Review: James Blake - James Blake

Artist: James Blake
Title: James Blake
Format: Full-length
Year: 2011
Label: Interscope Records
Genre: Soulful Downtempo Electronica
Rating: 68 / 100


James Blake seems to have gained a lot of attention with his first EP CMYK, so much attention Interscope Records (Lady Gaga, No Doubt etc.) heard there was money to be earned. His first release on Interscope Records is this self-titled album. Where, on previous releases Blake mostly used samples of other people singing, he seemed to have grabbed the microphone himself this time, moving to a bit more Soul in his tracks.

Some people referred to CMYK as a dubstep album, everything that was dubstep about CMYK is now mostly gone. It's a more minmal approach, more piano, more vocal harmony, let's say: less Burial and Skream and a bit more Marvin Gaye. Is this a soul album? No definitely not, it's electronica, but it's electronica with soul. What? Yes, electronica with soul. As weird as the description sounds, so does the music. It's like a white Otis Redding on a vocoder, with Bon Iver on harmony vocals singing to glitching Massive Attack beats.

All these aforementioned artist create music soaking in emotion, to be fair, I can't hear much of that back in Blake's music. Soul? yes, emotion, passion? very little. Maybe that's the consequence of signing to a label like Inter$scope Re€ords, maybe it's just not what James Blake is here for. Blake makes minimal music, minimalistic soundwise, minmalistic emotion-wise. It's quite enjoyable, it really is, it is renewing, for me at least. Objectively speaking it's a qualitatively good, well-written record (especially comapared to the rest of the Inter$cope roster), but for me personally I prefer those three aforementioned artists. Mathematically speaking: (Blue Lines or Blood Bank) > James Blake.

Spread the love,

Selwin.