![]() He continued into 2017 with appearances on Jay-Z's 4:44 and Mount Kimbie's Love What Survives he also produced "Element" for Kendrick Lamar's DAMN. ![]() That year, Blake also contributed to Frank Ocean's Endless, Vince Staples' Prima Donna, and Travis Scott's Birds in the Trap Sing McKnight. The album peaked within the Top 40 of the Billboard 200 and topped the U.S. Recorded in England and at Rick Rubin's studio in Malibu, California, it included input from Bon Iver and Frank Ocean. A couple weeks later, The Colour in Anything, his third album, arrived with only a few hours' advance notice. He resurfaced in April 2016 with contributions to Beyoncé's Lemonade. It won that year's Mercury Prize, and Blake's songwriting was acknowledged when "Retrograde," one of the album's highlights, won an Ivor Novello Award in the category of Best Contemporary Song.Īpart from an Airhead collaboration and an EP on his 1-800 Dinosaur label, little was heard from Blake for three years. In April 2013, second album Overgrown appeared, featuring collaborations with Brian Eno and RZA. Blake spent much of 2012 working on his second album, releasing new work under the name Harmonimix, and performing less often as the new songs percolated. Titled James Blake, it made a major impression, and was eventually nominated for a Mercury Prize but lost to PJ Harvey's Let England Shake.īlake returned to Hemlock for the Order 12", then reverted to Atlas for Enough Thunder, a six-track EP with a Bon Iver collaboration and a cover of Joni Mitchell's "A Case of You." Yet another 12", Love What Happened Here, was out by the end of 2011. The last of the series - a cover of a song by Feist in which Blake's heartfelt vocal was placed front and center - served as a precursor to his first full-length, issued the following February. He received quite the endorsement when the heralded Soul Jazz label picked the track up for their Steppas' Delight 2 compilation that same year.īlake raised his profile every few months during 2010 - something of a breakout year for him - with a succession of warmly received 12" releases: The Bells Sketch (Hessle Audio, March), CMYK (R&S, June), Klavierwerke (R&S, October), and the single-sided Limit to Your Love (Atlas, November). Blake's R&B-sampling strain of dubstep first arrived in the form of his Air & Lack Thereof 12" on the Hemlock label in 2009. dubstep artists like Burial, Distance, and Skream and merged it with influences from textural R&B innovators like D'Angelo while developing his first original tracks. While still very young, he and his friends became fixated on electronic music, in particular the emerging dubstep sound that was beginning in London in the mid-2000s. ![]() He was classically trained in piano from a very young age and focused on musical studies throughout his education. ![]() Blake revisited his earlier, dubstep-influenced sound with 2023's Playing Robots Into Heaven.īorn James Blake Litherland in London in 1988, Blake was raised in a musical family. 2021 saw Blake issue his fifth long-player, Friends That Break Your Heart, which included features from SZA, JID, SwaVay, and Monica Martin. Commercial success worldwide came in the mid-2010s, with high chart placings (as well as critical praise) for 2016's The Colour in Anything and 2019's Assume Form. His second album, 2013's Overgrown, earned him the prestigious Mercury Prize. His renown continued to expand over the next several years, and he collaborated with pop icons like Beyoncé, Kendrick Lamar, and Bon Iver. ![]() He arrived in 2009 with a series of 12" singles and achieved both critical acclaim and worldwide fame following his self-titled 2011 album. Producer, singer, and songwriter James Blake is known for his unique style, which wraps aching, gently sung R&B vocals around the deep bass and minimal rhythmic elements of dubstep. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |