James Blake
I haven’t tried to disguise how I feel about the modern singer songwriter. I don’t hate the Joshua Radins, the Ingrid Michaelsons and the William Fitzsimmons’s's…’s that produce those saccharine, emotional, Scrubs soundtrack overtures which makes women weak at the knees. It’s hard to hate them, at least from a purely aesthetic standpoint, but by the same token it’s hard to love them with so little to grab hold of. Here and now though, we’ve come to a place where the winning voice of the singer-songwriter is being combined with something more interesting than an acoustic guitar.
James Blake – ‘Measurements’
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James Blake – ‘A Case of You’ (Joni Mitchell cover)
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The genrebending James Blake has a whole swathe of largely electronic EPs out that you’ll appreciate if you’re into diffused dubstep but what I really want to draw your attention to is his self titled full length. Wikipedia tells me it came out in February but I’m all but positive it came out earlier. Perhaps it was just prerelease bloghype I was seeing. Whatever the case, it’s a record you need to own. I mean it. Get on itunes and buy this record before your dad realises that you’ve still got his credit card hooked up to that thing.
I won’t attempt to talk too specifically about the record because Blake is one of those artists whose fanbase is so aggressively possessive that any attempts to label, classify or describe his music is met with venom. Read some of the comments left on his youtube videos and you’ll feel me.
Artists you need to know rn
| 1. 1300 |  |
316 |
| 2. Voidhood | |
259 | 3. jamesjamesjames | |
186 | 4. Zan | |
174 |
| 5. Sesame Girl | |
147 |
hurray, you finally came around!! your ears will be better for it. hands down my record of the year & it’s only may.
I bought this yesterday. ‘I Never Learnt To Share’ is my favourite; absolutely mindblowing!
And once again as I ponder whether or not to blog something, Sound Doctrine nips in.
Haha, sorry Garth. If I’d have known I would have vetoed this. It’s been in the drafts for a while, it need not have ever been! It’s some album though, huh.
The music blog scene’s a cutthroat world; I clearly need to learn that time is of the essence. There’s no time to decide how much I like something- just blog it!
My two cents… I don’t think people care who got in first on an artist they care about what you have to say about it. they may have already heard the name floating around a bunch of times but you may be the one that convinces them with your words to actually fork out the dollars to buy it & listen to it all the way through. be a wordsmith
when did he give up tennis?
Katie, I agree. In my writing this post now I’ve already missed the James Blake boat by months. I just can’t help but share what I’m stoked about. Post it Garth, he’s worth spreading.
Matt, it isn’t the same James Blake. There are two. One of them plays tennis and the other is this one. I’d be really interested if anyone could knows a third. That would be cooler than Chris Aynsley isn’t.
Just making sure that Matt knows this, they are not -repeat- they are not the same person. Matt?
hey matt – tommy is totally right. there are 2..
and.. IM A DICK
love gave
1. im pretty sure they are the same guy and he plays some tennis on spare weekends
2. Dave’s name is in capital letters. this is the first sign of an idiot! DAVE STEEL.
i was going to say that this is quite possibly my favourite of all your blogs thus far but it seems that there are more important things to discuss.
like that dave can’t even spell his name and that that should probably be the first sign of an idiot.
What is going on here?!?
This is a serious case of identity theft and i will hunt down and destroy whoever thought it would be funny to pretend to be me.
Also I’m pretty sure that was how I spell my name, even if it was with noobie capital letters.
Finally, I just want to make sure that Matt knows that these are two different people.
[...] bass. 2011 could even be the year of the double bass. James Blake utilises it better than anyone (see Measurements) and I’m pretty sure The Living End are going to make a massive comeback this year so the [...]
[...] during the early days as a good few folk thought he may have been cutting a little too close to James Blake stylistically but he seems to have found his feet as a legitimate artist unto himself. The first [...]