James Blake, Mt Kimbie, CD/SD

I think it's pretty obvious why Blake has generated so much hype vis a vis other post-dubsteppers:

pretty much every release has gone for a very specific sonic (and even conceptual) angle quite distinct from previous releases, so there's a sense of an emerging "narrative" in his work. You could call this "the Aphex Twin model".

This is like catnip for a lot of music critics, (a) because it makes reviewing any particular release more interesting in that you can do the whole "where has he come from, where is he going?" thing, and (b) more generally, that internal diversity makes of Blake's work its own "genre" which the critic can reflect on without reference to other producers, other music etc, so the auteurist emphasis of most music crit is not impeded by the "scenius" quotient habitually associated with dance music.

Nicolas Jaar has benefited from the same dynamic. The proportionately larger hype for Blake is mostly reflective of the fact that there's more critical goodwill towards the idea of an auteur emerging out of post-dubstep than out of post-minimal (which has already had a surfeit).

(compare/contrast with most reviews of individual Night Slugs releases which are usually half about the label in general, half about the specific release - reviewers are less inclined to abstract away from the context in which the specific artist is situated and so the spotlight is less sharply focused on the artist herself)

I think major labels (consciously or otherwise, but I'm willing to bet consciously) are very good at picking up on those signals, and can recognise when an artist is generating hype that is detachable from their scene-context and thereby more ripe for crossover. Whether or not Blake's label expected the album he gave it is a different question.

he's cute

i am not going to listen to this. calm. calm.

a cover version as your debut mainstream single is a dubious tactic already imo. to continue relying on them is indicative that MAYBE YOUR OWN COMPOSITIONS ARE PISS WEAK.

lol j.blake is s0 not the cutest post0dubstep artist

he has the bieber-esque pretty boy face, easy on the eyes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrVgCCUQ3fQ

i am not going to listen to this. calm. calm.

a cover version as your debut mainstream single is a dubious tactic already imo. to continue relying on them is indicative that MAYBE YOUR OWN COMPOSITIONS ARE PISS WEAK.

― lextasy refix (lex pretend), Wednesday, February 9, 2011 3:23 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

But the "cover song as your debut single" is a longstanding tradition in music; it's not like Blake is the first to do this. Yes, I think it's troubling, though.

huh what? i have...not noticed this at all? i mean his EPs have been "coherent" but...so are many electronic EPs? and i haven't noticed that with jaar, either. everything you've said about him you could say about girl unit or subeena.

Yes you could say this about Girl Unit in particular, but also Girl Unit is about as hyped as it's possible to be after only two releases (you don't win the ILX poll without a sh*tload of hype, frankly) so this really supports my point rather than contradicts it.

Re Jaar - listen to "A Time For Us", "WOUH", Marks and Angles, the edits, the stuff on Ines, the album - pretty much every one of these is in a markedly different style.

people are forgetting Blake has Britskool backing - that gives him all kinds of support other people wouldn't get, ensures he receives greater exposure and a visibility that inevitably leads to the press taking notice and people bothering to form opinions off the back of that hype. see also half the UK artists in the top 40 now seemingly (inc Jessie J, Katy B). that said a lot of people surely liked the CMYK EP before knowing anything about him (true in my case, and why i was quite surprised by LTYL).

but he's not really making dance music at all so why compare him to those (who also DJ but, crucially, DON'T sing) that do - massive difference.

Yeah, "WOUH" was my introduction to Jaar, and it sounds nothing like [/i]Space Is Only Noise[/i].

people are forgetting Blake has Britskool backing

what does this mean

blueski you mean Brit School as in, he went to the actual school? I thought that was Jamie Woon

Yeah Girl Unit is prob further on than James Blake was with hype at this kinda stage in their releases... I mean IRL and Wut where both massive inside and outside the scene. Way bigger than James Blakes two early anthems Sparing The Horse and the Stop What You're Doing remix, he's then gone onto release three EPs after those singles a fair few remixes and an album, he's just further on Girl Unit will catch up and do his thing in his own time. Sayin that I can only really see Girl Unit crossing further into electro scenes and other areas of dance rather than into indie like James Blake has. Nothing wrong with that of course. They're both just diffrent. I didn't expect this James Blake album to get this much attention to be honest. Its a pretty low key album. I really dig about half of it so far, gonna let it slowly sink in while people get angry on the internet about it lol

whoa, lex is going to love this -- i'm listening to that bbc interview and apparently "wilhelm's scream" is a cover of a song by his dad? the original is some awesome yacht rock.

yeah i'm mistaken sorry (not because i was confusing him with Woon, thought they both went) xposts.

Re Jaar - listen to "A Time For Us", "WOUH", Marks and Angles, the edits, the stuff on Ines, the album - pretty much every one of these is in a markedly different style.

i don't know if it's that marked tho - obviously the various singles are different, but not "conceptually", or in a way that's particularly pushed. the edits were a free giveaway that didn't seem representative of jaar or reflective of any "narrative" (and also weren't that good). inès was a label comp so had another different context. at no point did it ever cross my mind that "whoa, nicolas jaar has changed direction". the album is substantially different, but by now the hype you talk about has been established already.

brit school backing is a good point, i'd forgotten that - and i guess that also partially explains katy b breaking through instead of kyla or ny or miss fire or ahu or whoever.

oh ok brit school not a good point after all!

But the "cover song as your debut single" is a longstanding tradition in music; it's not like Blake is the first to do this

is it really that common? i was thinking about this when we covered blake and anna calvi on the jukebox and...i couldn't really think of any other examples!

also i think it's way more problematic if your schtick is that you're an auteur.

his rapid rise to prominence just reminds me of the BRIT alumni, albeit reflected by critical love/hate rather than actual hit songs

disagree the edits werent good. they were my intro and i kindof shelved them at first but came back after like wouh and time for us and in that context they seemed really good. I think there's a kindof palimpsest notion of *oeuvre* w/ both these guys tho, like ambient *in the context of his previous* house tracks or singersonwriter *ino the context of his previous* post dubstep stuff

which is HALF tim otm

It's doesn't happen every day, of course. But it happens. Limp Bizkit covering George Michael's "Faith" for their breakthrough hit?

woon hasn't had a "hit" really either.

i kind of want to make a list of all the artists in this scene who are RBMA alumni, actually. subeena, goldielocks, braiden, hudson mohawke, katy b, flying lotus...

flying lotus is in this scene?

isnt flying lotus kindof some post dilla thing?

ok, here's the original: http://www.amazon.com/Where-To-Turn/dp/B00169YIZC

also i think it's way more problematic if your schtick is that you're an auteur.

not really, if the nature of your auteurism is in sound design / sonic experimentalism.

The (charitable) reading of Blake's craft is that he's simply shifted the form of his "deconstruction" of pop material from sampling to cover versions, which themselves verge on "interpolations" anyway.

FlyLo has been adopted by the scene much like James Blake, Mount Kimbie, HudMo, etc... They're people that got a lot of love from within the scene but never really fit in, but they got made to feel at home and find their feet before anyone else really took notice so they often get lumped into dubstep now even when they don't make it or only loosly play with some of its ideas.

that wilhelm's scream orig is cuet

disagree the edits werent good. they were my intro and i kindof shelved them at first but came back after like wouh and time for us and in that context they seemed really good.

Stuff like "Come and Get It" sounds really awesome in the mix if you're not coming at it with expectations of "blow me away with your riddimatic expertise mr jaar".

I think there's a kindof palimpsest notion of *oeuvre* w/ both these guys tho, like ambient *in the context of his previous* house tracks or singersonwriter *ino the context of his previous* post dubstep stuff

This is a better way of putting what I was getting at.

Blakey did some re-recording of vocals/samples in a load of hsi early singles/EPs as well, they aint just samples some of the time. He's always been singing in his work he's just hiden it really well haha. Plus this really vocal side wasn't much of a suprise he's always talked about it and the first mix I ever heard from him back in 2009 started with his cover of Limit to your love. Its the first thing I ever heard from him I think.

i get that, but how does that palimpsest notion come into being? is it the critical narrative overlaid on it or is it in the music somehow? i lean towards the latter with jaar, because when i first heard him he really did feel very sui generis, but none of blake's EPs struck me as being all that separate from the many other EPs from his scene that constantly get released.

xp

seriously? to me the eps sounded both very different from everything else i was hearing and very distinct from each other.

Mixture of both. Artists aren't entirely naive about this kind of thing either, I suspect both Jaar and Blake have had "strategies" of sorts and this feeds through in the music, but then also in press releases, in interviews, etc.

Critics most of the time are suggestible: they will respond to and engage with those sorts of cues and it will shape what they read into the music.

i lean towards the latter with jaar, because when i first heard him he really did feel very sui generis

really? i could get that with the album but none of the previous stuff (as great as it is) couldn't easily be the work of other artists IMO. (haha weirdly inverse xpost reaction with Jordan re Blake)

is it the critical narrative overlaid on it or is it in the music somehow?

more generally it's basically impossible to disentangle these two things, though god knows we all do continue to try.

yeah i will admit that part of what i like abt jaar is how the whole thing hangs together, the link b/w the intimacy of his ambient and the slow human-sounding rhythms of some of his tracks. the feeling of being up-close to another body either dancing or

that interlude in keep me there w/ the just shagged conversation

really? i could get that with the album but none of the previous stuff (as great as it is) couldn't easily be the work of other artists IMO. (haha weirdly inverse xpost reaction with Jordan re Blake)

idk, it's not something specific i can put my finger on, more going by my automatic reactions to hearing blake and jaar last year. when i heard blake's EPs, i kind of nodded and thought "whatever" and filed them away with all the other non-standout electronic EPs i hear over the course of the year, never to really cross my mind again. (tbh i can't really recall a single damn thing about them.) when i first heard jaar i basically went into a bit of a rabbit hole and couldn't listen to anything else for half a week, and had to go and hunt down like everything he'd ever done, and basically got really really excited.

w/ blake i think its suppose to be like he's kindof played w/ all these post dubstep tropes, like pushing at the expanses of space, testing the plasticity until it ends up shaped more like something singersongwritery though still kindof made from all these other things. still yeah this feels like a small album. something that i could imagine being rediscovered as an oddity in a couple decades and really loved by ppl if it gets forgotten about, similar in that way at least to how i feel abt One World maybe but idk how useful that sort of speculation is to anyone

idk, it's not something specific i can put my finger on, more going by my automatic reactions to hearing blake and jaar last year. when i heard blake's EPs, i kind of nodded and thought "whatever" and filed them away with all the other non-standout electronic EPs i hear over the course of the year, never to really cross my mind again. (tbh i can't really recall a single damn thing about them.) when i first heard jaar i basically went into a bit of a rabbit hole and couldn't listen to anything else for half a week, and had to go and hunt down like everything he'd ever done, and basically got really really excited.

I feel pretty similar but I think these are qualitative rather than categorical distinctions.

If anything i'd say that what I like about jaar's work is that it doesn't to me feel sui generis, more like he's picking up on all these familiar threads and saying "there's still something interesting that can be done with these."

I actually like the concept of what Blake is doing now but feel it would be better done using another vocalist - and I suspect that if that had in fact been what he'd done no-one would bat an eyelid at the preponderance of cover versions.

dont go killing/killing the vibe/i cant take your lame style

lol

when i listened to this for the first time a few songs in i wondered if it was him singing but then decided it couldn't possibly be

the link b/w the intimacy of his ambient and the slow human-sounding rhythms of some of his tracks. the feeling of being up-close to another body either dancing or

written abt jaar but otm for jb too

lamp don't be more of an idiot than you absolutely have to be.

better than being simply tiresome

not worried about you thinking i'm tiresome but multiple posts that amount to apocryphal elvis costello quotations would have to be the worst way of making that point.

I learnt the word "palimpsest" par hasard earlier today, and there you all are slinging it around like it ain't no thing.

*humbled*

I hope he fires whomever is handling his U.S. distribution. Stopped in two different stores tonight on other errands and thought I would poke around for this. Neither of these major chains even had him listed in their database, let alone on the shelves - they couldn't even have ordered it! That major label doesn't seem to be helping over here.

Although maybe its only a digital deal in the U.S.?

the database at my store says it's out on CD and LP Feb 15 in the US.