summarized by Arctic J.
based on interviews with James Blake doing by Pitchfork, etc.
based on interviews with James Blake doing by Pitchfork, etc.
- He is tall - 6ft 5in. and he is boyish and softly-spoken.
- He grew up in suburban London, north of London.
- His father is James Litherland, a musician and guitarist. and his mother is a graphic designer, he has no siblings.
- He is a student of Goldsmiths, University of London. He didn't go to a music school.
- He's up for R&B, artists like Destiny's Child and D'Angelo.
- When he was into neo soul, he got into a bit of hip hop through that, but not really involved it.
- He believe that things which D'Angelo's been working on, could turn out to be the best thing in last ten years.
- So far two people directs all his videos. Martin de Thurah did the 'Limit To Your Love' video and the 'Lindisfarne' video. Alex Brown did the 'The Wilhelm Scream' video.
- He sent in-depth, honest and fairly long email to whoever is doing the videos, telling them the real emotion behind the song.
- He and Drake are fans of each other's music.
- He loves using his voice.
- His writing process is so quick and primal that he's got no memory of actually doing it.
- In his debut album, apart from 'Lindisfarne', every single lyric was written on a train, a tube, or a plane of some sort.
- He writes lyrics in those moments when he hasn't got anything else to do.
- A piano teacher came to his house to give him a lesson a week, he completed all the grades.
- He listened to solo pianists, guys like Eric Satie and Art Tatum, before he got into dubstep.
- He got called a jazz pianist when he was at school and it always pissed him off.
- He doesn't think he is a soul singer, and he never wanted to sing soul. He has a stigma when attached to 'soulful'.
- He thinks, in a way, classically trained and classical conservatories are more easily making people being uncreative.
- He only produce things that totally represents him, if it doesn't, then it's stopped immediately.
- He doesn't think his production is as natural to him as his piano playing or his singing.
- He loves Joni Mitchell's album Blue. Second year at uni, he listened to it every day for six months.