Music Saturday: James Blake

Every week again... we're presenting another album of bands or singers we currently love. This week: James Blake - Overgrown

James Blake - © SOMA Magazine

James Blake Litherland, known as James Blake, is an English electronic music producer and singer-songwriter from London. He exploded onto the UK's dubstep scene in 2009 with a series of singles he recorded on his own while he was attending college at Goldsmiths, where he took a course in popular music.
His debut album was released in the United Kingdom in February 2011 for which he was nominated for the Mercury Music Prize in 2011.
His second album, Retrograde, was released on 11 February 2013. Again, he was nominated for the Mercury Music Prize.

Blake is a strong singer with a warm, expressive tenor, and while some of the vocals on his songs are straightforward expressions of his vocal timbre, more often his vocals are sampled. He uses his voice as if it's another instrument in the mix.










"The sounds of dub step can be felt in your body," Blake says."There's a physical satisfaction to that and it adds another dimension to what you're listening to. Producers like Mala, Loefah and the like know how to exploit that sub bass pressure; it can really send you to another place. My other big influence is Stevie Wonder, not least because he was so eclectic - a multi-instrumentalist with an unrivaled voice. For me it was really his voice at the end of the day. He's my desert island artist."




Track list:
1. Overgrown
2. I Am Sold
3. Life Around Here
4. Take A Fall For Me
5. Retrograde
6. DLM
7. Digital Lion
8. Voyeur
9. To The Last
10. Our Love Comes Back

Overgrown - James Blake (cover)