With his sixth album, the Brit returns to experimental electronic music.
One thing you can’t take away from James Blake: his early fragmented, deconstructed, minimalist tracks based on British bass music pointed far into the pop future of the 10s. With his debut album JAMES BLAKE in 2011, but especially with his EPs, which he recorded from 2009 onwards for labels such as Hemlock Recordings, R&S and Hessle Audio, the Briton became a prodigy of new electronic music.
Some of his colleagues also saw it that way. Blake then produced and/or wrote songs for superstars like Beyoncé, Frank Ocean, Kendrick Lamar, Jay-Z, Travis Scott and Rosalía, who also wanted a bit of his underground credibility. But his own albums went more and more in the direction of radio-friendly electronic pop that only conveyed a vague James Blake feeling, most recently on FRIENDS THAT BREAK YOUR HEART in 2021.
With his sixth album PLAYING ROBOTS INTO HEAVEN, Blake returns to his roots. He is experimenting again, with voices, with sounds, with song structures. “Tell Me,” for example, has more twists and turns than his last two albums combined. “Fall Back” is a flawless minimal house track. And fans have been waiting for three years for the regular release of the deconstructed soul track “He’s Been Wonderful”, which Joy Orbison first played on his BBC 1 radio show, and now it’s here. It seems the world of experimental electronic music has got James Blake back.