James Blake, Mt Kimbie, CD/SD

Really, the industry should have latched on to Woon more than Blake, yeah.

i think the industry has definitely latched on to woon as well

is woon shit? he seems to be. jamie lidell was better.

I really like Night Air, but not so much anything else.

I had assumed that Woon was a house producer with a guest vocalist. Only recently realised he's a songwriter. Who produced Night Air (Original Mix) though?

burial

I really like this Woon track

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dw1PTtu2dE

Night Air is pretty cool to, I like the Ramadanman remix best.

He's alright otherwise not massively my thing.

Woon produced Night Air Burial just added some flourishes here and there. Woon wanted Burial to do more but it didn't work out I don't think. He's more a random session type guy on this stuff and the album I think.

decent and fair review -
http://www.factmag.com/2011/02/04/james-blake-james-blake/

Can I just

how did he get signed to a label that gave us Spose's "I'm Awesome" and Godmack's "Cryin' Like A Bitch"? How is this going to work out in his favor at all?

Because he's awsome and makes people cry like a bitch?

^^

this album is too expensive on vinyl. fucking dubsteppers with their quintuple pack fetishes.

the actual title is 'Cryin' Like A Bitch!!' come on ppl these things are important

I think Blake himself has mentioned Bon Iver as an influence, I know Mount Kimbie do as well. So thats maybe where that comparison comes from and gets over stated.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_cePGP6lbU

Yurrrp thats the track I think of when Blakey talks about Bon Iver's influence on him.

"CMYK" and "Limit To Your Love" were two of my favourite tracks of 2010, but I couldn't stand to listen to more than three tracks from Blake's album. There was only one reason for that: the HORRIBLE vocals. But I'll try again, when I've summoned up enough nerve.

actually LOL'd when i heard 'Unluck' - so bad but am kinda curious about why make something sound like that. i can imagine Telefon Tel Aviv doing something a bit like it altho that would hopefully sound not quite as (intentionally) messy and less irritating vocals.

the sunday broadsheets were all giving this four stars and record of the week. but in a way that felt sortof like drake getting good reviews, like they were racing to "first" it

You know, if you listen to these songs not as like verse-chorus-verse songs, which they clearly are not, but as electronic songs with vocals used as another layer, as samples, really, the album is better. To me, at least. Because I think it's obvious he's not writing traditional "songs."

"I Never Learnt to Share" is surely some elaborate prank.

"Unluck" is actually quite interesting for about a minute.

Went to see Ramadanman the other night and he played a remix of "I Never Learnt to Share" that actually made it good. Hopefully it sees release

having not heard that Bon Iver song I thought the Lindisfarnes were just doing a Laurie Anderson thing. And I still kinda do, professed influences or not.

I like the P4K review - nice antidote to all the haterade itt.

they throw 9's around like candy these days...

Well someone has to.

mark decided before album was heard tho right?

If Blake really does cross over and become the pretty white male who introduces a broader audience to dubstep, with its foundations in Jamaican music and black musicians in South East London, he'll receive the tired, requisite backlash.

pretty sure dubstep has already gone through its "being introduced to a larger audience by white guys" phase

mark decided before album was heard tho right?

yeah when i saw it tweeted i was like "hang on i thought they'd already done that"

mark decided before album was heard tho right?

shhh, he'll chime in here if yr not careful

do ppl really think of dubstep as predominantly 'black' music? i mean i know it's been a while but it kind of started as grime's nerdy white cousin -- plus all the people i know who are into it are white, when i used to go to dubstep nights in bristol there were a lot of pasty white dudes, etc

smh

Yeah, that bit's very odd - it's not like Burial and Skream are underground, and then there's Kode9, Shackleton, Darkstar, Guido, Rusko, Horsepower Productions, Joy Orbison, Mount Kimbie, etc etc. Notwithstanding the dub reggae influence, I've never thought of it as predominately black music. And I can't see the James Blake album introducing anyone to dubstep.

a friend of mine told me the other day he sold one of james blake's first records on ebay for some hilariously large amount of money!

classy use of nerdy and pasty there thomp

One thing I don't get is the rhetoric about this album being some sort of pop move - compared to say Burial or Mount Kimbie it's a challenging listen with only "Limit to your love" as a proper crowd-pleaser. That's why I think the album is interesting, though Blake doesn't have the tunes or presence to pull off the stark minimalist torch song vibe he's aiming for.

pretty sure dubstep has already gone through its "being introduced to a larger audience by white guys" phase

― een, Wednesday, 9 February 2011 14:49 (36 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

assume he's talking about a different kind of larger audience, ie £50 man types rather than student clubbers, although it's not terribly well explained tbh

though Blake doesn't have the tunes or presence to pull off the stark minimalist torch song vibe he's aiming for.

― Daithi Lacha Flame (seandalai), Wednesday, February 9, 2011 10:23 AM

Definitely agree that Blake's minimalist torch songs fail pretty badly. I'm not sure if "Give Me My Month" and "Why Don't You Call Me?" are products of hubris or just a lack of self-knowledge.

well there is some truth to the fact that an 'urban' scene like dubstep is going to need a nice white figurehead to get it lots of attention from nice people who wouldnt go to fwd or dmz, and blake fills that niche nicely, but then dubstep has been a very mixed scene from day one, and the people you see at dubstep nights are 90% white and its been like that from day one more or less. so its a bit stupid to look at this in racial terms. plus geoff barrows comment about blake taking dubstep coffee table is absolutely stupid considering you could have said the exact same thing about portishead (except about hip hop).

assuming we're talking about the same tweet that's been everywhere else (how I wish we weren't etc) he said "pub singer" not "coffee table"

ah. even more off the mark then.

i. the music on album is gorgeous & really incredible
ii. doesn't sound anything like dubstep to me? up until the point where that (admittedly nagl) bass riff came in on like the fourth song it sounded a lot more like antony & the jonsons over really delicate disembodied drum stuff. last james blake thing i'd heard was bells sketch & this threw me totally off guard

Despite Geoff Barrows great musical contribution with Portishead, I don't take anything that man says in consideration.

I've been listening to this James Blake guy after not knowing he existed for an entire year. I think the album as a concept doesn't achieve what it wants to. I actually found the first song, "Unluck" to be quite unnerving for some odd reason. It was like I didn't know he wanted the song to be a traditional song with a few quirks or it is trying to be like typical abstract electronica.

However songs like "I Never Learnt To Share" did tug at my heart strings. Though the traditionalist in me wanting more lyrics, the fact he just repeated that line got me into it. I'm just struggling with what James Blake is trying to be with this album. However, tying him to dubstep for his debut album is lazy music writing (looking at the Pitchfork media review).

If anything this album is like post-r&b or deconstructionist r&b.

yeah i agree w/ that last part good way of putting it

flopson otm: Antony and the Johnsons is exactly the comparison that came to mind for me...as I said above, I just don't think Blake has the presence or the tunes to pull it off.

The weird thing about the Portishead beef is that the first Portishead album was much more accessible than "James Blake"; you couldn't use most of the tracks here as e.g. TV music without seriously disturbing the viewer.

yeah but afaik all GB said was that his singing sucks

lol grumpy geoff

do i have to fight for "coffee table" NOT being a pejorative here? this is re: portishead - and really it was weird to me that dummy did get used as tv music etc, cuz i thought beth's vocals there were pretty fkn anguished, def enough to "disturb" casual viewers.

"pub singer" isn't quite right, blake's vocals are worthless shit but in a v different way. "bedwetter" about sums it up. i can def see it as incidental music in a "gritty" "raw" bbc drama set in a bedsit or something

I think his singing/tone is fine, just the way he uses his voice can be a little irritating. But Geoff Barrow should not talk, Beth Gibbons on a bad day could get on your nerves as well.

With Portishead I guess there's some sort of circular effect: because they became very popular their music became more acceptable/accessible ("I know that song!"), but I assume their initial popularity must have rested on some amount of accessibility (I wasn't paying much attention at the time). As Lex says, Beth Gibbons' voice is anguished and piercing, though I guess the music is easier to get into (unlike Blake, they had tunes).