James Blake
“Death of Love”
Good Boy Records
I love when you feel like you’re in the room where the music was made.
That's what separates great electronic music from good electronic music. Instead of hearing sterile, machine-made sound inside of a vacuum, you can actually feel the beat bounce off the walls and into your ears. It’s splendid magic -- when in the hands of the right talent.
That’s been the strength of the forever moody James Blake for a long, long time. His new album, Trying Times, is due out on Friday, March 13 via Good Boy Records. Our first taste is “Death of Love.” Seems like we’ve got a dark record en route from Blake.
The room where “Death of Love” is made sounds like the vaguely warm echo of a massive cathedral. There’s undoubtedly a sense of going to church here -- perhaps it’s the haunting choir that ushers you into the house of worship. Over a slippery beat, Blake layers his voice over and over again until you’re twisted up in the vocals. Maybe it’s a funeral procession we’re listening to.
In a press release, the album was described as how it feels to move through “the comfort of loving and being loved while recognising how fragile that safety can feel when global anxieties and private doubts pull in opposing directions.”
I don’t expect this to be a bright and poppy album. This is James Blake digging into his bag of feelings (and production tricks) to create an album for these “Trying Times.”
