Longitude and Latitude, a talk with Lawrence Blatt

Had a wonderful talk with Lawrence Blatt, about his new work Longitude and Latitude. Many instrumental artists use clever and exotic song titles to invite listeners to share their passion for adventure and unique places. Guitarist and composer Lawrence Blatt may be the first in history, however, to create an entire travelogue featuring song titles reflecting where the tunes were written, and – in line with the uniquely geographic theme of his latest album Longitudes and Latitudes – the exact latitude and longitude of each locale.

Accumulated over the course of his world travels over the past decade, the 15-track collection fulfills the independent artist’s mission to create a more upbeat, percussive sonic experience, featuring tracks written everywhere from Makawao, Hawaii (“Two Shades of Sunshine”) and Florence, Italy (“A Place In Your Heart”) to London (“Hyde Park Bench”), Huangshan, China (“Open Fields and Running Water”), Beerse, Belgium (“Morning in Beerse”) and his hometown of San Francisco (“Two Steps Down The Line”).In his liner notes, after a colorful explanation of how the early Greek explorers derived the idea of creating a gridded map of the world, Blatt moves past the science to make the emotional mission of his fifth album clear.