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.“
With its both intense and yet mellow mood, „Java Street Bagatelles“ was something of an imaginary walk down that street in its title, a record which used a restricted array of tools to come up with something unmistakable and real. An important factor is achieving this was the inclusion of field recordings – both on an upfront and a background level. On the new work, James Beaudreau has decided to take this element to a new level: „The ambient sound that received a lot of attention on Java St Bagatelles has become more of a purposeful compositional factor in the new album“, Beaudreau discribed the variation, „That said, this new one is actually more "hi-fi" and sonically varied than the first one.“
Even though release date and record company are as yet unclear (Beaudreau runs his own label, Workbench, but is pondering offering it to other outfits), James hopes to „have the whole thing finished in March and hopefully available before the end of the year.“ For anyone not yet familiar with his music, there's no need to wait that long, however: There are still copies of „Java Street Bagatelles“ to be had directly from his homepage.
Homepage: James Beaudreau
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