talking to you about it gave me the confidence in the idea that it was actually the next James Blake album and that it's actually mice no this is my sound this is in my opinion like my most natural state like it there's no skill I didn't need to acquire any skills to make it it just happened from what I was in that moment [Music] thank you that was a good day in the office though
wasn't it yeah that was a good day it was a good day that was one of those moments where you can sit back and confidently say to yourself quietly if not out loud but probably only with you in the room yeah but yeah that's what I said smash that yeah I smash that facts yeah it's facts they were my very words it's facts and then I said facts afterwards start to finish facts yeah the whole
thing is a stunner I've lost count how many times I've been lucky enough to be able to hang out on the record and at times off the Record and talk about music and life with you I treasure every one of them thank you and I'm excited to dive into this into playing robots into heaven I mean you work with people you're a generous collaborator but this is you and very few other people trying
to find purpose and trying to find something new to say and so the question I've never asked you is where does it start this time how do you know it started how do you know it's the beginning of something new and not just totaling about in studio around with sounds having fun yeah well actually you know around with sounds and having fun was was the start of this and
it started alongside probably friends that break your heart around that time I was also making kind of um I got into like modular since yeah I did and it's obsessive right I know people who've yeah yeah absolutely it's uh it's an amazing outlet for um addiction or uh ADHD um it's a midlife crisis 10 years too soon for you yes absolutely um well who knows I mean we have longer
life spans now uh it could be a third life crisis and I just had this you know the this increasingly large folder of modular jams that I'd been making and you know I had like 120 modular gems and they were all like an hour long and I was just going through them and you baked off your head when you do because in my head the best way to do this is to just do a bowl and just work on modular synths for
like eight hours just consistently just topping up just smoking mad weed that is the classic combo but um good I find that when I smoke we just see something good came out of the 90s you know yeah no exactly I can't make music on like when I'm smoking weed it it um it uh the last thing I made when I when I smoked was clavioca and it was it the sound of the synth sounds like a
heartbeat and I remember as I was making it it's your anxiety attack literally as I was making it it was it sounded like my heart was arithmic and like I was having some kind of like a heart problem and I started freaking myself out and worrying that I was gonna die um yeah um and so I've never really did it again because you know my heart you know you need it
yeah I need that anyway so I did all these modular jams anyway and I was just doing it for fun and eventually I started turning them into pieces of music that were listenable because you know a lot of that stuff it can be a bit uh you know some of it's a tonal some of it's you know like um not necessarily in song format it's very it's just like long periods of synth exploration should
we say but um to the Layman it just sounds like you know just just stuff that's not I mean does it sound like this did this come out of a modular jam it did so this was one of those things that you found settled into and it organically just followed yeah with no destination at the time so with this I was listening to this over and over and over and over and then I came up with this melody yeah
and it had no lyrics initially we did it on tour [Music] and at what point did um your body chemistry shift and you realize that you'd found something that you were deeply in love with well this this team first started as a break beat like the the beat was like break B really um and that's when I sort of fell in love with it uh Baseline all that stuff and then
it was just a matter of getting the beat right and no it's about getting the lyrics and that because oh yeah that up you got this This Could Have Been instrumental and move people added such an incredible moment to it it just gave it that Center [Music] that's also a good day at the office isn't it got a lot of good days every time I come here if I can have one of those buttons no
I need one for my house sure what do you do in your house is your business because you can't touch mine yeah right okay all right I hear you I don't go into your house and start around with your modular scents you're right you're right and I was out of older for asking it's really challenging I think for people to understand how tough it is to take something that feels ready instrumentally and find a
place that's necessary for a vocal right that needs it rather than you want to put on that needed that if you'd wanted to put it on it probably wouldn't have fit yeah and it had to sort of be simple and then the melody had to be simple and kind of repetitive and you know it's funny there's an intersection between pop and dance music that just is kind of it's like they they
arrive at the same idea without without even real without even meaning to but it's just the it's the repetition thing it's like like underworld do there beautifully yeah beautifully exactly yeah yeah and there's obviously tiny Echoes of of Underworld or not even underworld but like just just the timber style yeah it's fast like yeah that's the thing a lot of people when they're
trying to create emotion and dance music understandably and rightfully fall in between 120 and about 128. that's what 135 yes it's fast yeah and and I guess it's all yes we'll just say analog drum machines and distort Distortion and people and you know It's Just Vibe and not not so much thinking which uh which I think you know someone like me I think I can I can overthink and
so a lot of the music on this record is is um you know it happened quite quickly and it's not really that over raw you know is that why we're listening to what is effectively the closest thing to um a club record that you've made in a while definitely I mean I don't think I've ever made a club record apart from um CMYK yeah the beginning and you know stuff that was designed for that
completely but this is this sort of isn't really designed for the club particularly I mean it's sort of just designed to be to sound good loud and I think it's it's like I think some some of my favorite electronic music has come around from from people who are really plugged into a certain scene but then also some of it's come from people who are completely
detached from scenes altogether and and I think you know living in La for eight years it's kind of like not been you know I've not been plugged into a London clubbing thing for a long time apart from when I pop up there and and stuff and obviously I still have friends who who play there but I don't think it has any bearing on how you are respected or or um received within the scene but I
acknowledge your point about um for one reason or another separating yourself from it geographically yeah um there's lots of reasons to move to LA no totally but but was to some degree do you think even looking back on it now that there's a subconscious part of this whole experience that has been by design that in a way you are happier when you're not playing nice in the sand pit
with everybody else yeah I mean I was always like that really I mean I sort of had I don't know I I would be kind of shopping my Beats to DJs at like you know various like clubs club nights and stuff and and I hope that they would play them and and and when they did it was always a great feeling but the music always just sounded so different from the rest of the set it was a blessing
and a curse really because obviously it just doesn't fit and that's good when you want to do something when they want to do something different very often they would end on it [Laughter] you either end on a song because it's like peak of the night I'm sending you home with a big fat smile on your face or you're doing someone a solid yeah you end the tune because it's your mate end
the night with a chin because it's your mate and um so I think maybe they just yeah it was like a pity party um God bless that pity party absolutely imagine if you imagine if everyone had decided that it's like an episode of black mirror there's a parallel universe where James Blake's songs like yeah like the Swedish House Mafia or something like the biggest tunes of every single
night and you're miserable you're sitting behind the DJ booth on your 13th bottle of high level tequila yeah everyone's just like taking selfies with you your hair is different yeah you're wearing different hair leather trousers yeah you're wearing leather trousers probably obviously you've got your shirt at least three buttons lower than it is right now it's kind of low right now you
know and it's like there is another Universe where James Blake is the peak era the peak of the night yeah this is I mean there's it's a um in the Multiverse there I'm sure there's one influences this event is so rad who's playing who cares I just love the event that's it that's it that's all I want anyone to say by the way it's happening in Another Universe
but I want to end this universe I know I I I hope that's my Marvel have been trying to fix that for 60 years yes I just want it in in in some permutation of this world that um but maybe hopefully in this one that um somebody's just raving and they don't give a in this universe yeah you are incredibly successful almost 49 year old influences we love you great and this event is rad oh yeah it
is it is look I mean it's it's it's funny because We've joked about this before off the Record about the idea of success other people's version of success who James Blake is to everybody versus who what it is you're actually trying to achieve and I wonder like um there must be times when those two things marry beautifully and it's in Harmony and you're like yeah this is
exactly what I wanted to make and where it sits right now in the conversation and within the audience and where I am is beautiful yeah and then but there must be times because it happens to every artist where you feel a bit misunderstood yeah well I mean that was kind of the purpose of releasing big hammer first I mean it's the it's one of the only songs on the record that doesn't have me singing on it
um but it's also a kind of Nod to an energy that like I probably I can't you know I'm not the Ragged twins you know what I mean so I uh I can't that's there's something I can't do myself but I can the you know the energy of that track is it was undeniable and I needed to put it on it um and it's funny because there are going to be I know there will be going to be
people who who just just not really into it but and in fact there was one review um a reviewer who who normally loves my and he was just like it's like it's just annoying it's just an annoying sound I was like yeah fair I mean to someone to someone who doesn't have any to someone who doesn't have any connection with that kind of music it probably just sounds like crazy frog
well my comments when I put up the this thing someone was like uh was like are you sure this is James Blake and everyone's just like yeah she was a DubStep producer before a singer and like you've exposed yourself as a new fan and there's someone else like people in a comment it's not real James Blake his I don't know he could do it all and it's like the amount of people that came out there and just like
I got people real Defenders coming out the woodwork it was great but hey it's um I didn't mean it's equals division uh amongst the uh YouTube comments of course you did I mean big hammer is not it's hardly no I did I did of course you did it's not like you didn't open the door it ever so slightly be like is anybody is anybody out there you kicked it off intentions it
was designed to be subversive it was designed to make sure that when people wouldn't know what the the album sounded like and the next tune that I'm dropping called loading is with my voice um although when you first hear it I like a lot of people don't know it's me singing but it is I love that though um you have the mastered the ability to make yourself sound like many different
people and it's it's awesome and um and I I know how beautiful your voices and everybody does now how beautiful your voice is naturally and and when it's just um without all effects and everything else like that um but when you are kind of processing your vocals in a way and trying to kind of design a collaborative experience almost a feeling that you're not alone is it
that deep like is it like I'm looking to create something that I'm looking to create a connection artistically even though I'm only here on my own yeah it's definitely a way to have um features without having to deal with um people's egos yeah um but it's a way of separating me from the vocal I'm listening to so that I can then treat it like basically I can do whatever I want
rather than it be this precious thing it's like when I'm dealing with my own vocal I always feel this kind of it's like everything that surrounds it then has to kind of match the identity of me and the vocal and sometimes that's super prohibitive but when I'm pitching my vocal around it's just you know then the beat can be anyway yeah the chords can be anyway the vibe can be anyway it
just it just totally changes it given that you primarily work on your own I know you have a couple of people you work with there's a co-producer and elements on this record and stuff but do you ever sort of do you still suffer from a crisis and confidence do you still suffer from moments when you've lost touch with the with your inner voice and you're just kind of like well
I'm having a bit of an out-of-body experience within my own creative process here yeah well I get sick of my own voice for a start I mean that's that's the thing I just seem to be on all my own songs gets quite boring for you for me yeah because obviously there's so many more songs that aren't coming out as the most people away you know if if they're a fan of mine they're waiting two years
for me to bring out a new song you know for me it's like there's just constant songs of mine floating around and I tend to have to listen to them a lot because I'm producing them yeah so yeah you do get sick of your own voice but at the same time I think my confidence has grown recently I think this album is actually like the most confident I've been putting an album out for quite a long time because
it's not trying to be good at anything you know it's like well I feel like we're friends that break your heart I was kind of trying to be good at songwriting and coloring anything a little bit the same I was trying there was a lot of like Pursuit of something great that I didn't have yet um and kind of uh almost a you know desiry suffering you know it's like that
kind of thing of like it's it's over there and it's very difficult to when you're feeling when you're thinking about something in those terms of acquiring a skill or trying to get to a certain imaginary spot or you're immediately taking yourself out of the moment you are taking yourself out which is incredibly anxious it is and also you're you're you're also kind of admitting that what you are is not
enough good enough right now yeah yeah but also you're gonna have to be the one who judges whether or not you made it yeah and actually it's funny because those those moments did end up you know I mean like friends at Breakheart was probably my best performing album that I've put out even though it was fourth or fifth in my career you know assume forming that probably
um but I still I think to some extent I felt like I was trying to convince the the art form in a way and I and I with this it's like everything every skill that was required to make this record was already there it's Dawning on me now it's not a solo record it's it's an album you've made with all of the people who put these analog synths to get these modular scents
together they gave you these these really cool ideas and the and the starts of something um a lot of the musicality that ultimately informs the songwriting is already flowing through these machines these robots you talk about yeah I mean it's like I probably owe more to like intelligel who make this Metropolis sequencer than I do to Stevie Wonder on this album do you know I mean it's like
there's there's whereas on other albums there were influences that just went all the way through like him like others um but this is um the machines definitely spoke for me in a lot of this and and the the kind of the way of creating you know there's a lot of talk about Ai and stuff but you know generative music's been around a long time yeah yeah I'm way less worried
about the Arts or music I should say very specific than I am about other things no I I'm with you because to some degree as you said we've we've been relying upon these predestined kind of presets and everything else for a long time I mean it's one of the great creative gifts to the modern era is the analog and modulus synth yeah because they ultimately gave you a template upon which to build
copyright free yeah AI is going to open up a lot of possibilities for composition too um I think there's a lot of very exciting things going on with it for example there's this one guy um who creates um a center called sin plant which is a good thing where you can put in any sample say it's a sound of me going and it will the synth worst thing you've ever done with your voice in my presence
by the way like that like a warm-up type thing like that I used to be able to change it I should be able to do it like the okay karate yeah anyway so something like that like a sound and then the synth would recreate that sound on a synth magically it just does it you don't have to do anything that's cool yeah it's amazing it's like if you could just imagine a thing and it just
can be there that's not you know we don't have that if you you want to do that now you've got a citizenth and like you know how to use it figure it it's like there's gonna be a lot of people who can make music who weren't previously able to in the ways that they want to I think it's really interesting but at the same time obviously as with every new technology
it creates uh lack too again I think with I think with the music side of things um you know me my principles are all simple if I go where the artist goes and it served me really well in my life if I've ever tried to chase an audience or do something that I feel to go into a room where people are I fail I mean I I fall flat on my face before I even get to the door but wherever the artist goes
that's where I'm gonna go yeah and and so my feeling is that that you will inform us how you want to use it with an environment that is comfortable for you and in your case it may be using that synth what's it called again oh a sin plant yeah for other people it may be just like Grimes or I think she's hinting at this the idea of like you know putting in a name Warhol Style on a
piece of art that someone else has made and she's like it sounds like me and I stand by it and I didn't lift a finger on it but cool what's the difference between that and yeah she's democratized herself right exactly which is an interesting and new way of thinking about it I think we'd expect nothing less from someone like her to do that you know she's very much at the
Forefront of thinking different but I think um if she's cool with that I'm cool with that as long as she's making money out of it and she's cool that she stands by she sees an artistic Merit to that experience yeah I'm okay with it and so once I figured out because everyone was asking me I'm sure alongside you and anyone else who's kind of makes music their life outside of
family and friends like what about the AI I think once I kind of figured out my position on it at least in 2023 which was if the artists are comfortable using it and use it in a way that makes them comfortable I'm okay with it if someone decides to come out there and sell me a drake record that Drake isn't on and Drake doesn't like it go yourself absolutely and and it's about making
sure that the artists are enumerated I mean that's what I intend to it's not a game I just want to you know take part in making sure that it doesn't end up creating music in people's likenesses that are sold without their kind of yeah having shares in it essentially and also lacks the heart and the spirit and the what it will that car in spirit yeah but anyway but in a lot of ways we're
already existing in a world where what's considered that the framework of that has been removed anyway it's much deeper now in a different way what I mean is like um you know I want to hear the artist stand by it like people say to me you worried about interviews happening in an AI and cutting you out no because they'll be too good my interviews are at times really and annoying and that makes
what makes the good parts good it's got to head the both it's got it also they haven't tried I don't know I don't think they've trained an AI to emulate a New Zealand accent will be the last on the list it's we always are it's just it's too nuanced so nuanced even the way I just said that nuanced nuanced [Applause] it's true we're always the last I mean in this case it might be good maybe
we'll be the last Bastion of humanity down under yeah who'da thought g'day mate yeah AI will confuse you for Australians um just as bad as any Uber driver I'd be more offensive to me than almost anything else yeah not like Australians unless there's a game on in which case I do not like Australians right of course but um because our accents are to New Zealand
is very different and to Australia it's very different but to all of you find folk around the world we're one and the same and we're just not do you hear the way I said of course of course they are yeah it's very patronizing so I didn't mean it to sound patronizing it's actually they are very different um not least because of the way you say your eyes in words thank you
um which is very nuanced very nuanced well I forgot how successful you are down under as well I spent a lot of time down there I love it yeah perfect but we love you thank you is there anywhere in the world that you're not you can't play in terms of like I'm not sure anywhere I'm hated uh I think where your data shows that you like yeah people actively avoid your music um they leave the bar when it comes on
there's places where there's no listeners like we're actually um where do you have zero engagement it's like it's so funny but the idea of you showing up and no I don't know I don't think anyone in Iceland has heard of me that they have I don't know I think it's just Bjork that knows who I am is the idea um all right well we've got work to do then there was a time when I went to
Ireland I mean I you know I love Ireland so much but I went to um a festival it was on a particularly bad run bad Festival run where I was putting up I was put on on all the wrong lineups basically and um I played this faster than Ireland and who else was it Hozier was the was the headline act and he was on at the same time as us right so you can imagine Jose in Ireland yeah
we went out and I was like I was backstage just going like do my general like Okay cool so I can you know you know stretching like just just getting because you know getting older and stuff so yeah yeah getting ready for what was you know like what I was hoping was gonna be a great Festival show anyway the music starts playing um you know the intro walk out music and
we're like right let's go I'm gonna kill this um walk out there's no second row is is one row and then and we're in by the way John Imagine John peel tent size it's like it's 7 000 capacity yeah oh gosh out looking out and there's like a couple there's some people picking up plastic cups closing up for the night look no seriously they're like god let's just use this James Blake set to make sure we
can keep this tent clean um because they can finally see all of the the on the floor that everybody's left so that was yeah that was that was that was really genuinely a low point the last DJ said I ever did I mean I've done them since sporadically but when I was touring right before I came to Apple in La it was like to me and my team working on DJing this was the end of the era was it the Oxford
Academy and I pulled up my tour manager went in and he came out for 10 minutes later he went yeah it's upstairs now [Music] and I went up there and it was the same it was like oh about 12 people at the front and um and at least you can disappear into your piano right I'm up on decks trying to get 12 people to put their hands in the air that's the last DJ set you did yeah
really well yeah on that run I I did like I I did a festival on news even in front of New Zealand headlined after the fireworks display at midnight in front of 20 000 people triumphant return to my home country my agent was like let's put a couple more on yeah just give a couple a couple months put a couple more on it's like yeah sure and it all just fell off a cliff I did a Show
recently with Don Toliver and um it was a rolling loud festival and it was just after we spoke yeah I was wondering how that was going to go because you were basically in your pajamas when I saw you and you're like yeah I'm gonna rolling loud later I was like well you better change yeah right well I did um and but I might as well not have I was stood backstage as he started his
show and and um the we'd not rehearsed anything so it was just a matter of just walking out and doing the thing doing my verse and anyway I had the um my in-ear monitors I got some generic ones basically they gave me some like headphone things right so immediately the things like got caught on my clothes it's tugging so if I walk my my next book being thrown back like that so I
can barely really like you know I can't really move around that much so I'm I'm feeling very stiff so anyway he starts our songs together and um he doesn't introduce me so I'm like I don't know when to come out it's like one of the first times he's done this show and yeah he's going amazing but he's he's in it so if he gets to introduce me and I know I'm like okay waiting for my moment
I'm like okay I think this is where I come in so I start walking out and of course no one knows I'm coming out so and there's no like there's no indication yeah that that's gonna happen yeah so I just walk out like like this Nick's slightly pulled by this thing no one knows I'm coming start walking down this Runway super slowly towards Don he's not looking at me
and my verse starts as I'm walking out so I have to just like while I'm walking just sing the thing until I get to the end I'm looking out no one knows who I am what the song is why there's this guy who's singing on this song I finally get to the end and my verse is finished and then I'm like okay I gotta go so then I walk back and I and I'm like oh that wasn't great and then Justin Bieber
is on the next song and he comes out and he's just like so natural so natural like perfect consumer performer like sort of like does the like you know the like he's got like the rapper moves you know what I mean and he's just going out and killing it and everyone's just like like unbelievable reception I checked the Twitter afterwards and people were like why is Mr Beast on stage
yeah so but in a parallel universe again a parallel universe everyone even flopped didn't it he flopped and he flutt and I was Victorious I found listening to the album for the first time pretty emotional you could tell there's a couple of moments in there and I kind of it got the better of me in a good way I was happy about that well you came around and I played it to you uh in
more of a home setting yeah and I was very very glad to play at you there because it just felt and it was I mean to be honest it was still being made in a way but you know I was finishing it up but um your reactions really gave me like a lot of confidence and I think previously playing it too I hadn't really considered how it could come across live and and what it meant for
the next stage of my career and in a way I'd sort of thought of it as my in a way like a almost like a detour to I like what about this you know like this left field and it actually talking to you about it gave me the confidence in the idea that it was actually the next James Blake album and that it's actually my no this is my sound and this is next era and to put more time and weight
and kind of you know investment behind it because this is in my opinion like my most natural state like it it is it's like I said no there's no skill I didn't need to acquire any skills to make it it just happened from what I was in that moment I think it's how we fell in love with you and what you do and then I think what happened was people then you showed this other side of you that would be sitting
there we've talked about this many times for me it was the BBC session where you did the Johnny Mitchell cover and overnight everyone was like what the has he been sitting on like yeah and I I feel like that then to some degree started to inform what was possible but you're right like and it's lovely to acknowledge that but I for me when I heard I was like oh this is what
would have happened if if that voice had had not come out as quickly as it did yes I think he would have just kept finding the emotion in the robots and like driving that yeah I think that's true I think that's true and and you know to some extent music is kind of like you can never really separate like what you're doing from people's reactions to it and then how that's
informing the next thing that's a beautifully made Point by the way anyone listening to that that's a real put that in the book put that in the Playbook anyone who says they can it's you can't not be informed no it's it's very difficult and and even if you know it's like we we can't really know our true nature in that way uh and so when it comes to it you may just be a victim
of public and conditioning you know it's like you might just be getting the pat on the head when you make a certain type of music and then just going whereas you know that where's the next hit of sugar water so I think when it comes to as I had to I deserved it thank you I haven't heard that I just haven't heard it put that way before it's so true if you just distill that down the idea that
ultimately whatever you're doing in the present moment as much as you want to try to separate yourself from how it's being perceived in order to find a clear state of being going forward it can not not somehow influence your next decision which ultimately means you are attached to that experience which again creates a pavlovian that's yeah and that's kind of how some kind of album how some albums
end up forming because they weren't you know you're not in you're not making it in a vacuum so you have to whereas I feel like because I was making this album alongside other things it kind of was made in a vacuum and because no one really expected me to do anything I was looking at the puppet over here yeah there was a there was a kind of um and I guess the puppet was
um coming back with scissor and the singles from that record and the puppet was also life is not the same and songs like that which I absolutely love but they are me attempting songwriting in it you know it's funny I actually played Rick ribbon coming back and he said it he was like um this isn't a very good song and I had to change it because it was at the time when I first played it's like
it sounds good but it's not a good song Rick has the most amazing ability and this really is his absolute core of his true being to be able to tell you the truth yeah and make you say thank you yeah no matter how harsh it is yeah yeah I think it's there's something very genuine about the feedback and also an absolute and he's now we know this because he's been talking about from
within his book this unwavering belief in his own taste yeah which I love yeah absolutely you know I don't really need a producer a lot of the time what I need is someone to go that's good or it's not within your own catalog and over you know it's like you you this is this is you at your strongest or you this isn't you at your strongest and then you've got to figure out why that is and and I
think Rick's created that and we haven't spoken about this because it's not really my Lane but I I know her as well and we've hung out before I mean how honest is Jamila about this stuff it's funny to say that because jamila's a huge part of why I made the rec This Record because she was always a huge fan of my early kind of electronic stuff and you know whenever I'd go out and play
Live she'd love stop what you're doing and voyeur in those moments and she was like you have to let people see that this is what you're also doing right now and not just you know like you did it when you were 22 like you've you've been doing it this whole time and it's a whole side to you that people aren't seeing let them see it you know because in my mind I was
like right where do you go from friends to break up you go further down that road and and otherwise people won't connect and it's like she was like no this is this is the most quintessentially you thing and she would know given how you know close we are and how she knows me and it's like it I hadn't put my confidence behind myself in that way until she sort of just force me to look at it you know as a
at least you know she was just at least at least entertain it as like these tracks you've made that you've been playing me but you think they don't fit on the right they do you know and and and it's going to be great and it's going to be great live and actually when you came round you said words to the similar effect you know um but more heavily leaning into the live
side like what you were saying about the uh you know um tell me and how you were like this is an and how big hammer might be the opening notes to a show and it's like it just you know it's like watching watching Cartier uh did you mention Kai rolling loud I didn't see the wrong I went to the Forum my first show out of quarantine it was like right it's like
I'm not sure I've actually River recovered I hear it rolling loud with with that kind of backdrop and everything it was it was really unlike the opening notes and like how people how much people knew it was about to just be so anarchic and like dude it's just all you got to do is hear that wake up filthy drop yeah right are you filthy and everyone just goes that's it bad that's it I
mean it blows my mind actually while we're just talking about opium for a second how um I'm used to like varying sounds can can sort of register and people a reaction that is mad but for it to be a producer drop that is all you need to hear yeah and it's like someone just triggers twenty thousand forty thousand sixty thousand people to just go absolutely crazy just that little weird
that little Nokia text message thing distorted with the wake up filter it's genius it's great it's like pulls you into the present yeah right there and yeah and actually that is kind of what we need the most in a way yeah um but yeah without getting too philosophical about that drop I could go on about 20 minutes by that drop um also getting into that idea of um of you talked a little bit about the
sugar water I can imagine that you need someone in your life who isn't no just respect to anybody who's trying to do right by you and put you in the right rooms for the right people but isn't saying well James it's the voice that people want to collaborate with and the production side of things too you know but like people want your tone on their songs I mean
it's it's you're right up there with the sort of samphas and the great vocalists to people like oh please give me some some of your soul on my music and so I can imagine that it might be quite hard to separate that side of what people are asking for in their world versus what you should be doing in your world right yeah and actually it's quite a big bowl of sugar water that one it is and and
um I think the way I feel about it is that without making music like this I wouldn't be in that conversation really even though this might not be the side that everyone knows that that everyone um those kind of people you're talking about like if you want to feature a vocal feature or whatever it's like this might not be that the side they're thinking of yeah but it's also the reason I'm on their radar in
the first place yeah and yeah the more I can be myself the more right those collaborations will be well that's why this sounds so important right because it actually marries the two nicely for the first time yeah for sure yeah it does because you know if you go back and listen to some of my early electronic stuff like it doesn't um there might be vocal samples but a lot
of it isn't me uh whereas this is dance music with my voice on it and that that's new for me that's why I mean before there is obviously the before EP but the before EP is also much more down Tempo generally than this um this is uh you know tell me especially is is heavy and and fast and remember where you go over and over and over it's like oh man hearing you just
willingly and openly press the button yeah you know so it's it's like so if anyone listening the button is the moment in a song where the most obvious thing is the right thing to do right right the most right thing to do if you if you're leaning instinctively into a place where you can imagine 60 000 people going over and over don't shy away from it yeah have the confidence
that it's the right thing and then give them and give it to them uh wow it goes on a long time now doesn't it the the tail I stole it from the BBC wow yeah that's political not really since sound effect nine years no just symbolically I mean you know leave the BBC go to Apple it would take their bomb sound effects listen mate they wouldn't let me take the hottest record
in the world so I stole their bomb the truth yeah they were like no we're gonna keep that I was like well I'll keep that so so they definitely won by the way yeah they won is there an is there another so so another broadcaster can't can't say the hottest record in the world is that trademarked I could have but it would have been a reach for me to go on almost at the same time as
my friend Annie who is doing that slot and go no I've got the hottest record I see because of course because there can only be one hottest record in the world well yeah I mean and it's like best chicken isn't it it's like you can't can you imagine if she'd have gone like here's tonight's hottest record in the world the night came on and was like well actually I have the hottest record
I mean it would have been ludicrous yeah yeah had a successful run you know should probably stay with the company yeah but yeah I'm not mad with what I walked away with no no no no I think you did well out of it I'm still using it yeah it's exactly the same sound effect exactly the same wow yeah wow it used to sound like you could sell that as an nft we still doing it I don't know
who knows that's going to come back and bite me in the ass yeah nft 2.0 revolution in three years time that's not gonna age well that's going to be an EFT what you just said well I just said will be an nft cut that out put it in the file Mark future nfts we'll make a fortune I'm worried I might be an nft you already are in a parallel universe you're only in nft
can an nft can be a physical thing so imagine oh that's interesting you can yeah I just know I'm right houses can be nft yeah that's what I'm saying I get it it works it works for me I uh but I yeah it's a confusing world of um the last 10 to 15 minutes of this album are profoundly moving thank you for asking a question there because I just I didn't have any more banter about nfts what I do and but
yeah I was really sweet thank you um yeah it's it's profoundly moving and um to me it's where the concept of the album truly reveals itself and I think that it actually starts pretty human the album starts as like this human being finding finding yourself in this place where collaborations with artificial intelligence or predestined pre-designed presets things can exist I'm figuring
this out at the end it's like a fully symbiotic relationship which is in perfect harmony is that was am I getting that right that's how it felt feels to me yeah um in other words the the biggest songs are at the front at the top laughs yeah I can't wait for the day that you're an nft no um well look for a start the last song on the album is effectively the title
track and so that's a reveal in itself yeah and then the the as I said at the time when I heard it those three pieces of music almost feel like one bit of music that's kind of flowing together as a three-part piece and it just it just feels to me like you've you've found yourself more immersed in their space than they are in yours it feels like you are in control at the
beginning and perhaps you don't have to control the end yeah that's that's that's an interesting read on it actually and I think the the songs at the beginning um they they are kind of in a way this the sort of spiritual blueprint of the record uh that the the kind of the modular stuff and all that stuff has has kind of followed as well um you know like playing Rebels into heaven the actual track is
kind of sounds like a almost like a church organ which is where the name came from in fact there's a Instagram post from two years ago where it's just this kind of modular synth and it just says uh the the Rope uh the organist that plays robots into heaven that was the caption and I said that and then I just left it and it just I just left it you know and reels or whatever yeah and then it
didn't think about it again until I was compiling all this stuff and then I went back to that name um and that was actually the track playing in that video is playing Roblox into heaven and that's what ended up being the last track so the whole thing is uh a kind of an exercise in spirituality through machines really and and giving it back uh to them in some way yeah um
because I think it's a surprise when you're a musician and you finally especially when you're dealing in stuff like this is it it's it can so easily end up in a bunch of unusable noise um for me uh but when I got the hang of it I was able to create beautiful music with it and that's when you know I'm kind of merely a curator in that space in that in that moment you
know it's like it's spitting stuff out and I'm just going oh that's good that's good you know it's it's not always predictable it can't be REM you know it's it's very hard to remake the same thing again um in fact maybe impossible um so each moment that is on the record that is a modular Jam or whatever is a snapshot in time a jam that will never be made again and that I guess that kind
of special to the to this record whereas a lot of other records there are things I could replay or there's things that could have been made in a different way but but this is yeah to your point it's everything that that creates is it by design it both perfect and imperfect right because it's it's unpracticed it's unrehearsed there is no discipline to it it just exists yeah spontaneous display
of Melody or sound sound design Rhythm something of that nature and then to build something around it to give it life and let it breathe and find emotion Through The Human Experience it's like one of the most like beautiful examples of that you know what craft work kind of ultimately began on a mass level and others yeah I mean it's definitely there's a there's a long line of um
of people who've made kind of human sounding music with with uh drum machines and synths and and all sorts that have that who've who've tweaked them to kind of be more I mean fx20 is a good example you know Chemical Brothers I mean I asked them about it I mean they have hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and they just literally Jam they jam with drums and
loops and figure things out and I'm like you know I think that's the most fun part for them I think the albums are just kind of a byproduct of the joy of doing it exactly that and that's really you know without you know I could talk about it all day on the technical side but really ultimately it's having loads of fun with a bunch of gear and just and then just singing over it and that's
still to come in part two of this conversation Boston's corner with myself and James Blake where we will dive deeper and deeper so deep in fact that you may never come out of the uh circuit board into the modular synth experience how it's affected James Blake's sense of mental well-being and ultimate descent into Insanity it's been actually ironically it's been great for my mental
health because the the way I interact with them I don't use screens I um so it's all just sensory I think you lose um musical intuition and sense when you stare at a screen too long it's like you just can't yeah hear what you're well it's screaming it's screaming at you to refine refine refine refine that's what I found whenever I'm making music it's the hardest thing I can do is leave it
unrefined which is ultimately probably better and I think you just get drawn into this idea the amount of times I've caught myself like it was so much better an hour and a half ago every time I use a computer that's how I feel I got to a point where I was like oh this has happened enough times that I've lost like I have to keep going back to early versions like why am I doing it just
just don't do don't just don't use it yeah and then maybe and you know and then when someone comes into the room if I've been staring at a computer screen for two hours three hours someone comes into the room and I'm just like like I don't have any like human left so I just have to I just have to be like you know talking to me is like it's just very functional like it's I'm
not I'm not really like truly connected anymore and if that's how I am with someone when I've been staring at a computer screen which I think it happens to everyone by the way which is why I think it explains so much of online discourse you know and it explains so much of like why we can't why we're finding it hard to talk to each other in an empathetic way it's like that's what
these screens are doing whether they are designed to do that or not um they are doing that so that's what sort of led me away from screens and that's and modular synth and and kind of Hardware stuff and like gear and that's just you know yeah you could call it like a sort of like obsessive it can develop into an obsessive hobby but it's actually a very connective hobby
it's it's way closer to Bonsai and yeah totally it's way closer to that than it is close to programming you know it's it's way closer to Pottery than it is too you know that kind of intense blow it to me have you ever ever cooked it too critical do you know what give me fine give me a phone can I have it just a bit longer because you're done I'm gonna remove this then
we don't even have Sims anymore there's just a couple of games on this that I do like Tetris I bet what do you do with it when I give it to you listen just give me the damn phone okay get rid of it all right back to Nokia for you mate well there's obviously yeah what don't say it don't you don't you say it there's always don't say it there's always Android get out that's what you should have called the
album music for Androids right yeah um is the bit over yeah it's the thing about bits you've always got to walk them back yeah yeah it's like when you pretend to walk out of a room and then you have to go back in how long do you wait out there for I just don't come back yeah sometimes I don't come back and then I'm like that will show you everyone just got on with
the night and give a yeah yeah yeah you're like whatever it's like when you do it he thinks it's still a bit Yeah Yeah like in the back of the mind of somebody who's done an Irish exit there's always the feeling of I bet they I bet that's confused them yeah yeah I bet they're talking about it and no one cares and I think they're in La is a nice way for us to pause until our next conversation [Music]