Coming towards the end of the year, the umbrella of ‘dubstep’ (whose days of being a mere micro-genre seem far-gone) widens at seemingly breakneck speed to envelop sounds as far-removed as wobble-hungry corporate two-stepper acts Rusko, Skream, Benga etc. and the more self-conscious tripped-out atmospherica heralded by the likes of Burial, Darkstar and Pariah. And it’s around this latter pole that James Blake gathers considerable attention, from both within the mentioned scene and beyond its increasingly blurred boundaries.

This is in part owing to the refreshing parallels between the rising British 21-year-old’s shared roles as both producer and singer-songwriter. Conveniently springing to media attention around the same time as notable contemporary Jamie Woon – whose once raw acoustic compositions are becoming increasingly saturated with dubstep production – James Blake seems to be stepping out of kilter with the tangent of the times, and drifting ever further into the world of the singer-songwriter. His arrival point does share many similarities with the current trend – the XX album being the apotheosis – of British dance-music influence in rock composition, both sonically and in audience. But Blake seems to be passing by his peers in a conflicting direction.

This is most notable in his recent single Limit To Your Love, a bare piano and voice Feist cover that finally puts Blake’s surprisingly soulful croon to the forefront. His production roots slip in gradually towards latter part of the track to seamlessly cohere each chord stab and vocal gush into unexpected harmony, his sub-bass rattles, subtle pitch-effects and echoed snare shuffles comprising an immaculate balance between the intimate, earthly and swung, and the magnetic, mechanical rationality of garage production.

But it’s not merely this fusion appeal, nor his relevance to today’s dub-crossover epoch, that make him a promising act for 2011. More than the ability to straddle two sounds, it’s the flawless and individual mastery of each of his developing career’s many tangents. Limit To Your Love is a far cry from October’s Klavierwerke EP, a decidedly ordered maelstrom of hazy synths, incomprehensible vocal trills and variably coherent piano motifs, reminiscent of Four Tet and Joy Orbison’s recent work. Yet this again was an incredible shift from his CMYK EP that circulated the blogosphere like an epidemic earlier this year: its infectiously warped-beyond-comprehensibility Kelis and Aaliyah samples showcasing the variety of Blake’s influences, as well as the ingenuity of his intent to tap into the nostalgic areas of our collective subconscious, (whether voluntarily or not) awash-with-R&B musical memory.

So if his debut LP promises anything beyond the sonic variety displayed so far, dubstep can find another reason in its own ranks to question the arbitrarity of its genre label.

James Blake’s debut album is due for release on the 7^th February.

Meeting guitarist and founder-member Paul Wolinksi after a live show, we talked about the band’s driving principles, their new sonic direction, The Prodigy and that pesky ‘post-rock’ tag.

Hey Paul, so to start off, what with the more dance-centric sound of your last album, has playing more electronic material live altered the experience of touring at all?

In a sense, yeah, but although everyone talks of our recent work as such a change and our more electronic direction – which it is, and we know that – you’ve got to realise that we’ve always had these elements to our sound. The big difference is that with the last record we had the intention of being able to play it live from start to finish. And while the electronics came to the forecourt at the same time, these weren’t the same ideas – if anything the sonic change was more part of a natural progression. With this record it felt like a whole different thing, almost like a new beginning. We were really worried because so many of the bands we loved hit a real plateau on the fourth album. We didn’t want to do the same thing over and over again. We’ve never been one of those bands, not least because we’ve always felt like we haven’t really hit our stride.

The phrase ‘a band reborn’ has been thrown about quite a lot in reference to you guys – do you think this is a bit of an exaggeration or is there truth in it?

Haha well not exactly, I mean, we’re getting a bit older… We’ve never been one of those buzz bands, because those kind of groups quite often get to the point where they’re just cast off. It happens. So we’ve always taken it slow and steady, and it’s always been hard. It’s getting harder because in all honesty we still barely make a living – I honestly don’t have any money! And that’s not a problem, but, you know, all our friends are getting married and having kids and getting mortgages, and although being in a band instead of that is obviously really cool, we are getting further and further away from real life! And once you’ve gone down that road you can’t really go back. So going into making this new record we were particularly hoping that everyone would like it.

And the response has been pretty positive overall! But what with the sonic thrust of your new album being much more direct and visceral, it’s inevitable that your fan base has somewhat diversified and spread – as a longstanding fringe band how do you feel about this?

We don’t have a problem with it! We’ve always been eclectic music lovers and we don’t really mind if some of the people that have been with us since the beginning do stop appreciating our new directions! If some people loved the early stuff but don’t like the new stuff, then that’s fine! We’d much rather be that band that are always moving forward, and we’ve always tried to be as accessible as possible – there’s never been a real desire to be truly avant-garde or experimental. Obviously being an instrumental band is a great barrier for a lot of people – and I can understand that, but at the same time we’ve grown up listening to the kind of stuff that just doesn’t have singing in it, so it’s never been a big deal for us. We’ve always wanted to make music that way but at the same time we make no secret about wanting to reach as many people as possible because, well, isn’t that the point? We want to make something beautiful – we don’t want to be this little niche project for people that feel left out, we want to make people dance and smile, make people cry or feel sad. We want a response!

There is certainly a common element to your music that comes alive when you’re on stage – it’s remarkable how well the old material fits alongside the new as there seems to be some shared passion driving each song alike – what do you regard this as, what is the driving force for you? What is it that keeps you going?

Well, the main one is – and it will sound ridiculous because all bands say this – but, we couldn’t not make music. Especially now we’ve burned so many bridges, in terms of what we can now do with our lives. I mean we’re getting older now, we couldn’t just apply for a regular job and hand our CV in – we’d be completely screwed! But even if not, we’d still have this thing, we’ll always want to make music and play music. And that’s really it. But while we always feel that need to perpetuate this output of music, at the same time we’d never want to have to start any record just for the sake of it, it’s the positive response that makes it all worthwhile. It all comes down to wanting to be a relevant band, a useful band. We have to be a band no matter what, so we primarily aim to be a good one!

So, this far into 65’s career are you still struggling with the perpetual habit of lazy journo-hipsters like myself throwing around the term ‘post-rock’ in reference to you guys? Or are you learning to love it?

Haha well it really depends! The only problem is being associated with all those bands that seem to still be trying to just be like Mogwai – or maybe Battles these days – who are too busy following in the wake of other bands to hit on anything unique. For me, having developed a much greater appreciation for electronic and particularly dance music, you can relate to the rigid rules that hold this music together, but try and be interesting at the same time. As for post-rock, it’s little more than a useful label for those who might never have heard us to relate us to a whole lot of other bands referred to with the same tag, who, in actual fact, I really like.

I can understand completely, though it does seem difficult to pin your sound down – in terms of influences particularly, it’s not easy to work out your influences and who you might be emulating most of the time. Is there a conscious effort to draw from specific artists and sounds when you’re working?

We certainly don’t talk about it – we never say ‘well let’s take this element from this track or this band.’ If anything we’ll say ‘oh that sounds too much like the Pixies, we’d better change that’. But yeah, I mean we all listen to a lot of different kinds of music, and during the writing process we will try and look at some music, and strip down what makes a great song. For example, if you break down a Prodigy track, and the parts that make it up, it’s such a beautiful thing – underneath all the chaos are the perfect elements, the choruses and the hooks – it’s such efficient music.

Funny you should say that, I was going to bring up Liam Howlett actually!

Oh really? Haha, well although we do that kind of thing, when it comes down to writing and recording we will actively avoid trying to sound like anything in particular.

Which is something that definitely comes across! Anyway – while hopefully not dragging out the theme of We Were Exploding Anyway’s new direction too much – for you, is that movement a permanent shift or more just one tangent in the band’s more continual progression?

At this point it feels more like a tangent – like we haven’t really got the most out of it yet. It wasn’t the album we expected to make. Even after we recorded it and it was getting mixed, we thought we were making a totally different record, one that was even dancier! Initially we were really taken back because we thought we’d screwed it up, you know, but after a while everything seemed to make sense – it wasn’t what we were trying to create, but it was really good! So there’s a whole lot of uncertainty to the process in terms of direction, which makes it difficult to pin down.

So what should we expect from the new EP then?

I’m actually very happy with it! We were all really proud of how the album itself flowed, with the connections between each track – that was what made it click for us. Whereas the E.P. just doesn’t flow at all! But… in a really good way – which we were expecting! Every track was recorded and mixed at the same time as the album, and each was at some point on the record. They’re just all so different – there’s some drum ‘n’ bass on there, and a bit of old-school garagey stuff. It’s basically all the sounds we tried out before we ended up with the album itself. It’s more like CD 2 in a lot of ways – in fact, if we’d been more prepared it would have been nice to release them together.

Really? I think you sidestepped the ever-fatal double album release there!

Haha valid point!

Anyway, avoiding the ‘post-rock’ tag yet again, I noticed that you describe yourselves on Myspace as ‘Electronica/Experimental/Industrial’ – the latter particularly being something that strikes me as odd. If anything there seems to me to be more of a tribal, human element to your sound.

That’s weird – I’ve never heard that before! It wasn’t me, for sure! While the term has been ascribed to us before and a few of the bands around during our emergence probably were what you’d call industrial I certainly don’t think it applies to us.

Industrial or not, the dance music elements running through your music have given you guys unsurpassable crossover appeal! How does it feel being asked to play Glade festival in the same year as somewhere like Sonisphere?

Well I wish Glade had happened! Coming from a long history of touring round small venues and a lot of support slots to being asked to play big stages at festivals – particularly the idea of playing a dance festival – felt like real progress! Sonisphere as well was great – it did take us about half the set to win people over though, there being a whole lot of people up the front who were complete strangers to our kind of music. I think we actually did pretty well! And then to go from doing that to the Edinburgh Fringe festival, soundtracking some contemporary dance – well, it was pretty far removed from Sonisphere!

Talking of unusual collaborations – after getting that Robert Smith vocal on the new album would you consider breaking your strict instrumentalism by working with more vocals in the future?

We’ve never been anti-vocals at all! We were very proud of what we managed to do with the Robert Smith vocal. The question is that if we ever worked with more in the future it would clash with one of our main principles as a band, which is to be able to play live what we record in the studio. While proper dance acts can get away with dropping recorded samples in a live set, we’re not the kind of band that would feel comfortable just playing a loop over our instruments on stage.

I guess that’s a no to doing it Chase & Status style and having Robert Smith projected onto a huge screen behind the band?

Haha, exactly.

So lastly then, coming towards the end of this year, how does it feel looking back, and what’s the 65 frame of mind for 2011?

It’s been a long year for sure. We spent a lot of time preparing for touring, the technology behind it and all the practice that has gone into it has given us a live show that we’re really proud of! The festivals we’ve played have been great and we’re really looking forward to our November tour, hopefully dropping in a few of the E.P. tracks. As for the future, we know that we’re gonna need to get writing again – we just need to convince ourselves that that’s okay, because, I mean, we have to write again! From a momentum point of view, we can’t afford to take a break – if we stop, we run the risk of losing that.

That unstoppable 65 energy is certainly something noticeable! It’s amazing to see how after nine years of near-perpetual touring and non-stop work you can still play ‘Retreat!Retreat!’ and look like you’re rocking as hard as in the original video!

Now what you don’t realise is that when we’re rehearsing it, it’s the dullest thing in the world. It’s only having hundreds of fans in front of you that instils you with that energy, and that’s the reason we keep on doing what we’re doing.

Well thanks so much for your time, I’m sure I speak for every 65kid when I say I look forward to seeing the next stage in the band’s ever-surprising journey! It’s been a pleasure.

Thanks yourself!

And with those closing words the real core of 65daysofstatic seems clear. While it might initially seem slightly empty for a band like 65 to claim an aversion to the avant-garde (especially with previous track titles such as ‘Install A Beak In The Heart That Clucks Time In Arabic’) and exemption from the clichés of other bands with clear post-rock and shoegaze influential forebears, there really is something uniquely distilled in the 65-sound and personality that makes their unfathomably hardcore cult fan base appear deserved. Watching them take to the stage after such acts as Tall Ships, who nevertheless employ the math-rock formula with awe-inspiring coolness and originality, you become more aware of what lies beneath the glitches, the positive wedding cakes of guitar riffs and the soaring reverbs. Moments of clarity arise – particularly in newer tracks – whether suddenly in the climax of the ethereal ‘Debutante’ or masterfully gradually in the progression of the monstrously euphoric closer ‘Tiger Girl’, where the synths, the echoes and the electronics give way to the rusty acoustic innards beneath: the fingers tearing along the guitar strings, the rigid thumb on the bass and the fists driving sticks to drums. You bear witness to the true, visceral humanity holding the whole thing together, and the driving force that make 65 one of the most instantly and consistently engaging live acts around: they’re just a bunch of guys from Sheffield with a whole lot of heart. And this, confirmed vocally by their own attitudes and motives, is why – although they might never achieve true mainstream appeal – they will always rock a lot harder than the rest.

N.B. I notice the term ‘industrial’ has disappeared from their Myspace page. I rest my case.

The ‘Heavy Sky’ EP is out now.

Check out the video for ‘Retreat! Retreat!’ below;

Record Label: IAMSOUND / Family Edition

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The reaction that this EP (unfathomable in purpose, direction and mostly in the sheer fact of its existence) has evoked on my part is only comparable to that of watching cult-flop-B-movie The Room: the questionable minds behind both projects’ appear to have absorbed only the most superficial and clichéd elements of their chosen artform and thrown them into clumsy Frankenstein-esque rag-dolls of works that are as laughable as they are disturbed. As hilariously-confused ‘auteur/actor/producer’ Tommy Wiseau managed to aimlessly string together copiously repetitive establishing shots of San Francisco and lewd sex scenes as much lacking in passion as romance (all with the continuity of a Charlie Kaufman script after being torn apart, eaten and regurgitated), so the hands behind this project tactlessly slap together klaxons, factory synths and vocals that stray schizophrenically between childish misinterpretations of ragga MCing and desperately swaggerless chants that sound like the panicked efforts of a troubled and ageing sociopath who was mistakenly allowed a spot onstage at the village talent show. It’s painful in a way that The Room sidestepped with humour – this is some serious Guantanamo-grade torture stuff. The only way the group can save themselves now is by following in Tommy’s footsteps and claiming this was all meant to be a joke.

Record Label: Thrill Jockey Records

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Now onto their fifth studio creation, psych-doom-blues trio Pontiak make little effort to leave the jarring groove they’ve set out for themselves so far, and the needle is still left scratching. This is the kind of record that wouldn’t be at all taken away from if your engine failed noisily halfway through the third song. Don’t be fooled by the approachability of opening track ‘Young’ – which sounds like an immaculate and refreshing blend of early Black Keys and Battles – everything to come is more exciting, testing and ultimately uglier – a point the band make no effort to disguise (it dissolves instantaneously into over a minute of sparsely arranged distorted monotone guitar chords that comprise the second ‘track’). It’s the kind of record Hemingway and Dali might compromise on in a hypothetical flat-share scenario, and neither of them would particularly enjoy. However there is some majesty to its pure grit – you can’t say it doesn’t pack a punch, however unwelcome it may be. Tracks such as ‘Beach’ and ‘Virgin Guest’ serve as brief oases of gentle melancholia among the alternate screeches and drones of pushed-to-the-limit guitars with their hypnotic waltzes between sultry organs and acoustic strums. Intriguing but largely unpleasant noodling.

Record Label: Souterrain Transmissions

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Dredged from previous B-sides and leftovers, low-key blog-indie-popsters Annuals follow up with a hectically eclectic yet immaculately laminated patchwork quilt of a record that renders the six-piece the missing link between Yoshimi-era Flaming Lips, Arcade Fire and a sunnier Sufjan Stevens. While seemingly not a particularly bizarre elemental mix in those terms, give them mere minutes and Annuals start to get seriously Heston Blumenthal on your ears. Flamenco and calypso rhythms sidle synth trills and maniacally busy keys to singularise the already infectious album-opener ‘Eyes In The Darkness’, before sophomore track ‘Hot Night Hounds’ somehow gets away with intertwining inoffensive grand piano riffs and vocals with a guitar solo that could have sat on a Van Halen album. By the time you get to the middle of the compilation you will have heard Adam Baker yowl like he’s fronting My Chemical Romance as well as chant in what sounds like Swahili. Luckily such experimental variety is entirely propped up by capable songwriting, the melodies and the glitzy PVC production ensuring some form of cohesion. But ultimately, while highlights such as ‘Loxstep’ do survive the unusual formula unscathed and joy-inspiring, the apt question is ‘do I really want bacon ice cream?’

Record Label: Universal

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Breaking news, ex-Placebo-drummer Steve Hewitt has only gone and done a Grohl! Only, as to be expected, it appears that the quality of the originating band of your Grohlite frontman is relative to how much the subsequent project is worth listening to. But why not let a few perpetually inconspicuous has-beens take advantage of the resources and contacts that being signed to EMI has bestowed upon them? Surely the end result won’t be an earful of bland, overproduced fodder for impressionable adolescent rockers and aging Placebo fanboys! Oh wait… Nevertheless, regardless of any ‘It’s-Not-What-You-Know-But-Who-You-Know’-style criticisms of the feudal music industry that would allow this project to exist, it remains inevitable that Hewitt’s experience (with, like, guitars and stuff) has granted him a decent rock sensibility and the ability to pull some decent musicians together to, like, rock. Which it does do, with lashings of grease and angst. The punchy production expertly weaves the positively gurning guitar riff together with an oddly basic drum beat (arrogant drummer syndrome?) in a way that satisfactorily distracts from Hewitt’s predictably amateur vocals and lyricism (‘it’s so sad to see you fade from me’ – chorus material? Really?) comprising something inoffensive, superficially pleasing but altogether pointless.

Record Label: Sharp Attack Records

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The new single from self-professed new-wave four-piece Rubicks seems to perpetuate their apparent determination to resemble a specific time capsule of musical history. Having said that, the band are not entirely lost to irrelevant nostalgia, and manage to retain an infectious energy despite the slightly dated psychedelia emanated by the arm-flailing that so often accompanies Redd’s mystical delivery. The single’s more dynamic moments encapsulate this perfectly – the propulsive piano riff bolstering Redd’s retro-echoed vocal could have been taken straight from The Stooges’ ‘I Wanna Be Your Dog’. The vocals themselves reveal a lyricism whose heartfelt frankness would have been better off un-shrouded by the new wave production – the affectingly contrasting parallel chants of ‘is there any way out?’ and ‘is this love?’ in the chorus comprise the most audible lyrics, and perfectly demonstrate the potential of more clarity in the mix. Overall, it seems that it would take merely a distraction from trying to channel the spirit of Debbie Harry on the part of Redd and perhaps the added production of a third party with more imaginative arrangements to propel the already punchy melodies of these clearly talented musicians to being more than revival tunes.

Record Label: Robot Needs Home

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Apparent Cajun Dance Party twins without the talent, These Furrows make their contribution to the seemingly endless onslaught of beige guitar pop. Their pedestrian nature smears across the track like acne, present even in the lyrical hook of the chorus – however fist-clenchingly emphatic the singer’s delivery is of the line ‘on my own I’m nothing, you take the only piece of me’, it still sounds like an uncomfortably warped Chicago lyric, and would offer little appeal in originality of expression even if Peter Cetera had never crooned those infectious words. This middle-of-the-road pervades even the instrumentation – there’s nothing in the arbitrary noodling of the bone-dry guitars or the yelped vocals that stands out in any way – and all that can be said for the melodies is that they’re catchy, and even then more in the manner of gonorrhea than laughter. There does lie some salvation in the mid section though as the tiresome plinkety-plonk of the verse’s arrangements give way to a maelstrom of distorted guitars and cymbals, bolstered by a riff that could sit comfortably in a Foo Fighters track, comprising a positive jerk of the collar for the listener and a rare and refreshing example of a real rock sensibility in an indie band.

Record Label: Everything On Toast Records

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Somewhere between a horror film soundtrack, afro-pop hoedown and art-rock spasm, ‘tropical surf punk’ three-piece The Heebie Jeebies’ new single is an apparently structureless, aimless and downright feckless mess – but it is a little bit exciting. Enclosed by soundbites of shrieks and distorted maniacal laughter, the two minutes of shambolic musical outbursts that comprise the single resemble a mad kind of abstract mosaic – elements of potential hooks last mere seconds before being thrown to the winds and replaced by messy tempo changes and Doherty-style drawled nonsensical verse. You can’t help but feel that had the band retained specific fragments, the piece as a whole would resemble something substantive – the refreshing afrobeat breakdown about a minute into the ‘song’ could keep the lower limbs twitching for minutes rather than the mere snapshot it remains for, but half-arsed lyrics such as ‘it’s gonna be a long, long time together said the beauty to the beast’ could happily have remained as a lazy scrawl on a crumpled piece of scrap paper for all the good they’d do. For this reason it seems that any refreshingly avant-garde element to their sound is either coincidental or just not thought through well enough to have a direction. Interesting trollop.

Tags: Alice Glass, Baptism, Crystal Castles, Doe Deer, Ethan Kath, Fiction Records, Jo Whiley, Timbaland

Record Label: Fiction

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Stepping away from the raw abrasiveness of previous single Doe Deer, Toronto-based electro-thrash-pop duo and notorious blog-whores Crystal Castles follow up with a single that even Jo Whiley wouldn’t be too reluctant to swipe from late night radio. And it wouldn’t even sound too out of place; Ethan Kath’s searing synth-lead would probably sit comfortably alongside something with Timbaland’s ring-encrusted paws all over it. But whether the hipsters welcome this sidestep into the more radio-friendly with scorn or not, it’s no bad thing for the pair to let their pop sensibility – rather than their penchant for mutilated retro games consoles, epileptic distortion and supposed contempt for the music press – do the talking. Have no fear! The 8-bit bleeps remain, meandering staccato around their characteristically minimal beat and bassline in the verse, after which Alice Glass’s signature piercing squeals return to embrace the aforementioned synth line, comprising a chorus simultaneously affective and propulsive (like Glass herself) without being overly crass. Cue return to the more subdued verse and repeat – a winning formula that helps to keep Crystal Castles in bed with the more avant-garde blogosphere without leaving out the mainstream kids.