James Blake - Assume Form

January 18, 2019 - Polydor Records

James Blake Litherland is from London. He has released his fourth studio album, Assume Form. Here are my collected notes on the individual tracks that make up this project.

‘Assume Form’ - Fragmented tonal idea shift in and out, each time coming in a little clearer, a little stronger. Half the track is an outro, and it’s the greatest outro that’s really an intro to the rest of a project. Blake has either taken a sample or created his own sample of vague, childlike vocals that he proceeds to speak/sing on top of, aligning the two not unlike a moiré pattern. This track is the tl;dr of the album, and when it comes to “form”, this track is the process, not the result. 

‘Mile High’ - This is why I watch subbed not dubbed. There is beauty in language that sometimes separates itself from the words. There’s so much sex but it’s elevated, it’s perfect and it’s on a pedestal and it’s in a glass box. Young Metro’s signature two toned hi hats have a purpose here; it was all leading to this. The spark that occurs between Travis Scott’s “40 days, 40 nights/Feel like a holy night” and Blake’s “The lesson’s always there/That less is always more” induces frisson; it’s addicting. Blake even makes me like the word “greasy.” This track was drenched in honey, frozen in a block of ice, and then blow torched in spots, causing the thick, golden mess to ooze out in spectacular fashion. 

‘Tell Them’ - It’s a harder sell for me. I’ll admit, it was the only track on the project that I didn’t listen to twice before moving on to the next track. Moses Sumney and his vast vocal range and powerful tone mesh well with that of Blake; it’s a pairing that makes sense and makes for good music. The combination of instrumental, melodic, and even lyrical elements just end up clashing enough times on the track to set me off. It works so well in one moment, but the next there’s slight misalignment and the inner workings are revealed. Not in a good way.

‘Into the Red’ - I hesitated to write about Assume Form because of this song. It touches me on an auditory level. It touches me on a narrative level. It touches me on a personal level. Sonically the track is built up from a looping of one fuzzy chord. Strings sprout from this ground. Bass trickles filling the dried riverbed. An ambiguous plucked instrument provides life to the space. The space for Blake’s mind to occupy. Like many cuts on this project, it’s infectious. It’s emotional even without any meaning behind the words. But the words carry so much weight. Music is personal, but universal truths exist. Blake’s ode traverses the relationship between himself and a partner who has sacrificed beyond the balance. It’s necessarily ambiguous but the color element playing into the idea of finances is incredibly poignant. Flashes of red, bursts of gold, deficits and riches. The track is tinged with guilt, but a stronger sense of appreciation is what is remembered. We’ve all been there. We’ve all relied on someone or something else. We’ve never been enough.

We’ll make it through somehow.

‘Barefoot in the Park’ - Immediately dunked in a vat of that sweet sticky. Pinging, dripping, plucking, droning, flowing in and out of focus, in and out of stillness and motion. ROSALÍA and Blake duet gracefully, commingling two languages, two stories. It’s a softer and shorter cut than the rest, but it is strong. 

‘Can’t Believe the Way We Flow’ - I think I hate California. Key takeaway here. This is perhaps one of the only tracks that couldn’t stand well on it’s own, but that’s beside the point as it serves its purpose well as a love-fueled intermission propelled by a The Manhattans snippet. I think the kid’s in love.

‘Are You in Love?’ - Uh oh, he heard me. James Blake is sitting at the church organ, drum machine looping a simple loop, hands pumping at the pedals and feet gracefully caressing the keys. The track ebbs and flows like the tide, mounting pressure both with sound and with message. 

‘Where’s the Catch?’ - Another question. Dark electronic currents part to reveal a pseudo folk banjo riff featuring André 3000 weaving idioms of failure and success, life and death, stability and insecurity. The track teeters the edge of overproduction, but it remains self-aware and pulls it off. An absolutely eerie female vocal sample cuts through the middle of the piece, and the fragmented parts come back that much stronger in the marimba laced outro.

‘I’ll Come Too’ - A straightforward, simple look into the peculiarities of love and what it does to the practical side of the brain when it comes to an individual’s physical location is held up by a convincing combination of puffy cloud beat production and a Disney-esque Bruno Nicolai sample. Blake’s sleepy sing-songy cadence oftentimes appears to be falling out of the bed but he catches it at the right moment every time to satisfying effect. 

‘Power On’ - The track begins to pull sentiments felt on ‘Into the Red.’ The dynamic between lyricist and musician Blake occupies clicks into place. He is a master of lists. Beyond the two core elements of the piece, other more disparate elements are stitched together; spoken word intermingles with falsetto, soft filtered piano meets a dark, gritty synth pulled out of 1989, tension builds and is released like the lungs of a sleeping giant. The lyrics themselves are nothing new. Not that anything is new anyway, but this story has been told countless times, countless ways. But there is a feeling of closeness, perhaps cloyingly so, but the feeling is there. Blake is lucky to be experiencing these emotions, and we are lucky to experience his retelling. 

‘Don’t Miss It’ - A track that contends with ‘Into the Red’ for emotional gravity. The singer breaks from love talk for five minutes, a brief but weighty five minutes. Paired with one of the best videos of 2019, ‘Don’t Miss It’ chronicles the emotional backlog of Blake, recalling back to times, moments, thoughts of missing out. It’s a fluid amorphous feeling, not really confined to the fear of missing out, but rather covering the struggles involved with introversion, extroversion, egomania, depression, anxiety. Again universal. Again unoriginal. Again incredibly executed. Blake paints with emotion. He layers feeling with insight. He uses his own introspection to draw awareness out from others. The music mostly sits back in the mix, a smattering of ideas seemingly pulled out of the tracks that preceded this one. But not in afterthought. For me, ‘Into the Red’ and ‘Don’t Miss It’ are the magnetic poles to the album. The center that the rest is built upon. It’s music I didn’t know I needed until I heard, and now I can’t live without.

‘Lullaby for My Insomniac’ - A right fitting end to the project. ‘Lullaby for My Insomniac’ is a lullaby that James Blake has created for someone in his life who has trouble sleeping. The choral chords ease into a sparsely lit and sparsely decorated space, a theater production that relies on audio cues over visual. The song is begging to be run through PaulStretch, I think that would see its true sleep-inducing potential in the best way. The words work to cement the sentiment of togetherness the entire album has projected since the beginning. It is better to sleep with another, better to be sleepless with another, better to be with another. 🍍

Assume Form, an album by James Blake on Spotify