James Blake & The Return of Harmony

Switched on Pop

Vox Media Podcast Network

Music Interviews, Music History, Music, Music Commentary

4.6 • 2.7K Ratings

🗓️ 12 October 2021

⏱️ 38 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

For a decade James Blake has crafted an idiosyncratic sound. His early work as a minimalist electronic producer fused lush R&B chords with lyrical collage and unfiltered synthesizers. He describes his hit 2013 song “Retrograde” as apocalyptic yet also romantic. This single was in stark contrast to the bubblegum pop of the early 2010s. But other artists recruited him to spread his subversive sonics. He produced on three of the most seminal albums in recent history: Beyoncé’s Lemonade, Kendrick Lamar’s DAMN and Frank Ocean’s Blonde. Before Blake, it sounded like pop was caught in the same four chord loop. But gradually Blake’s vision of harmonic melancholy has infused popular music. On his new album “Friends That Break Your Heart,” Blake has written his most compelling songs yet, but underneath are those his familiar wandering chords and emotional suspense. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Stream the new Paramount Plus original series 1923 a Yellowstone origin story starring Helen Mirren in Harrison Ford
0:08.3	1923 a new series streaming now exclusively on Paramount Plus. Go to ParamountPlus.com to try it for free
0:14.6	Welcome to Switched on Pop I'm songwriter Charlie Harding and I'm musicologist Nate Sloan.
0:32.6	Nate there's a lot of things I admire about you. Thank you. I sense a butt coming. There's no butt
0:38.8	It's actually I want to say one of the things I most admire about you is your beautiful panel playing. Oh, wow
0:46.6	That's just a genuinely nice thing to say and you've made my day. So thank you. You've earned it. You've got the most beautiful chords like a little bit of this
0:54.2	Is that the kind of nice piano playing you're referring to? That's exactly what I'm talking about Nate Sloan cocktail hour
1:08.7	You know as a guitarist I'm just so jealous because all I have are these like big chunky chords. You're like
1:16.3	Yeah, but you can do the one thing that every pianist wants to do which is take a note play it and then bend it
1:26.6	That's not very pretty. It could be in the right context or come my bends. I'm pretty jealous of that ability. Really all I want to be able to do is play those big lush chords like you've got in the piano. You know you have an amazing language of emotion through harmony and it's
1:45.7	This part of music that I love so deeply but has felt
1:51.3	Conspicuously missing at the top of the billboard charts in the last couple of years
1:55.9	Yeah, I think that's basically right if you're looking for thick lush
2:02.4	Extended crunchy chords probably the place to find them is not at the top of the charts. I feel like I should clarify that of course pop is full of amazing
2:12.5	Vocal harmonies. That's not what I'm talking about today. I'm talking about the underlying chords
2:18.1	And I'm wanting to get outside of the sort of basic chord progressions into things that are more roaming and winding and lush
2:24.2	And so yeah, I've been in a bit of a harmonic funk that is until just the other day that I heard the song famous last words by the artist James Blake
2:54.2	Wow
2:58.9	Wow, that was a
3:01.4	Harmgasm oh god
3:04.5	I dig it because it has this feeling of
3:09.3	The chords just keep on moving and stretching and expanding and weaving into new places and you're in this suspended animation like
	...

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