Bleep

Having successfully bridged the gulf between sweaty nightclub sonics and the earnest melancholia of a piano man — all while stopping off for some 21st-century defining production with Beyonce, Frank Ocean and Kendrick Lamar along the way — James Blake offers up a perfect amalgamation of his ever-changing sound with Before. ‘I Keep Calling’ and the title track recall Blake’s peerless melodic minimalism through looped vectors of electronic percussion, his soulful delivery manipulated to blur the lines between the digitised and the organic. Meanwhile, the torchlit ode ‘Summer Of Now’ burns slowly with distant beats and a quietly anthemic chorus.