James Blake

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1:11You don't want to just wait around hoping the right person stumbles upon your job. That's why LinkedIn Jobs AI Assistant suggests 25 great candidates daily so you can invite them to apply and keep things moving. Hire right the first time. Post your job for free at linkedin.com slash broken, then promote it to use LinkedIn Jobs' new AI assistant, making it easier and faster to find top candidates. That's linkedin.com slash broken to post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply. Every December, we start singing at church, around the fire, in our cars, with the radio turned up. But have we ever stopped to ask, where did our favorite Christmas carols come from?

1:47And what makes them so magical? Join me in unwrapping the meaning and the magic behind these caroling classics. Listen to Hark, the stories behind our favorite Christmas carols. Available now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and at americamagazine.org.

2:13Pushkin

2:17Since making his major label debut in 2011, James Blake has become one of the most distinctive voices in pop music. His gorgeous haunting vocals and brilliantly edited collage-style tracks have helped usher in a new sound in popular music. James has both produced and contributed vocals to artists like Travis Scott, Jay-Z, and Spanish megastar Rosalia. He even earned a Grammy for Best Rap Performance alongside Kendrick Lamar, J-Rock, and Future on the song King's Dead from the Black Panther soundtrack. This month, James is releasing his sixth solo album, which is a nod to his electronic music roots.

2:58It's called Playing Robots Into Heaven, a title inspired by the modular synth James built for the album that creates sounds meant to evoke a spiritual experience conjured by machines. It's a heady concept that translates into some of the most heartfelt and energized tracks James has made to date. On today's episode, Leah Rose talks to James Blake about how he and his longtime collaborator Dom Maker constructed key tracks on this new album. James also recalls how a conversation with Rick Rubin changed his life. and reveals how he spent months making new music with Andre 3000 only to learn on this podcast that it may never be released.

3:45This is Broken Record. Line of notes for the digital age. I'm Justin Richman. Here's Leah Rose with James Blake. Do you remember last time you were on Broken Record and it was in 2020 and you spoke to Rick? Yeah. Do you remember what Rick said to you about the first time he heard your music? You know what? No, I don't. What did he say? I remember a lot about working with Rick, but I don't remember that. I was hoping you would remember this. So I'm curious about this because I know we tend to remember sometimes more negative rather than positive things. He told you that when he first heard your music, he hadn't been introduced to any new music that he liked more than your music.

4:27Oh, that's amazing. Yeah. My head's increasing in size as we speak. What did you take away from working with Rick for your third album? Yeah, well, I remember Rick sort of came into my life at a very tumultuous point. You know, I was deep in mental health struggles, shall we say, and kept fucking up my relationship. I just wasn't in a state of coherency, you know. I was just in a very incoherent state. And I was looking to any, honestly, I was looking for maybe an answer in the music, maybe, but I, you know, I knew it wasn't going to be there. And Rick was actually really helpful at that time, because, you know, being English, growing up, we learned to speak a certain way, you know, and I learned to speak a certain way.

5:22And it was very accusatory. you know if you had a problem with someone it was like you've done this to me you did that but you know we didn't we weren't taught like when I came to California and people were speaking like this they were going well I just feel that you know the way you did that made me feel like this and I feel this way you know it's like we didn't do that we just had a go at each other would be So in my relationships, that would take form of just pushing people away quite easily if I became frustrated or whatever. I'd just kind of say something that would be too spiky and kind of ultimately not serve the situations, not serve me or them and our relationship.

6:06And so Rick showed me, and I told him about this, and I said, you know, I just, it feels like every time we have an argument or something like that, I say something and I just fuck it up. And he just said, check this out. And he showed me this book called Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg, which completely changed my life. Because I, until that point, hadn't learned to convey my actual needs without being accusatory. Yeah. And using accusatory language. I hadn't ever used nonviolent language in that way. For anyone listening, nonviolent language doesn't mean that, you know, violent language could be described as something like, yeah, like what I was saying earlier, you know, you did this, you shouldn't, you mustn't, you know, stuff like that.

6:56Kind of taking ownership of somebody's behavior for them in a way and trying to control it. And actually, it was an interesting lesson in explaining your needs so that everybody in the room realizes they have the same needs and that we can meet each other's needs. Or we can't, you know, and that's the decision rather than having these huge emotional kind of tantrums. Did it change the way that you thought about things that had happened to you in your past? does it take the blame away for situations if somebody you know yeah well i think what it did is it gave me it equipped me to go forward in in peace in every situation regardless of if i was hurt which was alien to me previously you know and that just helped in all my friendships and all my all my relationships really and and you know that was a thing we talked about and i think that rick had learned from too and and like i think that was probably the best thing that came out of that out of that session because the album's great like i love it and i'm proud of it and rick was great on the album but the album didn't change my life yeah that sit down for like 20 minutes changed my life so working with him there was there was actually time to have a deep personal conversation it wasn't just all work all day every day there was time to just yeah we did a lot of speaking yeah we did a lot of speaking I mean I was there for like three months so it was a long time you know and I was staying at Shangri-La so there was a lot of time to kind of and he would come come in about 12 leave about seven yeah on the dot by the way like never never miss dinner for any idea no matter how explosive an idea sounded like it was going to become he was out at seven did that make you sort of like panic as an artist like oh no we got a eye on the clock no what it did is it taught me that as a producer i didn't i don't need to just sit around in a studio waiting for shit and that it's actually good to set those boundaries because otherwise like you know i have spent a lot of time as a producer kind of just resenting the amount of time i'm spending somewhere in like a like room full of people that i don't really want to be around and just you know not taking ownership of that i can the fact that i can leave and i started to i started to just leave and what is it that um shark tank guy said he was like i don't hire the guy who who works seven days a week i hire the guy who goes and does golf on the weekends so it's like at least the person who takes a break comes back fresh i'd come back fresh to sessions and and feel like i could give people my best which is what rick was doing yeah i just didn't understand it at the time at the time i was probably did i probably did say like wait what we just started this thing you know why but um no i was i was like 20, 25 or 26.

10:12I didn't really understand the idea of boundary setting. Totally. I was going to say, it seems like a very mature approach to work. Definitely. Definitely. And I'm sure Rick has acquired that by, you know, doing the same thing. I was, you know, just spending long days and nights in dark studios with no windows, you know? Yeah. I don't think he was leaving at seven when he was working with the Beastie Boys. Doubt it. Yeah. What is your schedule, your working schedule like? Like with this new album, do you have clear set hours every single day? Do you have like a schedule you stick to? You know what?

10:47I could stick to a better sort of more rigid schedule. I try and start around 11. I like to do the kind of functional finishing of music in the daytime. And I like to do the actual kind of creative spark stuff after 7 p.m. Okay. Generally. so after 7 p.m would be new ideas trying things out i think it's as you get closer to the witching hour it just becomes more and more inspiring i think you know yeah seven is actually pretty far i mean really the some of the greatest ideas come at like three uh in the morning but it's just not really practical to live like that all the time for me do you ever get haunted by ideas?

11:35Do you get woken up and have to immediately record something? Yeah. So the best songs I've written probably so far came at around three or four and they were written in the middle of the night, which was Retrograde and You're Too Precious. They're two of my favorites, I think. Other times I get it right in the daytime and sometimes it's like, you know, eight, nine, whatever. But I do think there's something special about those hours. I that I think is hard to find elsewhere. Do you think it's because the mind is quiet and the world is more quiet and other things can sprout up? Yeah. I mean, without sort of going all the way woo-woo, I think it's like the channels are kind of, they're more open and they're less interfered with by outside influence.

12:29It's like when you're in a house that's got like three Wi-Fi routers. Some people are very sensitive to Wi-Fi. They can feel it. You know, it's like, it's a bit like that. It's like... Can you feel it? I can feel electromagnetic stuff, I think. Like if I'm in a room and it's just got lots of, you know, EMF, then yeah. Wow. We don't really think about it, but I think that, you know, it's feasible that in 30, 40 years time, we look back at all those signals as some kind of smoking. Very true. With the new album, let's talk about the new album. I saw that you released Loading today. Yeah. I love Loading so much.

13:12Thank you. Thank you. It's such an excellent song. And I was hoping you could sort of walk us through the architecture of the song and how you put it together. Because there's some really interesting choices you made. And certain things seem almost at odds with each other. But I'd love to hear you describe it. Yeah. it started with Dom bringing in a psalm I think it was something he actually wrote and played which is those kind of French horns at the beginning and he had the sample on it that went you know the little poetry sample and I wrote the wherever I go kind of melody over that but I wrote it at the original pitch and then in order to create what I realized is that if I just the way the melody worked it could be pitched up and basically not need to be altered too much to create kind of a cascading or a falling melody all the way down so if you start with the pitched up one then you can go all the way down to the the natural pitch and once I'd done that it kind of just wrote itself really it was just you know then it was a matter of adding a beat and playing synths underneath the vocals to try and kind of recontextualize it outside of the horn sample and then I started adding kind of more like ancillary like the crazier synths that go on later on there's some funny vocal glitches that were happening that I left in about that yeah so was that an accident it was a happy accident it was um i think it's a bug in flex pitch in logic logic's a great program but it does have some kind of quirky bugs and and things that don't aren't quite working as intended sometimes and actually depending on what setting you have the kind of flex pitch to whether it's monophonic or polyphonic it behaves differently and i think in this case it was polyphonic and it kind of it was hearing something in the background maybe the way it like picks up on the transience of the vocal it just freaks out and did this strange sound which i love so cool yeah i love it and and so i left it in yeah there are some things that are just happy accidents like that that to me become yeah they just kind of become fabric of the track and then for a long time the beat just wasn't hitting and I just couldn't really figure it out so me and me and Rob uh from my band Rob Airhead well we were looking for drum machines that could could hit a little bit harder um than whatever I'd programmed in the box and we had this sitting here which is the Drumbox Alpha Bass and also the Pulsar which you should be able to the blue thing there and just jammed over it and until i found the right drum sounds oh and the tr8s the rolling tr8s so yeah just a bunch of analog drum machines to kind of like thicken it up um the percussion super cool yeah the percussion's quite unique i mean it doesn't really it's not exactly like a sort of trad house beat or whatever it there's a lot of claves and funny yeah it sounded good in the club and I just kept playing it and then I kept kind of tweaking it until the version that you hear now.

16:38Very cool. So when you are playing something for the first time, what do you base the effectiveness of the song on? Do you base it on people's reaction to it or just how it sounds in the room to you? It's interesting. There's like a magic that happens when a tune's hitting that you can't really describe. It's like there's a rush of like, oh, that worked. you know like it's hard it's really it is hard to explain um it's like tracks either have a magic or they don't yeah you know there are some tracks that that when i play them to people like the whole room like gets out of their seat you can see it in people's body language you know it's like they start to be intrigued or interested you know and then they might start moving or they just they just get up because they they can't help themselves and you'll hear comments like this is the one or like you know it's like people just playing it to a broad enough range of people and the one and the tracks i tend to can are the ones that never really quite get the reaction i was looking for never really quite hit the emotional peak and i think it's a chemistry thing between the drums and the synths and whatever, but it's the overall impression.

17:55If the overall impression just feels high, it's like a vibration thing, you know, like coming back to the Californian speak, high vibration or low vibration, you know, it's like, is it uplifting you in some way? It doesn't necessarily need to be happy. It's like this track relies on a kind of juxtaposition between these kind of quite sad chords. Yes. And actually a melody that, well, a lyric that is basically saying, I'm only okay when I'm with you, which is not the happiest lyric and actually has slightly dark undertones in a way. It's a codependent lyric. Yeah. Not necessarily the best place to be.

18:37And yet, for some reason, the track sounds uplifting or engaging and kind of slightly higher vibration than the lyrics would kind of have you expect. Yeah, do you think that opposition is necessary for a song to work? Like it can't be all happy, it can't be all one mood? I think so. It depends what it is. I mean, Happy by Pharrell, I think is all happy. I don't think there's anything in that song that's trying to counter the feeling he was going for. In that case, something as strong you know it's like I think it's just about strong decisions I mean it's very obviously it's hard to just like boil down what works about music it's it's um something you know in the moment you either feel it you don't but yeah it's so cool I think you know a lot of what you do I've heard you talk about how editing plays a really big role in how you make music and I don't know if it's a superpower or a hidden power but it gives you a whole extra layer of tools to use on what you make yeah I think one of the frustrate the things one of the things I find frustrating about collaborating sometimes is that very often somebody just kind of wants a verse and there's not a huge amount of room for creativity within it and I'm it's not really where I'm actually usually at my best like I can write a verse for someone but I feel most comfortable when I'm recording myself yeah and just taking the vocals and using them as a kind of material right that's how I write most of my stuff even if even if it's just speeding up for a second or or putting an effect on it for a second to kind of create a moment that I can bounce off to write another thing maybe that next thing is a better idea than even the first stuff i wrote but i you i always use almost always use editing as a kind of bridge to a better idea because my voice is it's easy to manipulate i mean i think i guess everyone's is but i i find that i mean i get bored of my own voice you know that's that's the other thing is like you know I think everyone does, but after however many songs I've written, it's just...

21:03Yeah. If I've been writing a lot of music over the course of a month, you're going to get more and more of me trying to experiment to get away from how I regularly sound. But there are other times when I come to the piano and I just feel everything sounds fresh and I feel like I'm a new singer in a way. Would you ever consider releasing just a straight-ahead, you at a piano singer-songwriter style album? Or does that feel boring in the way that you're saying you can get sick of your voice? I think if I were to do that, I'd have to find new ways to play the piano and play my voice. It's not out of the question.

21:47I sometimes think computers also become a massive hindrance and editing becomes a kind of disconnecting thing. and staring at a laptop screen is it hollows you really totally so i in a way like after looking at a screen for about an hour i start to make very bad musical decisions by bad i mean disconnected i don't know it's kind of no secret it's like some days i want to be at the piano some days i just it feels trite and done to death and then other days the piano feels like the only place to express something. And it's the most magical instrument. It's the only way I can really communicate it.

22:31Has your voice always sounded like your voice? When you first started singing, did it sound like the James Blake we know now? Or did you have a different tone or a different style? I had a different tone because my voice was breaking at the time. Yeah. But I definitely, I was copying other singers more than I am now. So what would it sound like or who would you be copying back then? Well, it sounded, and I guess I'd be copying, it was like a mix between Stevie and then maybe something folkier and rougher. But definitely, yeah, not a smooth voice in that moment. And as it broke, I kind of found my falsetto So probably through some desire to get away from my identity.

23:23I think there was an interesting article about falsetto being a kind of means to disconnect yourself in a way. Or you feel alienated already, so you leave your regular range. And I always thought that was quite appropriate, really. just that's how I felt and maybe that's why I did it I don't know but like endlessly singing in falsetto is not really satisfying for listeners I don't think I think we need a break we need a range of somebody's you know capabilities which is why I started to incorporate my lower range like actually a lot of people like even in retrograde some of people's favorite parts a lot of people's favorite part is the moment where I go we're alone and it's like I drop down to that register.

24:14I guess it's a little surprising. Yeah, well, it's to say like, hey, I'm here, like still, you know, I'm not just, I'm not just over here being this kind of, kind of ghostly voice. It's like you're reaching through the TV and saying, I'm actually still, I'm still here. Yeah. So you mentioned that was one of, I think you said that's one of your best songs? Yeah. Do you consider it one of your best songs because it's one of the most well-known songs or what you were setting out to do worked? Yeah, I just really want it. I just think I nailed it. There was no barrier between or membrane to punch through between the idea and what it ended up becoming.

24:59It just happened very fast, very naturally and perfectly. When something like that happens so perfectly. Do you try and recreate the conditions, almost like a baseball player who always wear the same batting helmet or never wash the jersey? Did you go through something similar? I know people that do that. No, no, I didn't. I've always accepted that that will never happen again. What we are chasing when we chase that moment isn't the song itself. It's the feeling of being on your path it's the feeling of being of channeling and being in the flow state being in the flow state and in order to create a flow state i've seen artists do lots of different things i mean one of my friends monica martin who's who i think is just a generational talent like i think she's she's my favorite singer really she just lights a candle every time she comes to the studio wherever she is she'll just light a candle and i always i don't know if it's if it helps her kind of tune in but it helps me tune in a candle a candle really helps it's something that a lot of spiritual people talk about as you know helpful to kind of clear the the energies of the room or whatever but whatever it is i mean it i'm always i'm always a kind of proponent of what works so if that's the thing that works for you then that's what you got to do but yeah like i want to recreate the conditions even of retrograde.

26:29What I want to do is basically shield myself from all of the distracting factors. And I mean, the phone is a good example. It's like, I can't be creative if I've got a 10 hour a day screen time. It has to be like two or lower, or maybe none at all. And then I would really, I can really tune in. We're going to take a quick break and then come back with more from Leah Rose and James Blake. I firmly believe when it comes to the holidays, you fall into one of two camps, someone who loves holiday music or someone who won't admit they love holiday music. There's something about a voice you love singing that familiar opening phrase.

27:14Maybe it's Donny Hathaway, maybe it's Mariah Carey that just flips a switch and you're instantly back into that warm and cozy headspace only the holidays can bring. For me, that feeling pairs perfectly with a cup of Starbucks caramel brulee latte. That's their signature espresso with steamed milk and a rich caramel brulee flavor topped with whipped cream and a crunchy caramel brulee topping. It's like the sound of the season, but in drink form. And that's really what this season's about. Little moments of pairing, little moments of connection. Sharing a song, sharing a story, sharing a caramel brulee latte.

27:48because this season and every season, together is the best place to be. Come together over your holiday favorites at Starbucks. If you've ever hired for your small business, you know how important it is to find the right person. That's why LinkedIn Jobs is stepping things up with their new AI assistant so you can feel confident you're finding top talent that you can't find anywhere else. The best part is those great candidates are already on LinkedIn. In fact, employees hired through LinkedIn are 30 % more likely to stick around for at least a year compared to those hired through the leading competitor.

28:19That's a big deal when every hire counts. Hiring doesn't have to be complicated. With LinkedIn Jobs AI Assistant, you can skip the confusing steps in recruiting jargon. It filters through applicants based on criteria you've set for your role and surfaces only the best matches so you're not stuck sorting through a mountain of resumes. When you have a business to run, you don't have hours to spend on hiring and you don't want to just wait around hoping the right person stumbles upon your job. That's why LinkedIn Jobs AI Assistant suggests 25 great fit candidates daily so you can invite them to apply and keep things moving.

28:54Hire right the first time. Post your job for free at linkedin.com slash broken, then promote it to use LinkedIn Jobs' new AI Assistant, making it easier and faster to find top candidates. That's linkedin.com slash broken to post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply.

29:13Every December, we start singing. At church, around the fire, in our cars, with the radio turned up. But have we ever stopped to ask, where did our favorite Christmas carols come from? And what makes them so magical? I think it's probably one of the most perfect tunes to play and to sing. The voices are converging. They're adding this more complex and chromatic harmony. and it gives us that climactic arrival point. Hark is a podcast about the meaning and the making of Christmas carols. Get into the spirit of the season and listen to Hark, the stories behind our favorite Christmas carols. Available now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and at americamagazine.org.

30:05We're back with more from Leah Rose and James Blake. The new album, when you started making this album, people are saying that it's, you know, you going back to your roots in a way. Is it feel more exciting and maybe a bit easier to make an album that's more dance music based? It's not completely dance music based at all, but is that almost an easier task for you? Honestly, yeah, it is. It's funny, I was playing Brian Eno the record and we videoed his his reactions as well and we're putting out sort of little clips here and there and I said to him at one point I was like I was going to play you some of the more ambient side of things but I guess you listen to ambient music all day don't you and he goes James I shit it I shit ambient music and it's kind of like that with you know when I'm trying to aim at songwriting as like the first, like the principal aim of the project, it's like, it's tough.

31:17It's really, really daunting and tough. And I'm entering into a kind of category of, you know, some unbelievable songs. And I, on occasion, can rise to that challenge, but it just doesn't, it's not my most natural state. And actually Rick mentioned, he goes, I think you're best when you're doing collages. Yeah. And he was like, you're a good songwriter, but you're not, not yet. You can be, basically what he was trying to say was, you can do it whichever way you want. I'll tell you where you really shine. Yeah. And I think that's kind of one of his strengths as a producer is the fact that he, you know, I've heard some criticism of him about, you know, him, he doesn't like, you know, because he's hands off, right?

32:03So a lot of people go to a producer and they think well why is he just sitting there why is he on the buttons like why is he not like playing anything or you know arranging stuff and the thing that i think is one of the most effective kind of strengths of rick is that he will he can identify if you're resonating at your strongest and he can also identify when you're not and the thing that most artists don't want to be told in the creative process is that they're not resonating at their strongest. It creates some bitterness, I think, to acknowledge that you're not actually doing what's natural to you or that you're not creating the best scenario for your flow state.

32:51And I think Rick's right in some way that when I'm attempting to write a kind of straighter song, I find it hard to, you know, there are moments where I can truly channel it, But sometimes it can feel more like an exercise and it's harder for me. It's a skill I learned recently rather than... And so, yeah, the collage is something that I understand deeply and I've always done it. And I've always been able to take a motif and kind of build a whole thing or a world around it and make that world change and make that world evolve. And that's where the editing comes in. That's where the editing comes in and that's kind of where loading's at.

33:30And that's where tell me's at. and that's where all these other tracks on this album kind of and because i naturally i can tap into dance music from a very natural place because i've been doing it since i was you know 19 or whatever the alchemy is just quicker yeah so yeah that's i think this album is what's nice about it is that i don't there's not a single skill that i needed to acquire over the course of making it to make this album. It was all there already. And I just tapped into what I knew. And I think the only thing is I just haven't shown people this kind of music that I've been making for many years.

34:14I think your fans are really excited about it. I've read some really sweet comments and people are saying, oh, James is weird again. And, you know, he, especially with the first single that you put out, Big Hammer, people just were like losing their mind over the song. Why did you decide to put that song out first? Well, firstly, I've been weird for the whole time. I mean, even the more straight ahead stuff I've done by comparison to other music is very often, there's always something a little bit odd about it. It's outside of material. Either way. Even as much as I've tried to kind of like Trojan horse my way into pop music, it's not really, it seems like I'm never really seen as part of the crowd of, you know, the main...

35:08I don't know, all the in crowd is tapping you to work with them. Yeah, but it's like, again, it's that kind of compost thing, isn't it? It's like, I'm not one of them. I'm not the... I don't know. It's like... You're not Britney.

35:26I mean, yeah. So it's like when I went on, I was looking at Apple TV one night, I was like, oh, they've got a YouTube, like a music video channel. So I went on this music video channel on Apple TV and I looked at the music videos and I was like oh yeah that's what like modern pop music is and fair play like fair play to them and there's some amazing stuff here but I can't I can't do that I can do my own thing but I can't I can't be something I'm not and my I don't know I'm a weird guy in some ways my career has been like a push and pull of like do I want to be accepted in that kind of central position or that's never what's going to be and why would I even want to be that yeah because what I do is something else and it's okay and that's kind of what say what you will was about and what Rick identified was that it's like do your thing like not just not not exactly stay in your lane but like but remember what it is that you you have the most unique perspective on.