Blake’s career arc saw the spectral voice become a conventional front-of-mix singer

Evidence

Listening back to Blake’s records in chronological sequence is like hearing a ghost gradually assume material form; or it’s like hearing the song form (re)coalescing out of digital ether. A track such as ‘I Only Know (What I Know Now)’ from the Klavierwerke EP is gorgeously insubstantial – it’s the merest ache, Blake’s voice a series of sighs and unintelligible pitch-shifted hooks, the production mottled and waterlogged, the arrangement intricate and fragile, conspicuously inorganic in the way that it makes no attempt to smooth out the elements of the montage. The voice is a smattering of traces and tics, a spectral special effect scattered across the mix. But with Blake’s self-titled debut album, something like traditional sonic priorities were restored. The reinvention of pop that his early releases promised was now seemingly given up, as Blake’s de-fragmented voice moved to the front of the mix, and implied or partially disassembled songs became ‘proper’ songs, complete with un-deconstructed piano and organ. Electronics and some vocal manipulation remained, but they were now assigned a decorative function. Blake’s blue-eyed soul vocals, and the way that his tracks combined organ (or organ-like sounds) with electronica, made him reminiscent of a half-speed Steve Winwood. — Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life, 458

Categorization

• XREF: Directly instantiates the book’s hauntology theme — music as ghosts assuming material form, echoing Fisher’s earlier chapters. — connects to: Burial’s sampled vocal style pointed the way for Blake’s sung pop — Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life: Writings on…, 457

Broader Connections

• Burial’s sampled vocal style pointed the way for Blake’s sung pop #corroborates (0.78) — Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life, 457