James Blake

L

Loki

Well-known member
He reminds me of Shuggie Otis... the voice and the drums...

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Confession: I haven't read all the posts and this is such a blindingly obvious comparison that I'm worrying that someone's already said it... If they have, then I agree...:D
 
Corpsey

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Prefer that Shuggie Otis tune to anything recent I've heard by James Blake. I'm not saying there's nothing there cos a lot of people who's musical opinions I really respect are going mad over him, and I've liked a few of his tunes quite a bit ('CMYK' and 'Air And Lack Thereof' particularly), but as far as his singing goes I suppose I just don't really like his voice. The funny thing is with James Blake, it seems to me that his vocals water down his production, rather than the other way around. He isn't responsible for his own hype of course, and I think part of my opinion of his music is formed as a reaction against that hype, so I'm tending towards seeing the negative.
 
Corpsey

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Slothrop said:
The IDM fear is about the replacement of raw, exciting, mindbending music with something that is quite clever and uses all the right signifiers of good taste (while conspicuously avoiding anything that might be seen as cheesy) and does some vaguely innovative stuff, but without ever feeling like it matters (there's an interesting discussion to be had about if and why a radical step forward in a scene with a reasonably well developed musical language feels so much more exciting than another eclectic mutation in a scene full of unrelated eclectic mutations) and without ever really being genuinely exciting.
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Just reading through this thread, wondering how the fuck it's got to 20 pages, and it's actually quite interesting. This above quote made me wonder if the feeling (for some) of a lot of this internet hyped music not really 'mattering' is something to do with how it is tied in with the internet? This might be my social isolation talking but a lot of the people I know who are into this kind of music are really internet friends - there's a sense of a community of people into electronic music to this extent scattered all over the place, brought together on forums/twitter etc. I mean, I don't go clubbing to this kind of stuff much anymore, I don't really hang out with people that listen to it. So I feel I have a warped perspective on it (though everybody does, positively or negatively). And a lot of supposedly exciting and experimental music seems really to be an incremental evolution of something that everybody online is obsessively watching, waiting for those evolutions. Most of the time the really exciting things are happening off radar, and come as more of a surprise than the supposedly leftfield/experimental fringes of nerdy genres. I think with a lot of internet consumed/produced music, there's a mania for generic progression and experimentation which adversely effects it capacity to experiment by letting go, by being functionalist.

Dunno if this makes any sense, just Slothrop set my mind off. :confused:
 
outraygeous

outraygeous

Well-known member
Corpsey said:
Just reading through this thread, wondering how the fuck it's got to 20 pages, and it's actually quite interesting. This above quote made me wonder if the feeling (for some) of a lot of this internet hyped music not really 'mattering' is something to do with how it is tied in with the internet? This might be my social isolation talking but a lot of the people I know who are into this kind of music are really internet friends - there's a sense of a community of people into electronic music to this extent scattered all over the place, brought together on forums/twitter etc. I mean, I don't go clubbing to this kind of stuff much anymore, I don't really hang out with people that listen to it. So I feel I have a warped perspective on it (though everybody does, positively or negatively). And a lot of supposedly exciting and experimental music seems really to be an incremental evolution of something that everybody online is obsessively watching, waiting for those evolutions. Most of the time the really exciting things are happening off radar, and come as more of a surprise than the supposedly leftfield/experimental fringes of nerdy genres. I think with a lot of internet consumed/produced music, there's a mania for generic progression and experimentation which adversely effects it capacity to experiment by letting go, by being functionalist.

Dunno if this makes any sense, just Slothrop set my mind off. :confused:
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I think you have written what I have been thinking for the last 6 months or so. I have turned my back on twitter and use this forum for new music discovery. People in music batter twitter but the real world doesnt happen on twitter. Its weird because you can straddle both worlds at a point where you can look in on internet hype and what is actually really going on in the real world.

More fuel to the confusion fire

Who fancies a pint?
 
you

you

Well-known member
guys, anyone care to point me in the direction of his A-Z list he did for radio 1 tonight. I'd just like the list as reference really some nice stuff in there.
 
pattycakes_

pattycakes_

Can turn naughty
sorry for being too lazy to read the whole thread but can someone point me in the direction of one thing this guy has done that can help me understand what the big deal is? ive listened to a few things at random and nothing has really moved me in any way yet.
 
G

gumdrops

Well-known member
wilhelms scream is the best thing hes done to date imo.

though air and lack thereof - if you want instrumental stuff - is prob second. i never liked him for ages to be honest - always thought there was something a bit weedy about his tracks, but he has his moments. the eps are quite variable i think though. his stuff rarely feels properly finished to me.

i feel similar to outraygeous, though i find if im not on the net, i wouldnt know what is going on in music. half the time though ive realised that ppl on the net only seem to be into one sort of thing while i like another, though this is prob as much to do with personal taste as much as internet trends. maybe i should just find diff forums. or listen to the radio more rather than internet comments/recommendations. most of the stuff on the net related to 'bass music' (hate that term with a passion but hey) seems geared very much towards a certain aesthetic/sound which isnt really my thing. might be avant garde (or somehow FEEL avant garde) but it seems too trendy.
 
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pattycakes_

pattycakes_

Can turn naughty
damn, wilhelm's scream is a less than subtle attempt at being arthur russell (missing out the actual quality) and air and lack thereof is not really anything worth thinking of a desscription for.


filed under forgettable

:rolleyes:
 
P

paolo

Mechanical phantoms
i found the album didn't quite live up to my expectations but a good listen nonetheless. Be interesting to see where he goes from here
 
Slothrop

Slothrop

Tight but Polite
Corpsey said:
Just reading through this thread, wondering how the fuck it's got to 20 pages, and it's actually quite interesting. This above quote made me wonder if the feeling (for some) of a lot of this internet hyped music not really 'mattering' is something to do with how it is tied in with the internet? This might be my social isolation talking but a lot of the people I know who are into this kind of music are really internet friends - there's a sense of a community of people into electronic music to this extent scattered all over the place, brought together on forums/twitter etc. I mean, I don't go clubbing to this kind of stuff much anymore, I don't really hang out with people that listen to it. So I feel I have a warped perspective on it (though everybody does, positively or negatively). And a lot of supposedly exciting and experimental music seems really to be an incremental evolution of something that everybody online is obsessively watching, waiting for those evolutions. Most of the time the really exciting things are happening off radar, and come as more of a surprise than the supposedly leftfield/experimental fringes of nerdy genres. I think with a lot of internet consumed/produced music, there's a mania for generic progression and experimentation which adversely effects it capacity to experiment by letting go, by being functionalist.
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But how much is this actually 'internet consumed/produced music' and how much does it just seem that way because you personally find out about it via the internet? I'm guessing that if you stopped paying your broadband bill and started going to FWD, Night Slugs etc regularly you'd have a different perspective? I dunno, it seems like a bit of a trend (cf Blissblog, passim) to proclaim that scenes have lost some of their visceral energy or whatever once you've stopped being personally involved in them on a daily basis, which is rather a chicken-or-egg argument.

Having said that, I think that on purely musical terms a lot of the wonky stuff that's coming out would have been good and innovative but not particularly shocking if it had come out on Warp on Ninja Tune ten years ago. And people are actually more receptive to it now because there isn't a big obvious fuckoff pop modernist thing like UKG or grime going on, and becase (partly as a consequence of this) it does have a scene with some energy around it...
 
G

gumdrops

Well-known member
this guy sounds really bad live. saw him on jools holland the other night. quite terrible. though i liked how he translated his production to a live setup. that was well done.
 
S

SecondLine

Well-known member
continuum said:
at Great American Music Hall San Francisco

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Saw him do anti war dub to an empty room at Goldsmiths SU two years ago when I had no idea who he was. I remember thinking "well this is a classic Goldsmiths conceit, taking something great and completely missing the point".

Having said that I've since enjoyed a lot of James Blake's stuff and I think he's quite a talent.
 
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