DIY, October 2021

NEWS

of James Blake - James Blake This trailblazer of a debut album from 2011 kickstarted a sound that went on to dominate pop music in the following years. Before long, Beyoncé, Kendrick and Frank were picking up the phone… Words: Will Richards.

T

he true legacy of an album can be judged by the amount of poor man’s rip-offs that followed desperately in its wake. As the well-documented saying goes, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

When James Blake’s self-titled album came out at the start of 2011, following a series of hype-building early singles and EPs, it pioneered a new hushed, intimate form of dubstep - often, and somewhat problematically, labelled ‘blubstep’ - that took hold to become the signature sound of alternative pop production in the decade that followed.

FACTS

Alongside a host of people aiming to replicate James’s unique sound, some of the world’s biggest pop stars came to the producer himself to add a touch of his signature magic to their albums in the years that followed. Across the second half of the 2010s, he worked on Frank Ocean’s Released: 4th February 2011 Key tracks: ‘Limit To Your Love’, ‘The Wilhelm ‘Blonde’, Beyoncé’s ‘Lemonade’, Travis Scream’, ‘I Never Learned To Share’ Scott’s ‘Astroworld’ and more of the Tell your mates: ‘James Blake’ gave the biggest albums around. Alongside a producer some famous admirers. Madonna solo career that continued to blossom, said his music was “the kind of thing that he became the go-to guy for cutting edge makes me jealous,” while Kanye West - in pop and rap, all stemming from the trail the third person, of course - called that he blazed on his debut. him “Kanye’s favourite artist”.

THE

Around the time of the album’s release, James highlighted the trailblazing nature of The xx’s debut album ‘xx’, released two years prior to his own debut - an album that made intimacy and minimalism cool again and emboldened him to present his icy productions to the world. While the influence of that album is undisputed, it was ‘James Blake’, however, that signalled a shift of the sound into the true mainstream.

On that debut record, the sample-heavy dubstep of the producer’s early EPs gave way to the first traditional songs of his career. Even today, when the heavily manipulated voice on opening track ‘Unluck’ gives way to ‘The Wilhelm Scream’’s stunning, soulful vocal, it’s a goosebump moment and a shock to the system; no one believed that THAT voice could come from the dubstep knob-twiddler and blurry face on its iconic cover.

20 DIYMAG.COM

The record’s greatest triumph is in its seamless blending of cuttingedge dubstep production and more traditional singer-songwriter tropes: something that was replicated over and over by others across the 2010s, and can especially be felt in the music of Billie Eilish, whose ‘When The Party’s Over’ James reinterpreted on his 2020 ‘Covers’ EP. Despite its frosty production and cool exterior, his debut’s most successful song is a cover of Feist’s ‘Limit To Your Love’, while the deluxe edition features a notorious, gorgeous piano version of Joni Mitchell classic ‘A Case Of You’.

By the end of the decade, the musician had moved far beyond the icy textures and shyness of ‘James Blake’ - 2019 album ‘Assume Form’ saw him embracing full-on, loved-up balladry - but the legacy of his debut album still casts a long shadow. This was the template of the 2010s in one perfect nugget. DIY