James Blake has opened up about the remarkable process behind “Death of Love,” a standout track from his latest album Trying Times, revealing a combination of sources that range from one of music’s most revered voices to an archival recording of one of history’s most famous disasters.
Speaking with co-producer Dom Maker — one half of Mount Kimbie — as part of BBC Radio 6 Music’s Artist In Residence series, Blake detailed how the track came together, pulling from his dual identity as both a soulful songwriter and an experimentally-minded producer rooted in post-dubstep.
Trying Times as a whole reflects that duality. Blake’s heartfelt vocals sit alongside scattered electronic beats, nervy synths and processed samples, drawing on influences as wide-ranging as Joni Mitchell, D’Angelo and Leonard Cohen while retaining the cerebral sonic adventurousness that defined his early career. “Death of Love” is perhaps the clearest expression of those two worlds colliding.
At the centre of the track is a sample lifted from Cohen’s “You Want It Darker,” the title track from the late singer-songwriter’s 2016 album. Clearing that sample, however, was no straightforward task. Blake explained that the Cohen estate is notoriously protective of his work, making approvals of this kind exceptionally uncommon. “His son actually cleared the sample,” Blake said. “I don’t know of him ever approving a sample — it’s quite rare, so I was very honored.” The clearance came through Adam Cohen, Leonard’s son, lending the collaboration a personal weight that goes beyond the music itself.
But Cohen’s voice wasn’t the only unexpected element Blake and Maker wove into the production. In a separate revelation from the same conversation, Blake disclosed that “Death of Love” also features a piece of genuine historical audio: the real Morse code distress signal transmitted during the Titanic’s sinking — the actual SOS mayday broadcast from the ship. Blake explained that he had experimented with various options before landing on the archival recording, noting that it was simply the version that worked. “The only thing that sounded good was the real Morse code from the mayday on the Titanic — the SOS signal,” he said.
The juxtaposition is striking. Cohen’s “You Want It Darker” was itself a record widely interpreted as a meditation on mortality, recorded as the artist was in declining health and released just weeks before his death in November 2016. Placing that alongside a distress call from one of the twentieth century’s most catastrophic losses gives “Death of Love” a layered, almost overwhelming emotional gravity — one that feels entirely intentional coming from an artist as considered as Blake.
That Blake managed to secure the Cohen sample at all speaks to the esteem in which the estate holds his work. That he then paired it with a century-old emergency transmission speaks to the kind of lateral, instinct-driven production thinking that has always set him apart. Where another artist might have reached for a conventional sonic reference to underscore a theme of loss, Blake went to the archive, found something real, and let it speak for itself.
Trying Times is out now, and “Death of Love” stands as one of its most ambitious moments — a track built from grief, history and a rare act of trust from a legendary artist’s family.
Sources: Latest from MusicRadar, Latest from MusicRadar
