PCL present: Blake Mills + Jesca Hoop

Recorded in Los Angeles at the legendary Ocean Way studios in a room built for Frank Sinatra & used by everyone from Bob Dylan to Ray Charles, critically acclaimed guitarist, producer and songwriter Blake Mills creates an album that references a range of genres without really belonging to any.

“The goals for Heigh Ho were songs, sonics, and capturing performance,” Mills said. “I was interested in finding a combination of sounds that I hadn’t heard used together before. I was very fortunate to be able to call on this group of people to help me map some new terrain.”

That group of musicians includes Jim Keltner, Don Was, Mike Elizondo, Jon Brion, Benmont Tench and Fiona Apple (who duets on the slow burning ‘Seven’ and ‘Don’t Tell Our Friends’).

“Blake arranged the music the way that Cézanne would've filled a canvas,” Don Was notes of his experience playing in Blake’s band. “He’s a mind-blowingly great artist with the type of deep vision that is the hallmark of true genius. It's so inspiring for musicians to play with a cat like that! If he asked us to play in orange, we wanted to give him a shade that burned so brightly as to blind the unsuspecting.”

At 28, Mills has already stacked up a career’s worth of gigs as a session guitarist and touring musician working with Lucinda Williams, Beck and Neil Diamond. Rick Rubin and T Bone Burnett frequently call upon his services as a guitarist, and equally enamoured is Eric Clapton who recently told Rolling Stone magazine “Blake Mills is the last guitarist I heard that I thought was phenomenal."

As a producer, he has just finished Alabama Shakes' highly anticipated second album as well as working with ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons, Conor Oberst, Sky Ferreira and Fiona Apple.

To follow up his sold out London show in October at Bush Hall, Mills will tour the UK, Paris and Amsterdam.

Support comes from American singer-songwriter Jesca Hoop. Hoop has released three critically acclaimed studio albums, three EPs, two live albums and has a new record produced by Blake Mills in the pipe line. To find her catalogue go to www.jescahoop.com.