James Blake

English singer-songwriter James Blake debuted with a few experimental recordings of brainy stripped-down bedroom dubstep-soul fusion for heavily distorted vocals: the single Air and Lack Thereof (Hemlock, 2009), and the EPs The Bells Sketch (2010), CMYK (2010), with chopped-up vocals, and Klavierwerke (2010).

James Blake (Universal Republic, 2011) did more than simply fuse dubstep and soul: it invented a new style of singing that sounds like a skeletal, anemic remix of reggae and soul crooning, while at the same time also inventing a new form of arrangement, largely consisting in a slow murky palette of sounds cast inside a hollow desolate space. The lattice is surgically dissected and reassembled, deprived of energy by a mortal disease, the musical equivalent of a stillborn fetus.
Admittedly, not much happens in these songs. But that's precisely the point. Soul falsetto, shifting digital beats and synth effects pen the existential melancholy a` la Robert Wyatt of Unluck. That's a lively song by the standards of this album. The vocals only hints at a melody in pieces like The Wilhelm Scream, set in a disintegrating soundscape. He revels in both mutation and juxtaposition: the clipped and distorted vocal part of Lindisfarne I blossoms into the quasi-bossanova of Lindisfarne II; whereas To Care is about the eerie balance maintained between burbling electronica, warped vocals and skinny beats. One piece, I Mind goes even further, playing a magical trick: it sets in motion a transcendent nebula of muffled vocals and percussion that only for a few seconds lets out the simple ditty it contains. In a couple of places (the blues chant I Never Learnt To Share and the gospel chant Measurements) Blake performs a typical postmodernist operation of reinvention of a classic genre; but mostly his approach is so abstract that it does not relate easily to anything that came before him. The cover of Limit To Your Love feels out of context, since it is relatively conventional. The piano ballads Give Me My Month and Why Don't You Call Me introduce an artist who is much more interested in melody than the rest of this album and the previous EPs led one to believe.

The mediocre EPs Enough Thunder (2011) and Love What Happened Here (2011) diminished his artistic import.

James Blake abandoned the persona of the dubstep producer for the persona of the melodramatic singer on Overgrown (Atlas, 2013), a collection of skeletal soul-pop ballads for which the word "atmospheric" does not adequately represent the multifaceted nuances of the interpretation. He opens Overgrown in a tone that is, at the same time, fluid and oneiric, casual and transcendent, apathetic and tragic. And that psychological ambiguity remains the common denominator of all the songs. The sense of desolation is particularly strong in I Am Sold, set in motion by an agonizing croon and scattered piano notes, and not redeemed by the languid syncopated beat and the tiny periodic dissonances that come next. The single Retrograde is a melismatic gospel drenched in a dizzying electronic arrangement, a method akin to Robert Wyatt's, and still the melody, that could be anthemic and touching, is restrained to the point that the main refrain is barely whispered at the end. His gliding vocal style is wed to a ticking clock in Life Round Here for maximum estrangement. Blake plunges into a black hole of introversion in the piano elegy DLM, and ends the album on a bit too somnolent and purring tone with Our Love Comes Back. A bit more energetic is Digital Lion, that weds the resigned quiet of ambient music with the looping turbulence of industrial music: it would be a chill-out intermezzo on someone else's album, but here it feels like a hysterical detour.

James Blake became almost a household name when he helped Beyonce write two songs.

The sprawling, 17-song The Colour in Anything (Universal, 2016), half produced by Rich Rubin, tests the patience of the listener. His falsetto still crafts the best introverted chants around, but too many of these songs sound identical. There is only one Radio Silence, a lyrical lament that evokes Robert Wyatt's angst. There is only one stately Waves Know Shores, where his crooning sounds like the most dejected Bruce Springsteen and a multi-tracked trumpet provides an "orchestral" counterpoint. There is only one truly magical production skit, when Blake interrupts Points for a minute of variations on the words "no longer" (although followed by an annoying engine noise). One derelict piano ballad, like Love Me In Whatever Way, could be ok, but the format becomes just plain boring in F.O.R.E.V.E.R. (yet another take on Joni Mitchell), and the third one, The Colour In Anything, becomes pure torture. One desolate dirge in ghostly soundscape, like the plantation song My Willing Heart (with Frank Ocean), could be ok, but I Need A Forest Fire (with Bon Iver) is plain unimaginative, and the a-cappella Meet You In The Maze has weird backing vocals (another collaboration with Bon Iver's Vernon). There is only one beat that is truly innovative, the sleigh-bells of Modern Soul, whereas Timeless and Put That Away And Talk To Me have childish soundscapes that detract from, instead of augmenting, the vocals. Things get even worse when Blake realizes that he is whining nonstop and tries to get propulsive with I Hope My Life, Choose Me and Two Men Down.

After releasing a cover of Don McLean's Vincent (2017), Blake released two singles that are easily more creative than any song on The Colour in Anything: Don't Miss It (2018), one of his best performances as a singer, and especially the cubistic game of If the Car Beside You Moves Ahead (2018).

Assume Form (2019) was mostly filler.