Wiki
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Release Date
5 May 2016
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Length
17 tracks
The Colour in Anything is the third studio album by English singer-songwriter and producer James Blake, released on 6 May 2016 by Polydor Records. It serves as the follow-up to his Mercury Prize-winning 2013 album Overgrown. It features contributions from Justin Vernon and Frank Ocean, and additional production work by Rick Rubin.
In November 2014, Blake announced that his third album was "seventy percent done" and would be released in "about five months." In January 2015, he announced the album title Radio Silence. He later stated that the album would feature Justin Vernon (of Bon Iver) and Kanye West, as well as guitar work from Connan Mockasin. In a May 2016 interview with BBC Radio 1, Blake stated that he began work on the album in England, and after "running out of steam" went to America to complete the recording at Shangri La Studios with producer Rick Rubin.
Recording involved writing contributions from Justin Vernon and singer Frank Ocean, the latter described by Blake as "a huge inspiration for this record." Regarding Kanye West's absence from the project, Blake clarified that "I wanted Kanye to be on the song Timeless, but the verse didn’t materialize. I think a huge swath of things happened in his life, and I just stayed out of it." During this period, Blake also worked with singer Beyoncé on her 2016 album Lemonade, contributing to two tracks.
Blake reportedly "explored sitting at the piano and singing a lot more" during the album's conception, and developed a desire "to work with other people on my own projects" in an attempt to relinquish some control over his own work. Discussing the tone of the album in contrast to his previous work, he stated that "I realized that , it wasn't important whether I was happy or sad—it's about sensitivity and your reaction to the world. I wouldn't want to be one of those artists that keeps themselves in a perpetual cycle of anxiety and depression just to extract music from that."
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