When you're one of the most prominent faces in a newly-dubbed backlash heavy genre, you better make damn sure that your album can stand up to all the scrutiny. Because if it can't, you'll be ushered out the door as quickly as you came. What started with the dubstep-meets-house explorations of Burial now lead to the fractured dubstep-meets-soul skittering of James Blake. And the path tread from those intial offerings to this latest album by Blake seem worlds apart, in technique and form. Blake combines the buried beats and broken and stop-start melodies that Burial brought into mainstream indie circles and constructs precise bits of pop-soul from the pieces. He takes the basic concepts of what came before and refines it and allows the strangled warmth to come out, though at best it's a sterile warmth. You're kept back a bit from the man and music. Though I imagine this has more to do with the nature of the music than to any predisposed isloation intended by Blake, though I'm sure a bit is intentional.
On his self-titled debut Blake builds upon his already strong 12" releases and EP's and comes away with an album of sterilic beauty and uncommon aesthetic wonder. His voice still sits at the center of these songs, even though it may be processed and chopped up until it barely registers as vocals anymore. But even through this aesthetic fog, Blake pulls off the emotional heft needed for these songs to register with the listener on a conscious level, and sometimes on a not-so-conscious level. Songs like "The Wilhelm Scream", with its warbling skeletal synths and barely recognizable falsetto vocals, and album closer "Measurements" provide the musical framework which the album hangs upon. It's mysterious without being inpenetrable and distant without being unwelcoming. These and other sets of musical contradictions play at the heart of Blake's music. Blake is wanting us to give him our blessing but is reticent in allowing our full acces to his creative process. And in this time of musical opaqueness, a bit of mystery and active participation on the part of the listener comes as a welcome and pleasant surprise.
Tracklisting:
01. Unluck
02. The Wilhelm Scream (listen to the mp3 below)
03. I Never Learnt to Share
04. Lindesfarne I
05. Lindesfarne II
06. Limit to Your Love
07. Give Me My Month
08. To Care (Like You)
09. Why Don’t You Call Me?
10. I Mind
11. Measurements
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