Reviews : James Blake : James Blake

James Blake

James Blake

[A&M/ Atlas; 2011]

8.9/10.0









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London producer and songwriter James Blake gathered immense acclaim during 2010 through the release of his three excellent EPs: The Bells Sketch, CMYK, and Klavierwerke. On these releases, the electronic prodigy displayed his creativity and talent for composing unconventional pop music. The material on the EPs rarely resembles any other contemporary music, though it has been coerced under the genre of dubstep because of Blake’s use of signature sounds of the movement: vocal samples that have been altered past the point of recognition, funky synths, and syncopated, hip-hop-based rhythms. Instead of creating a follow-up to his collection of EPs, Blake’s new self-entitled record refocuses his attention and experiments with his own vocal melodies and arrangements to produce an album that truly showcases why Blake is one of the most distinct and promising electronic acts today.

The album opens with “Unluck,” a minimal track that builds over itself, gradually adding layers of electronic organs over an erratic beat in-step to Blake’s heavily auto-tuned vocals. Here, we get the first of Blake’s vocal style in which he samples and manipulates his vocals. They sound fragmented, haunted, and fittingly off-beat with the music, reminiscent of Burial’s groundbreaking dub release, Untrue. And yet, the London producer manages to deliver them drenched with a sense of soulfulness and melancholy. This is an amazing feat considering the fact that there is typically very little room for raw emotion within the pristine world of digital music, but with his surprisingly organic production throughout the record, Blake proves that even electronic music can convey soul amongst the cold, stark superficiality of computer age production.

After the turbulence of the opening track, the record continues with a more vocally straightforward song, “The Wilhelm Scream,” displaying Blake’s precision and restraint in production and composition.  Often, Blake’s inherent lyrical minimalism causes his repeated words to become maxims, allowing certain phrases to act as an endless chorus throughout the entirety of a song. On “Wilhelm Scream,” he repeatedly sings,” I don’t know about my dreams/ I don’t know about my dreaming anymore/ all that I know is I’m falling, falling, falling.” His words eventually becoming meaningless as the song progresses becoming warped under a haze of white-noise distortion and pounding bass. Blake produces similar effects on “I Never Learnt to Share,” as he establishes the track with empty space and vocal harmonies continually crying, “My brother and my sisters don’t speak to me/But I don’t blame them.” Gradually, over the midst of vocal repetition, the song crescendos into a wobbly, funked-out banger, covering an immense amount of ground in under just five minutes.

The LP’s finest moment arrives when Blake reworks his own version of Feist’s “Limit to Your Love.” The cover is the most immediate and traditional track on the album, though it represents the essence of Blake’s minimal songwriting. On the track, James sets his vocals as the centerpiece next to only a simple piano melody, a beat, and a rattling sub bass. His use of silence after each verse creates a sense tension, forcing the listener to crave the next sound to come. Through Blake’s routine production, he turns Feist’s upbeat song into something far more tense and austere.

Coming off an incredibly successful collection of acclaimed EPs, James Blake further evaluates the use of space and silence to establish mood, creating a hauntingly soulful record that invites the listener in leaving them craving more and more as James Blake progresses. As Blake puts out more new material, is evident that he is at the top of his game and no on else is making music quite like him. And if this record is any indication, it is safe to say that the young London musician is going to have quite the year in 2011.