Thursday, February 10, 2011

JAMES BLAKE: COMPOSER/ SINGER

James Blake:  Composer/Singer
You can clearly see this is not the James Blake who is the10th ranked tennis player in the world, or one of People’s Magazine Sexiest Man Alive.

 This is James Blake from the UK, and the BBC’s Sound 2011, #2 most promising new artist of the year.
 His genre is Dubstep (tightly coiled productions with overwhelming bass lines and reverberant drum patterns, clipped samples, and occasional vocals per Wikipedia), Minimal Ambient, (also From Wikipedia, Ambient music is a genre that focuses largely on timbral characteristics of sounds, often organized or performed evoke an "atmospheric”, “visual" or "unobtrusive" quality), and Electronic.
 These are genre terms we will be hearing more of if the BBC is correct.  We have electronic dance music, but this is not really danceable.  It is more the type of music you listen to while smoking a joint in a smoke filled room with friends sprawled about, and maybe a blue light. Warning; do not listen to this type of music while you are alone in the dark.
James started out playing the piano by the age 5/6 and knew early on music was his forté.  You can hear the piano on most of tracks, but you also hear auto tuned screechy, and eerie vocals. Very seldom do you hear  melodious soothing sounds from him. It is hard to decide if he can really sing, or if it's his techno savvy that you hear. 
The electric club music is what he enjoys, bringing the music to his fans. He put out four EP’s to get attention and raise his profile in 2010, before he released his first Solo Album out February 7, 2011 with arrangements like:  “The Wilhelm Scream”, “I Never Learnt to Share”, and the most popular “Limit To Your Love”, which he does sing a few words, and “Don’t You Think I do”, which starts out with sounds like the cat trying to puke up a hairball, techno enhanced that is.
Much of it seems like overproduced sound effects, sometime loud, that have been described as haunting, and uplifting, if that’s possible in the same song. Others have described it as melodic nonsense, but melodic is not really part of this genre. 
If at all curious check him out, the promised future of music.
http://www.facebook.com/jamesblakemusic?v=app_7146470109

No comments:

Post a Comment