Hot Press meets James Blake

James Blake is in love. He is a well-spoken Englishman of 24, however, so naturally there’s a certain excruciating social awkwardness he’s fighting through to ‘get in touch with his emotions’ and make his declaration. Imagine a younger, more likeable Hugh Grant with the bumbling turned dramatically down. So we’ll dance around it a little.

We’re talking about forthcoming second album Overgrown and all that’s informed its creation. We’re talking about changes over the last 24 months of this dubstep-producer-turned-crooner’s life. ‘Next big thing’ tags, Mercury Prize nominations, world tours, inevitable backlashes from the dubstep scene that once adored him.
“The saying goes, ‘The first album is everything up to that point and then the second album is just the years in between’. I don’t feel like it’s been like that,” he reflects. “A lot of things have happened in between so I had easily enough to cover. But touring is not material for writing. It’s what you do while you’re there... It’s how you feel when you’re out there. And maybe who you meet. You know like... um, you fall in love, maybe you break up with somebody. All these things contribute. But for me it was more... That first record, I don’t think it sounds like a loving record. There’s not much romantic connection. Where I think with a lot of the songs on this new record, they are
love songs.”
What, then, has been the biggest change in the Londoner’s life?
“Well,” he ventures, “falling in love. I think that’s kinda what’s happened!”
A relationship that began recently?
“The last two years. And I can’t deny it. There’s no point in trying to come up with some other explanation for what I’ve been writing about. I mean, there has been somebody that I’ve been writing about. And that’s about as much as I’ll say about it. But definitely one of the strongest impetuses to write is feeling that. It was kinda long-distance too, so far away that there was this longing and this distance. So I think this record has the feeling of those love songs but also a sense of distance about it. A sense of transition and ‘love in motion’.”
The music press and throngs of fans in every territory you pass through want a piece of you. You’re constantly travelling. There’s the mandatory criticism that accompanies all the acclaim. It must be nice to have stability with one person.
“Yeah, no it was,” the singer says, mulling it over. “Definitely, definitely. I think perhaps being ‘single and looking’ in that environment can be quite dangerous in some ways. Because you can just spin out of control. I’ve definitely had that before. I’ve definitely felt like there was no constant.
“And then when it happened, I was really struck. Y’know...”
Blake’s voice fills with a knowingness and joy. “... Suddenly I’m hit!”
That would be the pay-off line in lead single ‘Retrograde’, which finds him deftly channelling nu-soul, and at his most romantic. Though he quickly notes the lyric refers to something else, we both laugh that “it works”. As does the song, custom-built to knock patches off his famous cover, ‘Limit To Your Love’ which took him out of the Croydon underground and into the spotlight. As he’s quick to point out, that success also meant he wouldn’t simply be competing with himself when album number two came around.
“I’m competing with Feist and Chilly Gonzales (who wrote ‘Limit’)! Not directly, but in terms of the song I became known for. I’ve actually got to beat ‘Limit To Your Love’! Do something that’s even close in people’s estimations.”
Instead, he’s produced something that broadens his sonic palette, bathes everything in a new warmth and showcases an upgrade in songwriting. It brushes aside the gripes, the grumbling on blogs since his eponymous debut arrived that he’s somehow betrayed the instrumental experimentation and dub influences of his earlier EPs. There’s not a pure dubstep track in sight.
“Yeah, there really isn’t,” he concurs. “There’s none of that on the first record! So all of that was really funny.”
He responds brightly when asked whether he’s confident about the release (though he greets the question with a grin of, “God, I feel like a sportsman being prepared for a match!”), which suggests Blake managed to avoid losing the plot during the writing process and the pressure.
“Well, I almost did go mad. A lot of people like to chip in: ‘Oh, by the way, you really do need another ‘Limit To Your Love’.’ It does mess with your head. Especially when those people are actually in charge of selling your record! But you can’t let those things get to you, you just have to plough on and be you own person. Experience things and let them happen organically. If you don’t, then you can produce something that’s dishonest and that is probably the worst thing that I could imagine doing.”

Overgrown is out on April 8.