James Blackshaw - All Is Falling

Here ol' professional geetar fondler Jake Blimshirt offers up his second optimum lengther for Mike Giro's foreboding folknoir imprint. Once you make it past the awesome piano led opener you're thrust into a vast chasm of sweet neo-classical beauty & cinematic, orchestrated folk. He's gone "electric" on this record but not in the same way Bobby D did. He's still a man whose 12 string fingerpickin' skills are virtually unsurpassable in this country (possibly...) His sound is less intimate & stripped-down on this grand album - he's obviously much into engaging with chunks of wind instrumentation & brief bursts of dense percussion; large portions of deliciously maudilin strings flutter & cascade throughout these seemingly interlinked "movements"; there's even a flurry of spoken word & also present is a prominent locking-of-horns with this discreet form of minimalist composition. He sounds like he's more part of a travelling band now, the aura & beauty of his finest playing now mingling with other deeper, soul-soothing moods that sound more attuned to a wider, starrier stage! Total beauty is this, a really powerful engaging listen that'll appease his established listeners as well as fans of Max R, Sylvain C & Yann T.