James Blake

James Blake | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (March 22, 2011)
• Original Release Date: 2011
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Universal Republic
• ASIN: B004CR5TD0
• In-Print Editions: Audio CD  |  Vinyl  |  MP3 Music
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (41 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,010 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)
  • #3 in Music > Dance & DJ > Big Beat
  • #8 in Music > Dance & DJ > Techno > General
  • #72 in Music > Dance & DJ > Electronica

Editorial Reviews

2011 debut album from the runner-up in the BBC's 'Sound Of 2011' poll. The London-based Dubstep artist's album reflects his famously eclectic style. Featuring a blend of electronic production and more traditional recording techniques, this fusion is most obvious on Feist cover, 'Limit To Your Love', which is also the album's first single. Blake is heavily influenced by artists such as The XX, and claims their success has made it easier for others to understand his music. Polydor.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

42 of 48 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars James Blake - The sound of 2011? February 8, 2011

By Red on Black TOP 500 REVIEWER

Format:MP3 Music

James Blake is a precocious talent and arrived with a large splash following his stunning cover of Feist's beautifully elegiac "Limit to your love" included here in all its slow burning glory. As an artist he is a disciple of the "less is more" school with this debut album characterized by a predominant sparsity in certain songs often stripping out layers of instrumentation in favour of voice, bass loops and synth (and in the case of Lindisfarne 1 a straight vocoderised acappella)

The album soulful opener "Unluck" does remind of Bon Iver's "Woods" from last years "Blood Bank EP" with its use of vocoder style vocals but ultimately differs with its deep clicks and an minimalist intensity. It is followed by "Wilhelm's scream" a song that has been distributed freely on music blogs and one that has spent so much time on my PC speakers it could claim squatting rights. The huge debt, which Blake owes to dubstep, is revealed and builds to a digital intensity around the continual refrain of the lines "I don't know about my love anymore/all I know is I'm falling". This should be the starting point for the curious listener. "I never learned to share" is again based around a repetitive lyric but with all sort of electronic shenanigans going on in the background almost suggesting a church like ambience.

Blake's debut is often an introspective and moody piece of work, which can make The XX look like the Beach Boys in the fun stakes. But this is not a criticism; with some songs drifting along at a snails pace it can lead you to think that they may have finished, yet it gives the album a Sinatra like "wee small hours" quality. This will mean that Blake's debut will primarily be a late night feast. It is an album, which evolves through its slow revealing beats, and has a deeply intricate core based around sonic landscapes and truly extraordinary songs. The glacial "To care (like you)" is a duet that feels that Blake is just about keeping the ball rolling. Yet with its beautiful quivering auto tuning and double micro beats it is a stellar highlight. The debt to Bon Iver re-emerges on the albums closer "Measurements" and it is a testimony to the youthful brilliance of Blake that he can evoke the atmosphere of 2008s best album "For Emma" and yet carve out a distinctive niche, which solely belongs to him. The liquidly percussive loops of Lindisfarne 2 could seem repetitive to some but sit down and really listen to its underpinning beauty.

Blake has been criticized in some quarters as the acceptable face of dubstep, yet as someone who loved and reviewed one of 2010 best albums Scuba's "Triangulation" an LP of Berlin influenced beats, I would argue that the genre is big enough to have many strings to its bow. There are also echoes here of great artists such as Lewis Taylor, David Sylvain, Anthony Hegarty, Burial and Panthu de Prince (the towering "I mind" would have sat beautifully on his recent "Black Noise" album"). I wager that Blake's debut will be a true Marmite album loved by some despised by others, thus a warning - if you seek music pumped full of adrenalin and sweaty excitement avoid this like the plague. On the other hand if you want an album by an artist taking on board and developing a range of influences, trying to do something different with them and largely succeeding then this if for you. Blake has created a template for new music in 2011 with this startling debut and for once the BBC New Year predictions turn out to bang on.

20 of 25 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A beautiful slow burn February 10, 2011

By Smoking Ace

Format:MP3 Music

I must confess that I'm not too familiar about the british musician James Blake. Unlike most here, I have not heard his other EPs, and before coming across him yesterday by mere chance through I-Tunes, I had never heard the name before. But after listening to this self titled debut 5 straight times, I now know that he's made one of the first great albums of 2011.

In the spirit of Bon Iver we are shown again here that Dub Step, can not only hold its ground as a genre, but it can also have a soul. And boy does James Blake give it a heartbreaking one. Much like Beck's Sea Change, Blake weaves underlying tapestries of melancholy into beauty while also concocting very creative beats. The music is overall somber, sad, yet haunting and beautiful; Blake's voice does resemble Bon Iver, but it is also unique. It has a very rich quality, that is at times bluesy ("I Never Learnt to Share") and other times soulful ("Unluck") Personally I think Blake has Iver pretty well matched.
The album is also very well produced. It has been a while since I've found a truly great headphones album, and James Blake's debut fills the void perfectly. There is nothing like coming home at night from a hard day of work/school, turning on "The Wilhelm Scream" And just slipping out into space while staring at the dark ceiling. The more I think about it, the more this album lingers with me. The production is great, the album's atmosphere is mesmerizing, and James Blake has become one of my new favorite artists. Pre Order this one immediatly, whether you like the genre or not, it's one that deserves everyone's attention.

Top Track: The Wilhelm Scream.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Blake's first full-length garners international praise but it doesn't quite live up to all the hype December 3, 2011

By olesibap

Format:MP3 Music

I immediately took issue with the album for the simple fact that the first couple of minutes of a few songs sounded very similar in terms of vocal style with a musician that I do happen to really like, Justin Vernon from Bon Iver fame. My husband and I unfairly dismissed it right away but my husband came back to it a week or two later and did some research on Blake and his previous releases and had somewhat of a change of heart. I, being the stubborn person I can be sometimes, had my mind made up about it. However, I eventually came around somewhat while listening to it on my MP3 player on my phone in the car.

The song that made me perk up and pay close attention was "I Never Learnt To Share." The crazy, frantic, and indescribably hypnotic nature of the beat and the funky-futuristic breakdown towards the end of the song really grabbed me in a way that I wasn't expecting. However, I still wasn't completely in love with the vocals as they sounded like a blatant rip-off of another vocalist I am a fan of, Antony Hegarty of Antony and the Johnsons.

But aside from this small disappointment, I decided to actually give the album a fighting chance and listen to it in its entirety. The album gets off to a nice and interesting start with "Unluck," a simple, melodic, piano-driven song with fairly simple vocals. There is the occasional break in the monotony with a strange, record-scratching effect interrupting every five seconds or so. And then the beat in the background comes more into the forefront, building and building, and it jumps back to the original pattern at the beginning and more effective, Auto-Tuned vocals appear.

The fourth and fifth tracks ("Lindisfarne I" and "Lindisfarne II") basically sounds like Blake was shamelessly copying tracks that he probably listened to repeatedly from Bon Iver's For Emma Forever Ago release. The only noticeable difference was that Blake used even more voice-effecting computer techniques for his vocals, to which I would say the popular quote "Too much of a good thing can sometimes be bad."

One of the few all-around great tracks on the record is the Feist cover "Limit To Your Love." The cover is actually done very well and one of the few instances where Blake's delicate, vocals seem to work to his advantage. It could easily compete with the original version and that is saying a lot because I am a huge fan of Feist. And again, Blake's brilliant producer skills come into play and lend a special touch to the original version. I never thought a hip-hop beat could make this Feist classic sound even better.

I think that Blake's self-titled debut is at least worth a listen for his talent as a producer alone. He, however, has a long way to go as far as learning to find his own distinctive style as a vocalist and as a songwriter. Maybe this is just the case of a brilliant producer who wants to do too much. Maybe he would be better off producing for artists who have that extra something that makes them "them". Or maybe Blake just needs a little more time to come into his own.