James Blake - Enough Thunder EP

1. Once We All Agree
2. We Might Feel Unsound
3. Fall Creek Boys Choir (With Bon Iver)
4. A Case Of You
5. Not Long Now
6. Enough Thunder

Brand new six-track EP, an addendum of sorts to James Blake's widely-acclaimed debut album. Most notably 'Enough Thunder' contains his sought-after 'Fall Boys Creek' collaboration with Bon Iver, and his cover of Joni Mitchell's 'A Case Of You' recorded for Zane Lowe's Radio 1 show, but for us the best moment is found in the Footwork-inspired fusioneering of 'We Might Feel Unsound'. It also includes three other new songs 'Once We All Agree', 'Not Long Now' and 'Enough Thunder'...www.boomkat.com

James Blake - Order

1. Order
2. Pan

Given the hype surrounding his debut album, you could be forgiven for forgetting what a uniquely talented proposition James Blake is, and how powerful his work can be when aimed at the 'floor of DMZ rather than the housewives of Middle England. This 12" is just superb, bringing two instrumental, back-to-first-principals but still hugely inventive dubstep reductions with real balls to them 'Order' is a bruising, purist minimal half-stepper, off-kilter 808 hits nudging it forward and no doubt straight into the box of Mala and anyone else who still remembers how devastating a producer Blake can be. It's 'Pan', though, that's the real prize here: stalking, sub-heavy business for the the paranoiacs and occultists, tortured vocal textures that wouldn't sound out of place on a Raime or Haxan Cloak record peeling off a ruthlessly stripped groove that's reminiscent of early Shackleton and Mystikz productions but nonetheless possessed of its own unique presence...www.boomkat.com

James Blake - Klavierwerke EP

01. Klavierwerke
02. Tell Her Safe
03. I Only Know (What I Know Now)
04. Don't You Think I Do

Capping a very special year for James Blake, R&S drop the highly anticipated 'Klavierwerke', his most refined and sombre transmission to date. While his previous 12"s were defined by their unstable and unique sense of soul, these tracks have a more esoteric, modern classical air to them, clearly reflected in the monotone artwork and centre labels. It's like chamber music for the post-dubstep crowd, utilising lofty meditations on the techniques and feelings gleaned from the style, distilling their essence from a removed and considered standpoint. The title piece feels torn between wanting to be there, in the dance, and longing to be somewhere else entirely, sequestered in dancefloor solipsism, shutting out surroundings until rhythms are worn down to the faintest flickers of filtered drums creating a richly woven blanket in which to hide oneself from the world. 'Tell Her safe' is a little more optimistic, focussed on Blake's innate rhythmic intricacies and soul-burning chords, while 'I Only Known (What I Known Now)' slips back into that rarified sense of autumnal English melancholy, dappled with watery piano keys and deploying moments of reflective silence to stunning effect. Redressing the balance 'Don't You Think I Do' offers a spurt of tormented internal funk, making a brief but lasting closing statement. Held up against everyone else out there right now, this record is just essential...www.boomkat.com

James Blake - CMYK EP

01 CMYK
02 Footnotes
03 I'll Stay
04 Postpone

CMYK is only the third release from London electronic producer James Blake, who is only 21-- and the reason I keep saying "only" is because I get a little dumb thinking about how much ground he's covered in so few steps. His style is already recognizable: progressions of thick soul and jazz chords (a product of years of piano lessons), pitched-down and mangled vocals (often his own), and mid-tempo beats that balance synthesized sub-bass with handclaps, snaps, and other humanizing soundlets. But each of his releases-- last year's "Air & Lack Thereof" / "Sparing the Horses" single, February's The Bells Sketch EP, and now, CMYK EP-- also sounds like its own project, filled with private rules and concepts. He's writing his theme and his variations at the same time.

Blake isn't peerless, exactly. He's got collaborators and associates. (Untold and Mount Kimbie-- two artists he's done remixes for-- come to mind.) But Blake's peers are better known for the boundaries they're breaking down than the ones they're reinforcing, which is to say that Blake-- who appears to have a brain full of uncategorizable ideas-- is in a good position to do whatever tickles him. (The BBC DJ Gilles Peterson had him as a guest on his show last week, where he talked about his plans for a vocal-and-piano EP, and how he'd just had his mind pried open by seeing Joanna Newsom live. From any other contemporary electronic producer, I'd be surprised.)

CMYK is built from samples primarily from 90s R&B. Sometimes, they're incredibly obvious-- obvious like "I hope James Blake doesn't end up with legal fees" obvious. Other times, he crushes them beyond recognition. (We know from a Rising interview last month that Brandy is on there somewhere, and R. Kelly, too.)

The title track draws on both Kelis' "Caught Out There" and Aaliyah's "Are You That Somebody"-- songs that helped define the years they came out in by sounding two steps ahead of everything around them. This is canny for plenty of reasons, I think, but I'll be brief: Blake takes two R&B archetypes-- the Spurned Woman and the Secret Lover-- and imagines them in a back and forth. It's modern homage to old ideas. But if you know the songs already, it's also an exercise in warming up your cultural memory-- both tracks are over 10 years old but under 15, a kind of dead zone for nostalgia, not yet retro-ready but no longer current. He's not reminding us of something we've forgotten or telling us about something we never knew about, he's reanimating songs that are probably just at the edge of peoples' thoughts. (It's also a statement of allegiances: though Blake-- as Harmonimix-- has worked with Lil' Wayne's voice, he doesn't seem to be as interested in current American hip-hop and R&B as much as he is in picking up where Timbaland and the Neptunes left off at the end of the 1990s.)

But what makes the track isn't its samples, its the way Blake integrates them. Everything on CMYK is remarkably balanced: throwback sounds (a soul singer) next to contemporary ones (filtered synthesizer sweeps); deeply processed sounds (a vocoder) next to clean ones; moments of dissonance and digital noise next to a consonant progression of organ chords. One minute it's naked, the next it's obscure. Blake's songs-- three- and four-minute long pieces of electronic pop-- have no real space or time. They're not dance tracks. They're deeply retro and slightly futuristic-- which is to say they're contemporary. They're made on a home computer, but sound like the work of an animatronic band.

I keep thinking of the Wong Kar-wai movie 2046, ostensibly a love story with parallel narratives, one set in the 1950s, one set in 2046. The superficial surroundings of the past are different from the future, but at one point, two characters say the same exact thing: "Leave with me." The context, though, is different, and changing the context changes the meaning. And when the meaning is changed, communication breaks down. In both cases, the characters are somehow misunderstood, and the misunderstanding leads to heartbreak. James Blake plays in these gaps-- these modern gaps-- in ways that are both clever and sympathetic. "Do androids dream of electric sheep?" is an old question. Blake's trying to figure out how convincingly they sing gospel...www.pitchfork.com