

Bare piano ballads and ambient post-dub electronica tracks ooze and crawl of their own volition through the album’s progression.

The abrupt release of The Colour in Anything finally finds Blake once again in the spotlight, with a lot to show from his years in the industry.Īs consistently fickle as James Blake’s muse has been over his career, his newest album, The Colour in Anything - a wide-ranging 17-track 75-minute meander featuring collaboration from the likes of Frank Ocean and Rick Rubin - still surprises as one of his most variable in personality from track to track.

The last three years of his career were speckled with the quiet release of the 200 Press EP of experimental deep tracks of electronica and spoken word, a BBC Radio residency and a few tour dates with his 1-800-Dinosaur crew. Still, since his 2013 sophomore ambient-R&B triumph Overgrown, Blake himself has remained largely silent. After Blake and Beyonce worked one-on-one in the studio, she granted him a track of his own on her latest visual album Lemonade - at the heartbreaking spiritual and political apex, no less. In the past few years, James Blake has been receiving a great deal of outspoken respect from his contemporaries, with the likes of Madonna and Kanye West naming Blake among their favorite modern pop artists. Initially titled Radio Silence, James Blake’s highly anticipated third album The Colour in Anything finds Blake at his most mature, stripped of pretense and painting honest portraits of his maturation into adult life through adult love. What began as radio silence became watercolors instead.
