ALBUMPlaying Robots Into Heaven (Endel Focus Soundscape)James Blake
ALBUMPlaying Robots Into Heaven (Endel Chillout Soundscape)James Blake
ALBUMPlaying Robots Into HeavenJames Blake
ALBUMWind DownJames Blake & Endel
ALBUMFriends That Break Your Heart (Bonus)James Blake
ALBUMAssume Form (Deluxe)James Blake
ALBUMThe Colour in AnythingJames Blake
ALBUMOvergrownJames Blake
ALBUMJames BlakeJames Blake
James Blake's Popular Music Videos
Barefoot In The Park (feat. ROSALÍA)
James Blake
Can't Believe the Way We Flow
James Blake
Retrograde
James Blake
Wind Down (Endel Soundscape)
James Blake & Endel
feel away (feat. James Blake & Mount Kimbie)
slowthai
Limit To Your Love
James Blake
Mile High (feat. Metro Boomin & Travis Scott)
James Blake
Say What You Will
James Blake
Famous Last Words
James Blake
Big Hammer
James Blake
Artist Playlists
James Blake Essentials
Explore the prodigious producer’s brilliant, soulful catalogue.
James Blake: The Zane Lowe Interview
James Blake joins Zane Lowe for a conversation about his new album Playing Robots Into Heaven.
Inspired by James Blake
These electro/R&B artists followed in his minimalist footsteps.
James Blake: Influences
Meet the maverick artists who shaped the indie crooner's experimental style.
At Home With James Blake: The Playlist
“This isolation period is raising so many questions.”
The Lumineers' 2023 Tour Set List
Listen to the hits performed on their blockbuster tour.
James Blake: World Mental Health Day Interview
A frank, open-hearted and vital conversation to mark World Mental Health Day 2021.
About James Blake
Artist Biography
The underground bass-music scene has produced few superstars bigger or more unexpected than James Blake: in just a few short years, the London-born producer snuck out of the city's dankest basement clubs and refashioned himself as one of pop music’s most radiant singer-songwriters. Blake started in the late 2000s digging through dubstep’s dusty corners, crafting stuttering beats and sizzling synth lines out of what felt like pure shadow. His music could be strikingly minimalist: the title of his debut single, “Air & Lack Thereof”, could have doubled as the list of ingredients used to concoct it. But something shifted as he traded sampled a cappellas for his own voice. Held aloft by his airy, agile falsetto, his eponymous 2011 debut album soared. The Feist cover “Limit to Your Love” revealed the opposition at the heart of his music, his trembling high notes mirrored by an almost inaudibly deep bass throb. With subsequent albums Overgrown (2013) and The Colour in Anything (2016), Blake not only developed into one of pop's most introspective souls; he also became one of its most in-demand collaborators, writing and singing for an endless scroll of the rap and R&B elite, including Beyoncé, JAY-Z, Frank Ocean and Kendrick Lamar. It’s easy to see why so many would turn to him: between his wide-open baritone register, nuanced vocal textures and probing lyrics of ecstasy and doubt, he can make even the smallest song feel like a world unto itself. His universe grew again when he moved to Los Angeles and released 2019’s Assume Form, where Travis Scott, ROSALÍA, André 3000 and others joined him in making the most unexpectedly joyous album of his career—a tribute to his girlfriend, the actress Jameela Jamil, and, more importantly, a declaration of peace with his demons. But Blake has also proved that artistic evolution need not be linear or one-way, that there’s value in looping back and revisiting one’s origins. So on 2023’s Playing Robots Into Heaven he returned to the dance sounds at the root of his music—house, dubstep, trap, techno and blends of all the above—while imbuing them with his now-characteristic vocal melodies and tantalisingly bittersweet air. It’s the seemingly effortless sound of an artist flexing hard-won wisdom about his unique style—and taking a well-earned victory lap back through the club culture where he got his start. What he learned from the process, he told Apple Music, “was that the feeling of ‘Is this too easy?’ is actually a good feeling. It means you’re onto something, it means you are doing something right.”
Hometown
Enfield, London, England
Genre
Electronic
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