'Trying Times' is James Blake's first record as an independent artist, but it's not necessarily a reaction against everything that has come before. James highlights his third album, 'The Colour in Anything' from 2016, as a reference point for this record. "This album is like if 'The Colour in Anything' was more concise and actually got a shot at the runway," he says. Perhaps by "shot at the runway" he is referring to that very mid-2010s surprise-drop release model that absolutely no one with any sense would do today. "I was like, right, well, you know, it worked for Beyoncé, let's just drop a record, right? Big mistake," he laughs. "It ended up being my favourite album, and it was also a lot of fans' favourite album. It's dense, but it's also something that contains a lot of my best songs. It's a record that grew on people, and I think there was a sort of magic and a vibe to it that was quite different from some of my other records," he explains. 'Trying Times' shares some of the same vaulting ambition and ambience but deploys it more instinctively. "This record is a lot more symmetrical," he says. "It's very lean as well. There's no fat on the bone, if you know what I mean. I don't actually eat meat, so I don't know if that's the right phrase," he laughs before searching for a more vegan-friendly description. "There's no water in the tofu. There's not a moment that loses attention. There's no indulgence at all. There's not a moment where it's like, 'Oh, all right, mate, come on, we can go to the next one now.' Every sound has a purpose. There's something for every mood, but there's also a through line, there's a journey. "I think the record starts out quite questioning and potentially pessimistic. Then it becomes more hopeful. Then it becomes very beautiful, then it becomes quite ravy. Then it becomes quite peaceful. I think that trajectory is like there's a hero's journey to it. There's a feeling of completion when you reach the end. It's a beginning, middle and end type situation, which I think helps it feel like it has an arc and wraps it in a bow by the end."

There's a startling quality to the best moments on the album. A rawness that is reflected in James trying out a different way to compose. There are guitars here, for a start. Really quite loud ones. The anthemic, festival-ready, skyscraping chorus of 'Make Something Up' feels like a revelation. "My dad taught me a bit of guitar, but only a bit," says James. "I'm intuitive to most instruments because there's sort of like a background knowledge of music. If I can literally make a sound and I can figure out where the relationships are between the notes, then I can probably make something. I can play it just about, but mainly it's what it does to the writing. It frees you up because of how much it makes you simplify the song; it becomes easier to write. Whereas when I'm at the piano, I can really complicate it. I can really play tons of notes and get in my own way." The pivot to guitars on 'Make Something Up' and a few others on the album highlights James' desire to play with form and structure and warp traditional sounds and shape them to his vision. "I can't wait to play that live," he enthuses. "It's something quite different. I think it's sort of like a mini era unto itself. It harks back to some of the more guitar-led influences I had growing up. The things I sort of absorbed by osmosis, even though I wasn't massively into guitar music at the time. When I listen back to Morrissey or I listen back to Jeff Buckley or I listen back to, even Oasis, they have been influences to me. It's great, fun material to work with if you've not really worked with a lot of it before. You're approaching the guitar and the feeling of an anthemic guitar song with completely fresh ears. "The production on 'Make Something Up' is kind of spooky. Listen to some of the sliding, ghostly stuff in the background. I'm not saying it's, you know, utterly unique, but I just think it feels different to a lot of the guitar music that I've heard, and I think that's because it's being approached from a different angle, and that's quite fun. When I think about going out and playing that at Glastonbury, that's where I see that. I see myself standing in front of the stage with a guitar, singing the song, and having the crowd sing it with me. That's the vibe. That's the moment I'm envisaging." One of the life changes that has influenced James on this record has been moving back to London after a decade away in America. It's no coincidence that 'Trying Times' is a very British album in tone, mood and sound. One of the standout tracks is a collaboration with the UK's greatest current rapper, Dave, on 'Doesn't Just Happen', returning the favour of James' contributions on Dave's latest album, 'The Boy Who Played The Harp'. Working creatively in the UK provides a significant vibe shift after years within the glossy world of Los Angeles sapped much of his enthusiasm. "One of the main differences between living in London and living in Los Angeles is that nobody gives a shit whether you are successful or not," he explains. "They don't give a shit about how big your house is or how much you spend on a meal. There isn't a status obsession. I think it doesn't matter how strong you are, but with the constant celebrity worship and the insatiable desire for success in Los Angeles, it's hard not to let it affect you at all. I lived there for 11 years. I protected myself as much as possible. Of course, the people I'm working with in terms of my label, as well, are looking for that, though." The celebrity obsession in US culture was one of many issues that contributed to James' disillusionment with his record label and the structure around his music, something he experienced firsthand. "I would have an hour call with my label, where I'd play them all my new songs," he remembers of an experience with a previous album. "And then right at the end, I'd be like, 'Oh yeah, I've got this one that I'm working on with Travis Scott'. They've not said anything for the whole meeting, and then, right at the end, there are all these fucking fire emojis in the chat. Why am I not enough? It's hard to never feel like you're enough for the people that you're delivering this music to," he says.

When you hear him speak about the realities of life as a creative person working within the major record label system, you truly begin to understand why it's become James' passion in the last few years to educate and shine a light on some of the injustices of the system and work towards a fairer and more equitable framework for artists, both financially and creatively, burnished with the freedom of returning to the UK. "Coming back to London and feeling grounded in that way, and now being independent and not being on that kind of label anymore, I didn't feel any of that pressure at all. Pressure to fulfil an obligation to shareholders, essentially. I mean, it's not like I actually was thinking that, but that's what their thing is. I deliver them an album, like 'Playing Robots Into Heaven', and you see the disappointment; it's palpable." James is candid as he describes the feelings of real-time rejection. "The disappointment is so sad - to spend two years on an album and then for people to be visibly disappointed," he laments. "I heard through a secondary source that somebody very high up had said, 'Well, we're not funding that kind of art, it's an art project'. Somebody who I was working with in management at the time insinuated that I'd bait-and-switched by not delivering a pop record because there was this excitement that I was gonna deliver this record. And they were like, 'Well, you baited and switched, you gave us 'Friends That Break Your Heart'. It's not what we thought we were getting'. "These are the kinds of messages that I was getting over there. And I think, honestly, it's dark," he says. "It's the opposite of the light that I bring to my music and to music. The people are the opposite of that. I'm incompatible with that. And that's why it never worked. So, not being surrounded by people who are disappointed by the music I'm making is a massive change. Everyone has been supportive and excited and accepted me in a much more natural way," he explains about the liberating feeling of being back in the UK. "The UK enables that by not having such high expectations. It's funny because we, in a way, have tall poppy syndrome, right? But in actual fact, not setting your expectations commercially so high allows artists to be more themselves. And actually, I think America, because of its capitalist mindset, that hurts the ability to innovate in art. Obviously, there is so much amazing music that comes out of America, but I think a lot of artists that I know struggle with the fact that they just have to meet really relentless demands, and those demands keep increasing." James' time in Los Angeles initially coincided with the most commercially successful period of his career as he worked with global megastars on the biggest albums. He did 'Blonde' with Frank Ocean, and he worked with Beyoncé and Rosalía. It felt like the possibilities were endless. It was an enthusiasm and creative drive that was unsustainable. "At a certain point, you become part of the furniture in LA," he says. "LA is the kind of place where every day feels kind of the same. So people would be like, 'Oh, James Blake. Oh no, he's just in LA. He just lives there'. That whole kind of level of exoticness that you are when you first get there, it just starts to disappear."

Back in the UK on 'Trying Times', James is now singing the lyric "I don't have ambitions" in the song 'Didn't Come To Argue'. Is the lack of ambition a result of being ground down by Los Angeles life? Or should we frame it in a positive way, in terms of living in the moment and enjoying what you have, as the song feels uplifting and energised rather than desolate or bereft? "That song is about leaving society because you've had enough. So it's not that optimistic," he laughs. "But it's in a beautiful way. 'I'm gonna run away to the mountains and just enjoy some fucking peace' kind of vibe. Also, it's the struggle that led you there and that feeling of, you know, 'I'm out of here anyway'. That's one of the lyrics in that. 'Well, I'm out of here. I'm out of here anyway'. It doesn't matter. It just doesn't matter what happens from here because I'm one foot out of the door. I don't need this version of society. I don't need this version of life. I'm planning my escape. I don't need to care what people think. I don't need to care about what I'm supposed to do." It's a liberating feeling that runs throughout the album. "That's why this song sounds uplifting and liberated. Even though it sounds pessimistic, really, it's seeing beyond the veil, you know, behind the veil, and going, 'Oh, it's actually all nonsense. I'm actually fine. Yeah. I can go. I can leave'." Elsewhere, on the concluding track 'Just A Little Higher', James emphasises just why people have a desire to completely withdraw and escape from the hellscape of modern society. It feels like a weary clarion call that urges people to open their minds to a threat that gets more insidious every day. "Adjust your sights," James sings - but who exactly is he calling on here? "It's not addressed to humanity at all. It's not even addressed to me," he explains. "It's addressed to people who think the problem is some group that is somehow, in some way, the reason that they can't have what they want. We've had a lot of conversations like that in this country, with the rise of leaders who are turning us against each other. Yeah, yeah. There's always a financial and political reason why it's great to have us infighting. That's why it's profitable to run accounts that are just churning out stuff that points the finger at a certain group or whatever. "That song was written at a time when there were these kinds of white nationalist protests being organised. It was a fearful time in our country. People were afraid to leave the house. If you weren't the right colour, you were afraid to leave your house. It was scary to think that that could happen in our country. But even scarier to feel that it doesn't come from real information. As my girlfriend often says, we're not having different reactions to the same information. We're having different reactions to different information. Because we're all in our own algorithm bubbles, right? "We now know from Cambridge Analytica and all that kind of stuff that they can just find out what your general interests are and then just target you with a bunch of propaganda separately from other people who are not seeing that same stuff. So if you're a man of a certain age and you're white, then you're quite literally on a list of people who are being sent different information, fearful information about people who don't look like you." The song concludes by addressing the people who are orchestrating these troubled, trying times with the line "cause they're playing us from a great height". "The message of that song, for me, is self-evident when you listen to it, but it's to say that the real target is above," says James clearly. "Above all of it is who you should really be looking at, who are untouched by any of this. They're not in the streets, they're not in your local, they're not in your school or your place of work. They live in rarefied air. And they're pulling these strings. It's hard to see it when most of your view is taken up by this kind of internet pipeline. This song is not blaming. It has empathy for viewpoints that I disagree with, and I think are dangerous, but it is saying there's a much more nefarious target that you're not even taking into consideration here." A song like 'Just A Little Higher' is the sort of political and social statement that marks James' writing out as more important than ever. He has a defined sense of purpose, arguably stronger than at any point in his career. Creatively and professionally free and emotionally open, he's on a new path of enlightenment. "I want to prove the model," he says stridently. "Creativity has often been linked to depression and anxiety. They're not linked. If anything, depression and anxiety don't make you more creative; they make you less creative. They block you. What potentially makes you more creative is having real emotional reactions to real life, not perpetual broken PTSD mechanisms that are responding to things that happened 25 years ago, that keep playing out, and then you just write about the same thing over and over again, and you run out of cool ways to say it. "There's nothing creative about depression," he continues, his voice rising. "Depression makes you feel nothing. So what causes depression, though? It's repressed rage. It's giving up your control and it's self-betrayal. Those things are almost mandatory when you sign the wrong contract, and you enter into an industry full of people who may or may not have your best interests in mind, right? "The amount of repressed rage I've had for so long cannot be directed at any one person, one thing, because it's a group effort. The corporate effort. The purpose of a corporation is to literally distance the individual from responsibility - personal culpability. So you're putting music, which is the most sensitive thing on Earth, and a musician, which is one of the most sensitive types of person on Earth, in a situation where they are dealing with something that has absolutely no culpability or responsibility and has a relentless drive for profit. It doesn't really care about your art, but has made a bet that if it makes high turnover and doesn't actually develop artists and support them, then it will make more money. That bet works for a while, and now it's actually not working."

For a good few years now, James has been leading the charge on how to firstly recognise and, more importantly, try to fix the music industry. "That was a prediction I made many years ago, that this model of not really supporting art but investing in things that have high turnover will come crashing down in the same way that the mortgage loans did," he says. "It's like a crash. It's like an art crash." For James Blake, the only way out is for artists to take ultimate responsibility. "This is the least anxious and depressed I've been, and it's because I'm in control," he says. "Even though it's harder financially, it's more stressful, and it's more dangerous, the reward is that I don't answer to anyone. And the reward is that I don't have weeks and months where I am angry and can't write. I'm so much more creative. The flow is unblocked completely. "All of my drive is to educate other artists and tell them the things I've discovered. All my drive to do that is to unblock them creatively. It's the same thought process as me going into a studio with an artist and helping them make a song. I'm a producer, but part of one of my tools as a producer is helping unblock people emotionally." With all the work he has done emotionally on himself and with his desire to work towards a bigger, more altruistic purpose, has James Blake thought about his overall musical legacy in even bigger terms? "No, I don't care about legacy," he answers. "I used to, but having discussed it, I realised that I'll just be dead," he laughs. "If anything, I've sort of realised the opposite, which is that I need to spend a lot more time enjoying my actual life. It doesn't actually mean anything if a single stranger cares about what happens to me. I love the people who listen to my music because I feel like there's a connection that's being drawn there. That connection exists now. If people are listening to my music after I'm gone, and that's what we consider legacy, I'm not going to have that connection with them, so I think it doesn't really mean anything to me." On 'Trying Times', it feels like that connection is stronger than ever. It's rare that any artist makes their best album with their seventh record. "I think despite the fact that it's probably the simplest message, 'Trying Times' is the pinnacle of what I'm capable of," he says, referring to the title-track, but he could easily be talking about the album as a whole. "I think the reason for that is not because it's clever. It's not that I'm in the studio tinkering and creating a masterpiece. It's not that. It's that I completely let go and I gave in and I allowed it to wash over me. I think that for me, as somebody who overthinks, as somebody who has such an overactive mind and who thinks quite fast, where it can kind of encumber me a lot, that's probably one of the biggest achievements that I could ever hope to achieve." 'Trying Times' is an album that is operating on a bigger emotional and cultural scale than anything else James Blake has put out before. A record befitting one of the modern greats of popular music, finding a new, greater personal and artistic purpose. Pop music as a vehicle for societal reflection is more important than ever, and James Blake is ready to meet the moment. "This time I've been like, well, let's put ourselves out there and see what it means to really back this record in a more profound way." ■ Taken from the April 2026 issue of Dork. James Blake's album 'Trying Times' is out 13th March.