James Blake teases new album, reveals unreleased song — and explains why he left LA for London

James Blake has teased the release of a new album — and it seems like we won’t have long to wait to hear it.

Speaking at the launch of the Bowers & Wilkins Px8 S2 wireless headphones, the Grammy and Mercury Prize winning artist revealed he’s been hard at work in the studio, working on the follow up to 2023’s Playing Robots Into Heaven.

“I am working on an album,” Blake said. “There is definitely… we are in the, I'd say, the final stages of wrapping that up. I don't have a date, I don't know. I wish I had!”

Blake also gave a debut performance of unreleased song ‘Make Something Up’, his first to see him perform as the guitar lead over his preferred piano. You can catch a clip of the song below, which will also feature in the David Beckham-fronted promo campaign for the new headphones:

“So, the concept of the song is looking at different kinds of phenomenon that we don't really have a phrase for,” explained James.

“The lyrics go, ’It’s not fair when a car becomes a hearse / we never rehearsed that’. ‘When one caress says everything, what's the word for that?’ Lots of different kind of versions of that. ‘When I'm stood up on that bridge / And the voices compel me, even though I don't want to die / What's the word for that?’ Those little things, you know, then it's like, “well, let's make something up.” That's essentially what the song is about.”

Grungier than we’ve become used to from the songwriter, despite Blake’s plaintive vocals, it points to perhaps a rawer sound for the upcoming album.

“It's a song that sounds like freedom to me because I wrote it on a guitar, which I don't play,” Blake said. “When you're writing on an instrument, one that you don't even play, it kind of frees you up to just be yourself.”

Back to his roots

After spending almost a decade in the States, Enfield born Blake is now back in the UK, trading LA for London. It’s a move that’s influenced the sound of the new record.

“I think it's evident in this song,” said Blake.

“This song's a very British sounding piece of music I think. You know, you can be in one place and you've your heart somewhere else.

“I’d felt that for quite a number of years, as amazing as America is right now…” Blake wryly added.

So what pulled Blake back? The unbeatable British sense of humour.

“For a number of years I didn’t miss anything,” he revealed.

“After a while, I started missing the sense of humour. Because I moved out there with English people, so I basically just hung out with English people for about 8 years. No disrespect to Americans, I’ve got some great American friends — but they all grew up with Fawlty Towers, and so did I.

“Coming back here, it's like every conversation you have, whether it's with a taxi driver or someone in a shop, there's a deeply cynical, self-flagellating sense of humour that I’ll never grow tired of.”

There was a creative pull too, with Blake noting that the influence of the internet has dramatically broken down the way creative bubbles used to grow around locations.

“I’d done my time a little bit. Creatively, I was there during a really amazing time in LA. When I first got there, I’d walk into the studio and you've got Travis Scott next door, Stevie Wonder is walking in to work on a track, you’ve got Pharrell. I mean, it was insane,” he said.

“There's a lot of people who I've grown up listening to, who I’d just see around. There was a real feeling of creative germination in that period.

“The industry's quite different now. Things are abstractified, the internet has abstractified that sort of thing. There’s less of a sense of ‘scenes’ — just everything's on the internet and everyone's got access to all the same things. You don't have to be in one place to be creative. So that was one reason and then also, yeah…the other shit.”

America’s loss is our gain – we’ll keep you posted on any updates on James Blake’s new album as we hear of it.

• The 10 greatest ambient albums of all time