#299 James Blake - James Blake

From Pitchfork, haven't done that in ages! Plus, I did mostly like his 3 E P set from last year.

This is sure spare stuff, and I think it generally works in his favor. The basic formula is a vocal line or two, repeated again and again, in slightly different ways, distorted in different ways, sped, slowed, bent, auto-tuned, distorted, pitch-bent and rendered part of a glacially shifting landscape. Underneath the vocals, a large buzzy synth sound or two moves in and out, while a simple beat undergoes a series of breaks and variations, serving as an inconsistent, slightly broken, backbone. And that's it. These aren't really songs in any real sense, more studies of the vocal line, draped over digital soundscapes that evolve from minimistically spare to minimalistically rich, and back.

In some cases (especially on Wilhelm Scream and Lindesfarne 1 and 2) the effect is chilling and hypnotic, as the lack of macro-level variation lets you focus on the particular digital/production/sub-move moves Blake is making, and the sentiment of the repeated line gains force.

In other cases it doesn't work. Take I Never Learnt to Share, where the sentiment of the vocal line ("my brother and my sister don't speak to me! but I don't blame them!") falls flat, and the specific delivery is lazy, messy, dissonant and generally uninteresting.

Its a funny thing, the album that has basically one trick, especially when that one trick is being really single minded. It can either be consistent, atmospheric, singular, powerful, etc, or it can just be one-note and boring. This album flirts with both. At times I found it really annoying. And I don't think I like James Blake himself, who seems to think a bit much of himself. I put up with a lot of pretentiousness in music, but this album's pretentiousness is of a variety that I find particularly annoying. And yet, it worked on me often enough, wormed its way into my brain enough, that I think I overall liked it, at least enough for 3.5/5

[oops, out of order. For full obsessive record-keeping sake, I heard this before #300, wrote after #301]