Chicago-based Warr guitarist JASON BLAKE has completed work on his latest solo outing, Imaginary Cages, this week confirming the album for late February release through Wayfarer Records and issuing its cover art, track listing, a brief teaser, and more.
The Warr Guitar is a twelve-string instrument incorporating the range of a guitar and bass. It is played by tapping the strings; a technique known as touchstyle guitar. When his primary band, instrumental/progressive metal trio Aziola Cry, returned from a fourteen-year hiatus with the Sensory Records release of their blazing The Ironic Divide last year, JASON BLAKE’s performance on the record was noticed and praised by critics and fans abroad. Within the group, he writes music featuring the rhythmic and melodic capabilities of the Warr Guitar in a band setting.
However, with his solo work, JASON BLAKE pushes the boundaries of the instrument while incorporating elements of progressive rock, ambient, and classical. Signed to Olympia, Washington-based Wayfarer Records, he released his first album for the label in June of 2021. Called, “an aural feast of different sounds,” by Sea of Tranquility, the album Fictional Mirrors was the first album of a planned progressive ambient trilogy titled The Ternary Instinct. While the other installments of that series are being formulated, BLAKE now returns with Imaginary Cages.
A six-song progressive rock suite of solo Warr guitar, Imaginary Cages features some of BLAKE’s most complicated work to date, boasting technical prowess in a bold but subdued setting. With delicate and tranquil chorus-drenched ambience, JASON BLAKE executes forty minutes of precision musicianship with no overdubs. The album was mixed by Tyler Rice at Transient Sound, mastered by Bob Katz at Digital Domain (Foghat, Sinead O’Connor, Necrophagist), and completed with artwork by Hajo Müller (Porcupine Tree, Steven Wilson).
“I had this idea to explore the theme of loneliness inside of one’s mind. Then, the lockdown occurred, and I felt that this was the time to begin composing the music,” Blake explains of the album.
