James Blake

Second Street Jazz

The British dubstep producer releases a game-changing debut album

by Lukas Clark-Memler

This is so much more than a 22-year-old Londoner’s debut recording. This is the future of pop music

Pop music will eat itself. Through commoditization and planned obsolescence, the self-cannibalization of populist music is something that cannot be avoided. Thus, purveyors of pop must attempt to transcend the genre in order to avoid obscurity.

We are left with the pop paradox: artists must attempt to avoid the pop pigeonhole, while at the same time acknowledging the time-tested pop aesthetic.
Enter James Blake—twentysomething London-based producer, leading voice of the misguided, albeit intriguing, dubstep genre and runner-up in the BBC’s prestigious “Sound Of 2011” poll. Blake produced three critically acclaimed EPs in 2010 alone, and his eponymous debut has garnered

Merriweather Post Pavilion-levels of hype. The recent Goldsmith’s Art School graduate has sold out shows, graced the cover of international music magazines and been called the savior of pop. All this before the release of his debut LP.
A primary factor of Blake’s preternatural mystique is the inherent difficulty of pigeonholing the kid. How does one begin to define the enigma that is James Blake? To look forward, we must first look back; back to Blake’s unassuming rise, back to the early aughts. Back to the rise of the machines.

Following the backlash of the late ‘90s East London garage and grime scene, a new genre began seeping up from the basements of foreclosed apartment buildings. Combining gritty bass, obscure hip-hop samples and violent percussion, club frequenters and fringe-electronic enthusiasts alike reveled in this new style, known in peripheral vernacular as “dubstep.” In the years that followed, dubstep gained formidable buzz and began to shape the electronica blogosphere. Dubstep and the post-banger movement threatened to overthrow the conventionality and traditionalism of the self-aware legions of longhaired, gravelling rockers.

But because of expectation and anticipation (not to mention naive optimism, and even cynical opportunism) dubstep seemed to crumble under the weight of its own ambition. It left room for a new generation of clean-shaven bedroom producers to
take power.

James Blake perfectly captures this postmodern, digitalized zeitgeist. On his self-titled debut, Blake does not aim to disarm through aural aggression. Instead, this auteur focuses on minimalist deconstructionism along the lines of Brian Eno or John Cage. Blake has beaten the pop paradox by using silence as his main instrument.

On James Blake, fragile vocal lines weave between the nebulous shades of electronic instrumentation; soulful mourning is undercut with gentle waves of synthesized rapture; vertiginous guitar and off-kilter drum lines evoke seamless introspection. Blake creates a blank aural canvas for the listener to fill with their own hopes, dreams, fears and distant memories. The record is internalized to such an extent that it becomes difficult to distinguish Blake’s musings from the inferred sound your brain automatically fills into the music’s
many interstices.

Blake’s dynamic EPs saw the Londoner’s deftness behind the producer’s booth take the foreground, but on his debut LP, Blake’s vocals and songwriting skill are given center stage. The dub-inspired production is still there, but to a much lesser degree. Anguish, heartbreak and loss drip from Blake’s lips and the ebb and flow of his meticulous instrumentation provides the necessary undercurrent. What quickly becomes apparent on James Blake is its auteur’s perfectionism. Every synthesized riff is perfectly placed for maximum impact. Almost too hermetic in its execution, the record breathes a new sense of life and vigor on the skeletons of bygone genres. It’s actually an ironic contradiction—Blake utilizes many cold, sterile and generally soul-less production methods (autotune, vocodization) to create a rich, evocative and soulful sound.

To taxonomize Blake would be a trivial and belittling effort. The dubstep beats are present, but Blake has reached deep down into the genre and extracted long-buried emotions. There are resonant echoes of the halcyon days of psyche-rock, jungle house and UK garage, but this is not by any means a dubstep record. Like Dylan and folk, or Zeppelin and blues, for James Blake, dubstep is just a well-tread reference point. Blake actually favors the Motown stylings of Smokey Robinson and Peabo Bryson far more than contemporary electronic musicians. The heavy soul, R&B and gospel influence is heard throughout, shaping Blake’s cadence, rhythm and general aesthetic. Yet, ironically, it’s Blake’s penchant for these early twentieth century African American artists that gives the record a fresh feel while maintaining its familiar foundation.

The centerpiece, and lead single of the record, is Blake’s cover of Feist’s “Limit to Your Love,” a textbook example of the effective use of space and silence to create a sense of emotional heft. Blake’s effervescent croon and rustic piano jangle gives the already well-loved track a completely new direction. Elsewhere, the lyrical melodrama of “The Wilhelm Scream” transforms Blake’s minimalism into an arena-type spectacle. Featuring bare production, with cold, echoing tones intermittently ringing out through the hollow space, Blake bleeds onto the track, “I don’t know about my dreaming anymore/ All that I know is I’m falling, falling.” It’s easy to imagine the line sound-tracking Blake’s slow motion fall from a high-rise.

James Blake is modern, but firmly rooted in the past. It’s safe and familiar, but takes huge risks and sounds completely new. It’s sometimes impossibly beautiful and smooth, and at other times dissonant, cacophonous
and incomprehensible.

This is so much more than a 22-year-old Londoner’s debut recording. This is the future of pop music. Blake has crafted an album of quiet dynamism, and proven he’s more than just another producer. He’s a pioneer. James Blake is unlike anything we have ever heard before. He combines the soul of a Southern black gospel choir with a certain electronic minimalist flavor. Al Green meets Brian Eno. But in all fairness to Blake, there is no basis for comparison. What we are witnessing is the muted roar of progression, one soulful electronic track at a time.

 

James Blake is currently available from A&M / Atlas Records.

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