Artist : James Blackshaw & Lubomyr Melnyk
Album : The Watchers
Year : 2013
Genre : Instrumental
Quality : 232kbps / 44.1KHz / Joint Stereo
Source : CD
Playtime : 0h 45m
Size : 79.90mb
Label : Important Records
Catalognr : IMPREC375
Tracklist:
01. Tascheter 11:59
02. Venant 13:14
03. Satevis 11:42
04. Haftorang 8:48
Releasenotes:
The combination of James Blackshaw and Lubomyr Melnyk is a pairing so natural it
seems inevitable, especially when Melnyk's so-called æcontinuous music' style
could be just as easily applied to Blackshaw's guitar playing (the pianist even
proclaimed, after seeing Blackshaw play live, ôYou have invented continuous
music for guitar!ö). When the two first met in 2008, they hatched the idea of a
future collaboration, which ultimately came to fruition in 2012 when they
convened at the Vortex Jazz Cafe in London for a day of improvisations
(spontaneous composition, if you prefer). With Blackshaw playing twelve-string
acoustic guitar and Melnyk at the grand piano, no more than two takes per song
were done and the entire session was over in six hours, with The Watchers' four
long-form settings the wondrous result.
The album embarks in ôTascheterö on a sea of cascading ripples, the musicians
pushing forward side-by-side, neither one dominant and Blackshaw's ringing
patterns a fitting complement to Melnyk's elegant clusters. Throughout the
thirty-six-minute recording, the two act as conduits for the music's seemingly
unforced unfolding as it moves patiently through chord progressions and hints at
melodic possibilities, subtly rising and falling as it does so. Neither musician
solos in the conventional sense of the word, although one might just as easily
say that both solo constantly; having said that, Blackshaw's crystal-clear tone
does assert itself prominently during the latter half of ôVenantö to a point
where his repeating melody does stand out from the sonic mass.
Though each player is a master at generating swirling eddies of sound, the most
affecting sections, interestingly enough, are those where the density diminishes
and the music quietens. That happens most evidently during the album's second
half, specifically during ôSatevis,ö where the slow tempo allows Melnyk's
waterfalls to create an impressionistic mass against which the guitarist replies
with chiming figures, but most memorably during the closing minute where the
instruments' voices gradually scale back until they vanish altogether. The
stately closer ôHaftorangö is, if anything, even more elegant in the melancholy
lines the musicians draw. It's during these moments when the beauty of the music
comes most powerfully to the fore, and one leaves the album thinking that a
better title might have been The Listeners, given the telepathic level shared by
the musicians.
http://www.textura.org/reviews/blackshaw_melnyk.htm
http://importantrecords.com/imprec/imprec375