James Blake announced his
sophomore album Overgrown last month, with details about working with
RZA and Brian Eno. The same day, Blake released "Retrograde" - a
single worthy of the album it will be featured on, but increasingly annoying in
its vocal refrain. With one month left to wait, Blake released "Digital Lion", the track which features legendary ambient musician and producer
Brian Eno.
"Digital Lion" is a surprising return to form for the London producer
that opened up a whole new world of youth inspired music with 2011's
self-titled album. Tracks like "I Never Learnt to Share" and
"CMYK" from the EP of the same name are what's at large on
"Digital Lion". It has build-ups, unexpected segments of instrumentation
and the all-important vocal harmonising. Eno's existence on this track can't be
ignored. His deep synthesised riff opens the track and I’m sure it's his
production skills that put together the reverberating tapping which separates
the introduction to the bass 'drop', as people like to call it. The reverb
increases and becomes a memorable feature as the intro synthesizer riff returns
and Blake's layered vocal enters. There's a strummed guitar half-way in, an
instrument Blake isn’t shy of utilising correctly. The final third is
repetition of Blake's voice chopped up, the Eno synthesizer and a heavily
reverberated percussion segment. It ends with several different Blake's patched
together.
~Eddie
