Within the span of a few short years, James Blackshaw has established himself as the gold standard among the crowded field of contemporary acoustic guitarists. On 2007's brilliant The Cloud of Unknowing and throughout the course of his ever-expanding discography, he has drawn on an unusually broad array of influences, even by the voracious standards of his American primitive peers. So it comes as little surprise to find that on The Garden of Forking Paths, a new collection curated by Blackshaw for Important Records, he has sought to draw connections across some unlikely musical borderlands.

For the compilation, Blackshaw has gathered solo works for various acoustic string instruments, including performances by cellist Helena Espvall, Japanese koto expert Chieko Mori, and Renaissance lute player Jozef van Wissem. These musicians each bring a highly individualized approach to their instruments, yet each displays a similar balance of reverence and disregard for traditional form and technique. Despite the musicians' diverse musical and cultural backgrounds, however, the collection is able to accent the many subtle echoes between each of these pieces, resulting in an engaging set that provides a refreshing alternative to the recent deluge of folk-based guitar records.

The Garden of Forking Paths takes its title from the celebrated short story by Jorge Luis Borges, which is a dazzling meditation on time and the possibility of infinite simultaneous realities. It's a title that seems to suit this collection especially well, as the music here sounds unified enough to suggest that the performers have all been traveling parallel routes to reach the same destination. (And they each certainly appear capable of Borgesian bursts of virtuosity.) The album was recorded at various locations around the globe in 2006 and 2007 with a minimum of overdubs. Yet these are not wild flights of improvisation but are instead measured, deliberate compositions that progress to their natural conclusions with a quiet sense of purpose.

It is left unclear whether the musicians had the opportunity to work together or hear one another's contributions prior to recording their own, but nevertheless the album's casual symmetry is impressive. Jozef van Wissem's lengthy "The Mirror of Eternal Light", in particular, seems to breeze across musical boundaries with an effortless fluency. As the piece opens, van Wissem patiently repeats a hypnotic, minimalist figure that sounds remarkably koto-like, before moving into a rippling torrent of notes that could have easily come from Blackshaw's own 12-string. Blackshaw himself submits "The Broken Hourglass" which, like all of his best work, sounds immediately accessible and yet somehow strangely alien, as his intricate playing grows further removed from standard blues and raga formula.

It is Swedish-born cellist Espvall, best known for her work with acid-folk group Espers, who delivers the collection's most surprising and dissonant work. Her solo piece "Home of Shadows and Whirlwinds" is filled with darting overtones and ominous, scraping drones to provide a dark reflection to Blackshaw's more sun-sparkled illuminations. The album is framed by Chieko Mori's two koto pieces that draw as much on Western tradition as Eastern, especially on the resonant "Spiral Wave", whose layered harmonies and rhythms achieve their own singular, almost rock-like propulsion. In the time since this collection's completion, Blackshaw and van Wissem have resumed their collaboration under the name Brethren of the Free Spirit. And judging from the brilliant The Garden of Forking Paths, we can only hope this is just the opening statement in what will prove to be a fertile, ongoing joint dialogue.