One of the highlights from James Blake’s enjoyable but slightly patchy album features all the calling cards of the sound he establishes on that record – his often disfigured white-boy soul vocals, a base of saw-wave keyboard and hop-skip-and-jump dubstep percussion swinging sparsely in the breeze around him. The Wilhelm Scream is the first and most impressive integration of his left and right brain music worlds exhibited on I Only Know and most surprisingly Limit To Your Love. God knows why they thought that someone who’s music is this sonically opaque and conceptually oblique would make a good major label signing, but lets rejoice in the fact this truly inventive musician is riding a positive wave.
Despite building a reputation as a DJ, remixer and producer the most alarming thing about the sound Blake is cultivating on The Wilhelm Scream is that undressed the song would retain much of its power. The ability to separate production tricks and sonic design from the songwriting process yet appreciate all those elements makes you feel that Blake’s future is going to scattered with interesting gems like this one. Check out the BBC live performance in the video below to see how the song gets incarnated on stage.
Words: Ian Lamont
