A&M
Released: February 7th 2011

James Blake is virtually peerless. This is not to say that his debut album is wholly original. On the contrary, it draws inspiration from a variety of sources. It is to mean that James Blake works solely on his own terms and isn’t afraid in the slightest to delight, surprise, or disappoint listeners. Blake’s growth has been nothing short of phenomenal and not even the most astute in the dubstep scene could have initially predicted anything so markedly diverse as this self-titled release to come from the 22-year-old producer. But 2010 was a definitive year for Blake. His CMYK EP propelled him to the forefront of the underground, while the piano-driven Klavierwerke hinted strongly at the artistic direction of his successive full-length.

Even from the album’s cover art you get a sense of the split personality of Blake’s music, encapsulated by the ghostly overlaying of his image. On ‘The Wilhelm Scream’, Blake’s voice is almost lost in a haze of distortion and pulsing sub-bass, haunting the back of your mind while he sings about yearning and loss: “I don’t know about my dreams / I don’t know about my dreaming anymore / All that I know is I’m falling, falling, falling - might as well fall in.” The track that follows, ‘I Never Learnt To Share’, builds around the sparseness of a simple drum kick and what sounds like an askew Ben Frost melody, along with the repetition of a two-line stanza: “My brother and my sister don’t speak to me / But I don’t blame them, I don’t blame them.” After 3 minutes and 41 seconds of barrenness, the song bursts into a mind-warping mental breakdown with a  drop of warbling bass.

Bon Iver-inspired tracks ‘Lindesfarne I’ and ‘II’ precede the beautiful lead-single ‘Limit To Your Love’, exhibiting the same vocoder/acoustic guitar dynamic that Justin Vernon employs on ‘Woods’. ‘Give Me My Month’ is a highlight of the record’s more vocally- driven and sonically-subdued second half and the album’s gentle close provides a pause for thought about where Blake will go next. Like 2010, this coming year will be a shaping one for Blake as he juggles his new role as an emerging mainstream artist with his already established life as an electronic producer.

Luke Morgan Britton