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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) 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.
A deluge of mediocre EPs
The Bells Sketch (2010), CMYK (2010), Klavierwerke (2010),
Enough Thunder (2011) and Love What Happened Here (2011),
greatly diminished his artistic import.
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