What you are about to hear, should you feel inclined to put Guy Blakeslee’s album ‘Extravisions’ on after reading this review, is a cohesive and comforting project: every composition contained within is captivating, each evoking a different feeling through the myriad instruments and sounds the musician uses besides the acoustic guitar, which he used to play almost exclusively before the making of this record.
There is a significance behind these elements – the soothing nature of the songs comprising Extravisions, the inclusion of more than just the instrument on which he is most proficient – and it revolves around the events of March 13th, 2020. Blakeslee began that day able-bodied, as he had been his whole life. He awoke the following day in hospital, his new situation causing the upheaval of all he had known before. This was because, the previous day, Blakeslee had been struck by a car.
A musician based in Los Angeles, the accident, occurring amidst the onset of the global COVID-19 pandemic, couldn’t have left Blakeslee in a greater state of uncertainty. As the weeks passed and lockdown was swiftly imposed in America, it became apparent that, alongside the inevitable injury to his body, he had sustained considerable damage to his vision and areas of his brain – thus overhauling the landscape he had established as the person, Guy Blakeslee, let alone in his career as (primarily) a guitarist.
These changes did not deter the musician from continuing to make music, however. Rather, not only did they spur him to create an album, they precipitated further experimentation, especially through the medium of piano keys; heralding a new frontier in his musicianship, given that the guitar had previously been the instrument he used the most. And, truthfully, I am enamoured with the result of Blakeslee’s reckoning with life as he has known it since that fateful March 13th.
‘Celestial Radiance’ is a purposeful album opener, in that on it Blakeslee plays a descending scale on his acoustic guitar from beginning to end alongside a glockenspiel and – a key component of the soundscape he engineers on Extravisions – light, spacious synth chords. Only three minutes in length, this song offers a brief, succinct sample of the musician’s ability to instil a sense of tranquillity through his masterful meshing together of hypnotic melodies and a thrumming drone.
I emphasise the short duration of that song as the lengths of the rest on this record vary vastly; the longest, bonus track ‘Something Unknown,’ totals 16 minutes and 31 seconds. This is not at all a negative thing. I think that each musical environment constructed by Blakeslee is given enough time to express itself, lasting long enough for the listener to feel as though they have been transported into them, allowing for their meditative qualities to have a palpable, powerful effect.
‘From A Melted Place’ is a prime example of this. A composition that one could easily mistake as being one of Harold Budd’s (especially with the use of the reverberant piano sound that proliferates in the ambient pioneer’s discography), its 6:40 runtime feels like nothing, so entirely enchanting is it. The tremolo of the glockenspiel notes as they fade in and out of the fore, the pedal note of the piano scale subtly yet forcefully concluding each improvisation, how roomy the song feels as the two instruments interact…it genuinely feels like the music is a pair of open arms, welcoming you unquestioningly into its embrace.
Every song has that accommodative air about it: the flute accompaniment in ‘Wounded Healer,’ which sounds beneath a sparse glockenspiel melody, is deeply, inexplicably moving; the contrast in ‘Pisces Moon’ between the lo-fi, ascending synth bass line and the crystalline reverberations of the other synth melodies sounding is nothing short of enthralling; ‘Spiralling Down,’ whose wailing drone atop low, rippling synth notes makes one feel like they are looking retrospectively on a downward spiral – an effect that Blakeslee, for whom the song’s title could resonate regarding what he felt like after his accident, may well have intended for.
In short, this musician’s grasp on atmosphere really is something. What cemented this fact in my mind was the penultimate song of Extravisions (excluding the added bonus track). ‘Song of Saturn’ is simultaneously heavenly and funereal, with both connotations deriving from its main feature, the organ. Resounding above a quiet synth bass, its vibrato paired with the reverb effect that places the listener in an empty, expansive cathedral is enough to bring tears – of elation, of sadness, of whatever emotion the sound may evoke in you – to one’s eyes.
It’s one thing to have made an album of songs that speak to people. It’s another to have done so through just instruments. But for Blakeslee to have gone through the horror of what he experienced in 2020 – the uncertainty, the grief – and come out of it with a record that soothed him in the course of making it and a record that will doubtlessly soothe scores of others when they play it is an unquantifiable achievement. Aside from being a thoroughly gratifying listening experience, Extravisions is a testament to music’s second-to-none restorative abilities, that which everyone involved with it can enjoy.
Guy Blakeslee: Extravisions – Out 18 October 2024 (Leaving Records)
Blakeslee – Arcturian Whispers (Official Audio) (youtube.com)
