James Blake

The Britpop band Spiritualized’s NME’s album of the year for 1997 _Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space_ came elaborately packaged in the style of a pharmaceutical product, complete with information for consumption – 1 tablet 70 minutes, to be taken twice daily, best listened to when on substances, etc. If dubstep dj and producer James Blake’s self-titled debut album could be dispatched in a similarly instructional form, it should bare the following advice: Best listened to in a dark room. With good headphones. Alone.

After making waves with three strikingly different EPs last year, the James Blake bandwagon has been set in motion by his inclusion as runner-up in both the BBC’s Sound of 2011 list and the Critics Choice Award at the BRITs. A Mercury nomination will surely be on the cards come the summer for an experimental album that veers between the mainstream pop of ‘Limit to Your Love’ and sparse dubstep of the mournful ‘Why Don’t You Call Me’. Blake defies and defines genres and conventions in the similar manner to dubstep’s last crossover sensation Burial. Plaintive synthesizer and melancholic piano accompany minimalist songwriting, with Blake’s choosing to use his own voice over sampling.

The autotune audio processor – much maligned for its less than subtle use on the X-Factor and for basically enabling Jason DeRulo to have a career – is innovatively deployed throughout _James Blake_, continuing a recent trend for the device in leftfield music, from Vampire Weekend’s ‘California English’ to Bon Iver’s ‘Woods’. Indeed, Blake’s voice is comparable Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon or Anthony Heagarty’s beautifully impassioned falsettos. On ‘Lindesfarne I’ and ‘Lindesfarne II’: the former an acapella track that melts into the latter via a splash of gentle bass drum and guitar loops perfectly showcasing Blake’s bleak harmonies which illuminatingly manipulated by autotuning. In the Lindisfarne duo, Blake vocodes his voice in an artistic manner that contributes and defines to the album’s overriding coldness. This is no gimmick.

However James Blake is not a perfect album by any means. ‘I Mind’ and ‘To Care (Like You)’ are sketchy and don’t sound fully realised, and the latter half of the album lacks the taut shape of the first five songs. However at its strongest moments the album delivers beyond the height of his highly regarded EPs. ‘Wilhelms Scream’ coolly reverberates to a satisfying climax and the plain amazing ‘I Never Learnt to Share’ takes its sweet time to peak, but when it does Blake’s trademark dizzily blissful noise is well worth the wait, revealing more and more layers and depth, from the first to the fiftieth listen.

Fans of Mount Kimbie’s Crooks and Lovers and Burial’s rich and haunting discography should flock to Blake. On this album Blake has forged a thinking man’s dubstep; introspective, yearning and sparse, with Blake’s piano tinged electronica offers a quieter alternative to a lot of today’s decidedly club-heavy artists. Blake, is a truly unique artist, and the album proves it; it might even be the beginning of an era, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

For now, take yourself into a pitch black room and listen.