James Blake – If The Car Beside You Moves ahead

The British producer goes back to his mindwarping wizardry, while still doing the sad crooner thing

It’s been a long strange journey since James Blake melted our brains back in 2010. His first works showed off a maverick, madly creative genius for cutting, mixing and bending sound into undefined experiences. Then he surprised us by showing that he actually had a lovely, deep voice. But after that, he started putting that voice left and center, pushing back the noize wizardry to the background, and specialising in a tortured, pained genre of sad soul. Not that it was bad, but we had tasted the crazy fruit and wanted more.

His soul years have seen him always close to commercial breakthrough, but never quite managing it. In the meantime, he became the go-to producer for pop royalty from Beyonce to Frank Ocean to Jay-Z and Kendrick Lamar. It was maddening to see his talents wasted as producer of pop-pap.

So here is at last, back with some of that old stuff: this song has the dizzying electronics, the chopped up, messed up vocals, and the strangeness that we have missed so long. It also has the dark atmosphere and brooding lyrics for those who like that sort of thing. It even has ghosts of Bowie, on the haunting melody and the less mangled vocals late in the song. In short, everyone gets their Blake, and we love it.