JAMES BLAKE — LIFE IS NOT THE SAME

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"I wore your favourite clothes / I said the things you'd say" — the lines in James Blake's elegaic 'Life Is Not The Same' are elegant in their simplicity, evoking the everyday remembrances that sting when someone leaves. To a metronomic beat, ticking insistently as time tends to when it means the most, Blake spins his tale of woe, centred around the chorus, the central question: "So if you loved me so much, why'd you go?" Fair logic.

With co-production from Take a Daytrip, ensuring those glitching intricacies in the beat, the crashing waves (and sharing on writing duties), Blake's voice — by turns splashed with clarity or drenched with reverb or pitch-shifted — layers on itself like a feedback loop of longing: "Life is not same when you're miles if we're miles away." As his music has shown over the years, James Blake has a knack for detail and dynamic, and 'Life Is Not The Same' is another in a long line of this minimalist-meets-massive sound.

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• 🔔 You can stream 'Life Is Not The Same' on various services. It's taken from James Blake's new album Friends That Break Your Heart, scheduled for release on 10th September. You may pre-order it, if you like.
• 🔔 The Dali-meets-impressionist artwork was created by surrealist illustrator Miles Johnston (see his Instagram also).

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📠
☟ James Blake Internet Presence ☟
facebook ⚘ soundcloud ⚘ official site ⚘ twitter ⚘ spotify ⚘ youtube ⚘ instagram ⚘ wikipedia

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DAYTRIP – DROP IT [FREE DOWNLOAD]

Oooh…! Remember when I wrote about Daytrip's first track? It was called um 'Flight 43 (NYC)' that was it. It was a slice of bombastic footwork with a tasty guitar solo weaved into it somewhere. You should listen to it. More interestingly, it is the first section of a journey which lies at the heart of the very concept behind Daytrip: a round-the-world trip documented in music. So we've been on Flight 43 via NYC – where next?

Well the New Yorkers behind Daytrip – a duo comprising of DenZ and David Hugh Cosby – have taken us to Kingston, Jamaica, to see how they do over there. Home of reggae, rapping (via 'toasting' or 'chatting', when the DJ talks/chants over a beat; via West African 'griots' or poet-storytellers), ska, dub, dancehall, Jamaica is the perfect stop-off for a pair who at least seem to like their bass tasty and their beats meaty.

I wonder how they actually got to make any music because there are a lot of pictures of them partying. (Yes it's not just conceptual, it's a living, in-practice, physical trip to another place: check their Tumblr). Anyway! Listen! This is 'Drop It'.

Mmmm it basically goes off. Crunchy synth mixes with tides of infra-bass and booming kicks in a celebration of the low end of the spectrum, the beat swaggering and swaying in between aggressive collections of snare hits and wind-up hi-hat freneticism. And rightly so – it fits the no-nonsense party atmosphere of the song, with dancehall vocals (for the most part) inciting the crowd to lust-laden dancing. Airhorns abound in occasional patches, as do jostling glitches and stutterings in the track, decorating this track, which is essentially dancehall-trap if I'm allowed to suggest that.

Raps from Lil Silk and Yung Burrakami keep things fresh and add more voices to the track, giving it this bustling, busy appeal – just by listening to it you feel like you're out dancing in a sweaty sweaty crowd in a chaotic club. Looked at in the context of the series of daytrips themselves, the first was a triumphant, soaring introduction, but this second leg is a more settled, established sound, something achieved by aiming for a collaborative effort, perhaps. It's also a nice indication of how the duo will pick up and adopt the sounds of whatever locale they happen to find themselves in, making this a v followable series.

NYC → Kingston → ????? — I'm looking forward to it!

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