Like James Blake, though, Overgrown repays repeated listening. As with the first album, there is a simultaneous feeling that the tracks are both congested and unfinished, and that incompleteness—the sketchy melodies, the half-hooks, the repeated lines that play like clues to some emotional event never disclosed in the songs themselves—may. Overgrown won the 2013 Barclaycard Mercury Prize, which is an annual award for the best album from the UK and Ireland. The judges called it 'an inventive, poetic and poignant album of great beauty.' 'Well, I lost a bet on the other hand, I should thank a couple of people' Blake said upon receiving the honor. James Blake Articles and Media. A crazed Mac DeMarco doc, a full James Blake live set, a short film starring the late footwork pioneer DJ Rashad,.
Overgrown – James Blake – album review. James Blake is not unique in his predilection for bending, chopping, and fracturing melodies until all that remains is a sonic mosaic of meticulously arranged, stained-glass shards. James Blake Overgrown Rar Aplikasi Cetak Foto Acef Weiss Ds1-mk3 Collection On Sale 3m Tru Def Tpeditor Fanuc Donwload Narnia Hindi Dubbed Torrend Download Obd2 Diagnostic Software Tech Tools Installer Online Department Of Labour Delta Force 1 Download Full Version.
James Blake is not unique in his predilection for bending, chopping, and fracturing melodies until all that remains is a sonic mosaic of meticulously arranged, stained-glass shards. He is also not the first vocalist possessed of such soulful affect that his album cover image of a skinny white kid in a trench coat induces double takes. What makes Blake truly remarkable is the tension of those devices presented in tandem.
On 2010’s EP’s The Bells Sketch, CMYK, and Klavierwerke, the London-based producer employed alien, forward-looking sounds to achieve an uncanny familiarity, warping his own voice and the sampled vocals of R&B divas around asymmetrical sculptures of wonky sub-bass, twinkling jazz percussion, and glitchy synth squelches. On his self-titled debut full-length, Blake straightened out those kinks into sinewy slow jams, letting his full-throated croon take center stage while maintaining hints of the eclectic knob-twiddling that made him so beguiling to EDM and dubstep crowds in the first place.
This simplification continues on Overgrown where Blake ventures even further from his experimental electronic roots into more traditional song structures that adhere to R&B and gospel tenets. The acutely pitch-shifted vocals, fragmented melodic loops, and disintegrating dance floor rhythms that were prominent in Blake’s early career have moved from focal points to mere embellishments. It takes some getting used to; the transformation is akin to a cubist painter dropping the angles and edges for a deep dive into aesthetic realism.
Fortunately, the subject matter remains unchanged — Overgrown explores the delicate, inner workings of Blake’s emotional core, a compass that’s calibrated along the wobbly axes of longing, loneliness, and estrangement. Understated, elegant, and aglow like a candescent stove burner turned up to its lowest setting, Overgrown takes time to heat up (several listens at least) but once the temperature gets there, it’s an inviting place to invest your hours.
There’s a dead of the night stillness and somnambulant intimacy to Overgrown that befits intent, nocturnal listening. The title track relies on little more than a pattering of cymbal taps, a soft organ, and Blake’s miraculous voice for color, its clean arrangement and spacing acting as an enormous canvas for the song’s subdued blue hues and muted sepia tones. It’s dark and quietly sultry without ever feeling unctuous.
First single “Retrograde” has gorgeously subtle chord changes that are underscored by Blake’s little inflections and vocal runs. His softly hummed intro is looped into a backing melody that steadily builds until a whining synth siren launches it into the stratosphere — it’s as close as Overgrown gets to the eye-popping climaxes of precursors “The Wilhelm Scream” or “Postpone.” Blake is less enamored with being an aural auteur and boundary pusher, instead focusing on bare melody and whisper-thin texture to evoke a broad range of emotions.
Blake’s lyrics are often as sparse and impressionistic as his sound — there’s frustratingly little to grasp onto in Overgrown. You rely less on the actual imagery evoked by Blake’s words and more on their repetition, context, and nuanced phrasing to tease out the feelings behind them. On “I Am Sold” the recurring line “We lay nocturnal/ Speculate how we feel” lingers uneasily over a creeping bass line, but on the glowing album closer, nearly the same thoughts (“Our love comes back/ In the middle of the night”) exude acceptance and hushed contentment.
“Take A Fall For Me’s” murky piano dirge feels weighed down by guest star RZA’s stilted, lackadaisical rhymes (“Candle light dinners of fish and chips with vinegar/ With a glass of cold stout or old wine or something similar”) which feel more like a clichéd caricature of British life than heartfelt storytelling. It shows how delicate the balance is in Blake’s artistry — insert a guest rapper and the wispy atmosphere becomes little more than an old Wu-Tang motif, stoned out and stripped of its teeth.
More often than not though, Blake gets the subtleties right. On the title track, Blake likens himself to “a stone on the shore” and a “long door frame in a wall,” carefully marking his place in a dissolving love affair with images of insignificance and vacuity. Blake urges a lover to stay away from a bad relationship on the finely woven “DLM”, but there’s a shocking twist — “Don’t let me hurt you” he begs in a broken voice. He’s imploring her to seek protection from himself, as if his own desires are something he’s incapable of halting. It’s a provocative twist on the “don’t go to him” pleas that usually dominate R&B songs.
Blake isn’t above libidinous urges either. “Voyeur” features the maniacal, endlessly repeated line “And her mind was on me” — a moaned mantra whose prurient impulse is only augmented by cowbell, slinky bass tones, and the song’s suggestive title. The fact that Blake chose to include “Voyeur” on Overgrown instead of the more trance-inducing, climactic “dub” version (whose drop is ridiculous, by the way) is evidence that he’s more interested in mood crafting than reaching a sustained high.
Even “Voyeur” and Brian Eno-produced “Digital Lion” (which are about as close as Blake gets to a dance floor) are fairly straightforward, never truly duplicating the extra-terrestrial, frenzied lurch that Blake showed mastery over on old favorites “The Bells Sketch” and “CMYK.” The jittery nerve generated by those weird, wonderful sounds is gone — replaced by Blake’s plaintive vocals which, while wonderfully emotive, feel oddly incomplete without digital altering.
Normally when singers auto-tune and pitch-correct their vocals, they’re criticized for being inauthentic. But in Blake’s case, the overt note warping, audio filters, and deconstructive manipulation are actually missed — they add an essential warble and character to his softly-textured performances. Blake’s songwriting idol Joni Mitchell might have been able to yodel me-decade anthems over nothing more than an acoustic guitar, but Blake’s cocktail of post-millennial rapture and anxiety is best served with a heavy dose of the thing that causes those feelings — technology.
Jame Blake has always teased us with the idea of being something more. Something more than dubstep, than R&B, than EDM — a pioneer in the direction of music itself. On Overgrown, while Blake achieves polished-to-glass smoothness, it feels like he’s resting a bit, consciously toning down the risk taking and experimentation to make his mark as songwriter in the truest sense of the word. It’s a worthy, admirable endeavor that may help catapult him within pop music circles, but hopefully it’s merely a slight sidestep, a repose in Blake’s march toward something massive. Instincts say that if Blake can employ his unparalleled breadth of skills into a masterwork that is inventive as the three EPs, as impassioned and epic as “The Wilhelm Scream,” and as self-assured as the dark, dramatic maturity Overgrown displays, we’ll be in for something truly remarkable.
James Blake – “Overgrown” – mp3
James Blakes selftitled debut is without doubt a strong debut album, and a modern classic.
His experimental neo-dubstep on that album, was full of James Blakes creative production, mostly snippets of his soulful voice. At times it was to experimental for me. And too little focused and lacking structure. A collection of songs rather than a complete album.
Now that his second album is here, I have to admit I was a bit excited and sceptic if he managed to outdo his first album.
The first single “Retrograde” showed a “new” James Blake. He sounded less experimenal and more laid back. The production was softer, James Blake focused more on his vocals – he dared to be a vocalist, an singer songwriter. James Blake is not only a producer, a songwriter, arranger – but he´s also a extraordinary vocalist. With a voice that sounds like a cross between Talk Talks Mark Hollis, Antony & The Johnsons Antony Hegarty and the norwegian singer songwriter Thomas Dybdahl. Warm, soulful – smooth!
With his second album, James Blake have grown up, but not outgrown himself.
The production is better, he has written songs this time – almost all songs have full lyrics and a structure instead of snippets of looped vocals like on the debutalbum. If Blake had tried to outdo the debut album – make an even more experimental – make a James Blake pt II, I am afraid he would have tried to hard.
Instead he has mellowed the production, and he looks back. I can hear traces of trip hop here. Artists like Massive Attack, Tricky and even Björk seems to be inspiration, he even flirts with the dancefloor here and there.
Second track and third track “I Am Sold” and “Life Round Here” both tracks makes me think how Massive Attack around “Protection” would sound with James Blake as guest vocalist. The only guest artists is vocalist from Wu-Tang/Gravediggaz member and actor/screenwriter/director RZA who raps in english (instead of american) on “Take A Fall For Me” a song that sounds more like Tricky – than Tricky himself has done for years.
Skip forward to the Brian Eno produced “Digital Lion” where James Blake does a track that sounds like a update on Björks “Hyper Ballad” mixed with Plastikmans “Spastik”.
James Blake Overgrown Album Zip
If you want to dance, the club-friendly beats of french sounding song titled “Voyeur” is the track to seek. And when he let the beats pump out of the stereo for the last minute it´s almost like James Blake asks for the track to be included on a DJ-mix album. I would love to hear someone do a fat clubmix of this track!
Have you noticed war siren sound on several of the tracks? It seems to be part of a concept on this album. The sound is incorporeted at the end of a majority of the tracks: The one finger push on one button on the synth, and held down/looped and/or timestreched for the next minute or so. Until the end of the song (see i.e. “Retrograde” for a perfect example). If there is a soundconcept on the album, this sound is!
James Blakes Top 5 most popular songs according to Spotify is
- “Retrograde” off “Overgrown” album,
- “Limit To Your Love” the beautiful Feist cover from “James Blake”
- “CMYK”
- “A Case Of You” his wonderful version of the Joni Mitchell classic
- “The Willhelm Scream” off James Blake
You can listen to “James Blake” and “Overgrown” here, if you use Spotify If you want to buy the albums, click here to download through iTunes
James Blake Overgrown Rare
If his two cover versions of “Limit To Your Love” and “A Case Of You” is what you love about James Blake and is the sounds you love from him. I promise you you would love the whole “Overgrown” album. Some reviewers has called the album to slow, and if i should agree with that I would say the album is a slowburner. But let it sink in. It comes to you slowly – and when it hits you – you´re stuck!