging his pieces and ideas with the unflinching belief of Tony Conrad in 1964 or Steve Reich in 1965..." - Grayson Currin, Pitchforkmedia.com

"...his first Young God album, 'The Glass Bead Game', continues Blackshaw’s hot streak that has stretched for four or five years now. This one has five longish to epic tracks, two of which feature Blackshaw on piano, a development of the work he initiated on “Litany Of Echoes”….The sound this time is a little fuller, a little more orchestrated, a little further away from the folk/Takoma school tag he was first saddled with, but his grace-filled compositional style remains more or less consistent...gorgeous, pensive...an extraordinary album" - John Mulvey/Uncut Magazine

"...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... [Blackshaw] 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

"...one of the best and most original instrumentalists in the new, acoustic renaissance." - Rolling Stone

"In the tradition of "American Primitive" guitarists within which he's often grouped, James Blackshaw cuts rather an odd figure. Neither American, nor primitive, nor as Litany of Echoes begins, even playing the guitar, the English musician is all about upending the expectations we might have from his instrument. Whereas kindred spirits like John Fahey and Robbie Basho looked East for their Raga-inspired guitar diversions, Blackshaw instead sounds more East-Coast: his long-distance guitar tunes recalling NY minimalism, or Sonic Youth, as arranged for chamber orchestra. Mesmerising stuff, and proof that less is often more." - John Robinson, Uncut Magazine

"There's an indecent ease to James Blackshaw's guitar playing. His fingerpicking mantras are as melodic as a music box, gliding through dizzying tempos like clockwork... Such is the silky control he exherts over his instrument, Blackshaw often sounds more like a court harpist than a backwoods strummer." - Derek Walmsey, The Wire