“I Never Learnt to Share” – James Blake
Posted: December 19, 2011 Filed under: 2010's | Tags: james blake, post dubstep 1 Comment » James Blake
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James BlakeStaying afloat the popularity boat, there doesn’t exist many tracks with lyrics two-lines long; yet James Blake manages it in “I Never Learnt to Share” without you even realising it. Through his incorporation of dubstep characteristics like shuddering bass-lines, slick yet disorientating tone shifts or drum sets derived from a sampler; Blake has been crowned one of the major pioneers through the evolving ‘post-dubstep’ scene. His voice resonates an effortless ability to traverse the vocal scale, as well as creating a soothing support to his works despite it often being filtered or distorted through an auto-tuner. Yet his manipulation of this vocal-distortion differs from it’s off-putting overuse in works by such artists as ‘Black Eyed Peas’ or ‘Akon’, as with Blake this alteration supplements his melody crafted either sung or instrumentally designed. His crisp piano pervades several contrastive tracks; such as the woeful “Give Me My Month” or his seriously emotive rendition of Joni Mitchell’s “A Case of You” in which he entirely makes his own. His transition from his initial dubstep-influenced productions to singer-songwriting is evident in how some of the public currently understand him; perceiving him primarily as a developer of piano-based, soul tracks. Yet talking with Pitchfork Media, Blake confides that this perspective of him is “not really who I am” as personally he sees music “purely as sound”, with his tracks definitive of who he is and not of a genre. It seems throughout his life that Blake has been chasing dubstep’s “intensity”, attempting to re-create the art made by such influences Mala or Coki. Yet listening back on these artists he found in his teens, he understands how he doesn’t “sound like them”, with his work differing off into this new ‘post-dubstep’ genre. Yet is this an advancement towards a refined new sound, or just a simpler craft? It can surely be debated whether Blake is redesigning these stylistics for the better, or merely reducing his beloved influences down to simple “bass and drums”, as an anonymous YouTuber insightfully states on a ‘Coki’ video.
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