James Beaudreau: Recording Session Revelations

Guitarist James Beaudreau is currently in the final stages of writing and recording the follow-up to his remarkable and widely applauded solo debut „Java Street Bagatelles“. In between the sessions to the as yet untitled work, Beaudreau was kind enough to satisfy our curiosity and reveal a little inside information: „So far there's 8 tracks (totalling over 30 minutes) that are done, but need to be mixed - and I'm working on some other pieces now“, James Beaudreau said, „ The finished album should clock in somewhere between 38-45 minutes.“ There were discreet and yet important changes in approach: „One rulethat I held to during the making of Java St Bagatelles was that recordings couldn't be layered: there could only be one guitar present at a time, so as to present the image of a real performance, even when there were edits. I let go of that rule in this new album: editing has become freer and recordings layer on top of one another in many places, sometimes dramatically and sometimes subtly.“ Beaudreau made sure to dispel any auggestions of the album going in a completely different direction from the spontaneous, softly avantgardistic, jazz-flavoured guitar impromptus and compositions of its predecessor: „There will still be a few solo guitar improvisations on the album too.“