James William Blades

ABOUT THE ARTIST

James William Blades is a composer and music producer who has brought sound to a wide range of multimedia projects, including feature films, music videos, commercial works, and art exhibitions. Blades’ career trajectory maps a visual arts community that shows up in his sound design, a career that begins with fashion designer Grace Wales Bonner, artist Theaster Gates, and director Kahlil Joseph.

In the emerging-talent showcase Fashion East, Bonner was inspired by former slave turned general and Prime Minister Malik Ambar and wanted to create a presentation that would conjure up the interplay between African and Indian culture. The resulting soundtrack collaboration with Blades was “a cacophonous assemblage based in part on recordings [Bonner] had made in the markets of Dakar” (Schneier) during a recent trip to Senegal.

Theaster Gates’s Amalgam exhibition was “inspired by the forced relocation of mixed-race people from Malaga Island in Maine” and “explored the fraught interweaving of race, territory, and inequality” (Gagosian). Blades was involved in producing the soundtrack and created soundscapes for the exhibition, which are layered and multi-dimensional, traditional and modern at the same time. In “Kiss Me Before I Set Sail,” the song begins with a light piano—almost music-box-like—and the beginnings of “Amazing Grace” come in before the click of a tape recorder. “Through history” echoes as a violin joins the track, and new sounds are continually layered in, surge like a wave, and ebb back out. Later in the track, official voices referencing interracial marriage law and its penalties abruptly cut in, first, over the soundscape and, secondly, fainter in the background. You can listen here: Amalgam - James William Blades

Blades credits Joseph and his team, however, for their foundational insight into the potential of music, sound, and narrative together. This work with Joseph (Fly Paper and Black Mary, both 2017) eventually led to his collaboration with Beyoncé on Renaissance (2023) and prior to that on her visual album Black is King (2020) with Jenn Nkiru. A similar connection was made when AG Rojas reached out to Blades after his work with Darol Olu Kae on Keeping Time (2023).

Working with these different visual mediums (fashion, installation, film) so early in Blades’ career has had a critical impact on the development of his style and approach to each. The exploration process became co-constitutive, requiring one to be informed by the other. Due to this foundational intimacy with the visual arts, he now describes his process as “synesthetic,” and his sonic language in terms of landscape painting: his soundscapes move through thrilling peaks and depths with gritty textures or dream-like softness. Blades describes the temporal experience in spatial terms stating, “I like conveying a non-linear sense of sonics, playing around with combinations, depths, tempos, and making it feel like you’re in a moment surrounded.”

Blades’s process is grounded in collaboration, and it shows up in his philosophical approach to artmaking. He begins by sitting down with the director(s) to map the themes and emotions involved in each project. His recent work with AG Rojas on Pare De Sufrir (2024), for example, began with their conversations regarding “the nature of loss and the human spirit” and, in particular, a shared memory: that of their grandmothers’ out-of-tune pianos sitting in an empty room. These conversations guide Blades toward specific tones and textures. From there, he performs “contextual and multi-instrumental research” to translate his vision into a sonic landscape. The Bandcamp blurb accompanying the album states, “The score’s pull is reflective of the process of grief itself, how its moods and memories oscillate up and down into the past and lost futures.” 

When asked how he preserves the coherence and logic of his own music with respect to the content of the film in an interview with Frieze, Blades responded that the joy is in respecting the subject matter and understanding the subjects involved. He believes this respect “naturally conjures its own coherence and logic,” and that these parameters spur creative momentum and give the work a sense of identity. Blades claims “[he] would go mad if [he] had too much of a blank canvas,” framing collaboration as a site of relief, momentum, and extension—not of constraint. Instead, he enjoys the flight between subject-matter: “Last week, I was researching at a centre in Hounslow running a music workshop for children with autism, learning about music and sound as a form of therapy. This week I’m studying music and colour theories, in relation to synesthesia. I enjoy delving into the subject matter and trying to understand the subjects as best I can.”

SELECTED WORKS

Composer
Freediver (2024), dir. Michael John Warren
Been Here Stay Here (2024), dir David Usui
Marion (2024), dirs. Joe Wiland, finn Constantine
Lollipop (2024), dir. Daisy-May Hudson
Pare de Sufrir (2024), AG Rojas
Tendaberry (2024), dir. Haley Elizabeth Anderson
Keeping Time (2023), dir. Darol Olu Kae
Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé (2023), dirs. Mark Ritchie, Ed Burke
Power Signal (2023), dir. Oscar Boyson
Mutt (2023), dir. Vuk Lungulov-Klotz
Daron, Daron Colbert (2022), dir. Kevin Edward Steen
NYC Point Gods (2022), dir. Sam Eliad
Starfuckers (2022), dir. Antonio Marziale
Black is King (2020), dirs. Emmanuel Adjei, Ibra Ake, Blitz Bazawule, Beyoncé, Pierre Debusschere, Jake Nava, Jenn Nkiru, Dikayl Rimmasch, Dikayl Rimmasch
Montblanc feat. Spike Lee “What Moves You, Makes You” (2020), dir. Jaron Albertin
Sundays at the Triple Nickel (2020), dirs. Jess Colquhoun, Adam Rachlitz
Second Eulogy: Mind the Gap (2019), dir. Billy Gerard Frank
Dépaysée (2019), dir. Ruslan Fedotov
Sampha: Process (2017), dir. Kahlil Joseph
Half Way (2015), dir. Daisy-May Hudson

Soundtrack
Black is King (2020), dirs. Emmanuel Adjei, Ibra Ake, Blitz Bazawule, Beyoncé, Pierre Debusschere, Jake Nava, Jenn Nkiru, Dikayl Rimmasch

Fly Paper (2017), dir. Kahlil Joseph

Music Production
Black Mary (2017), dir. Kahlil Joseph

Installation
Gulf Tones (2019), dir. Haley Elizabeth Anderson
Amalgam (2019), Theaster Gates

SELECTED INTERVIEWS

Haley Elizabeth Anderson in Conversation with Eric Lavallée. “Interview: Haley Elizabeth Anderson – Tendaberry” Ion Cinema. February 26, 2024. https://www.ioncinema.com/interviews/interview-haley-elizabeth-anderson-tendaberry

Billy Gerard Frank in Conversation with Katy Diamond Hamer. “Self and Community: Billy Gerard Frank Interviewed: Exploring Grenada’s past and present.” Bomb Magazine. September 26, 2019. https://bombmagazine.org/articles/2019/09/26/personal-essay-billy-gerard-frank-interviewed/

James William Blades in Conversation with Frieze.com. “Music in its Broadest Sense.” Frieze. March 12, 2018. https://www.frieze.com/article/music-its-broadest-sense

SELECTED REVIEWS 

Blades, James William. “Pare De Sufrir.” Bandcamp. October 4, 2024. https://jameswilliamblades.bandcamp.com/album/pare-de-sufrir

“James William Blades Releases ‘Pare De Sufrir,’ The Score for A.G. Rojas’ Film” 23. October 4, 2024. https://twntythree.com/james-william-blades-releases-pare-de-sufrir-the-score-for-a-g-rojas-film/

Gotrich, Lars and Sheldon Pearce. “New Music Friday: The best albums out Oct. 4.” NPR. October 4, 2024. https://www.npr.org/2024/10/04/1203595450/new-music-friday-october-4-2024

Grierson, Tim. “‘Black Is King’: Review.” Screen. August 3, 2020. https://www.screendaily.com/reviews/black-is-king-review/5151917.article

“Theaster Gates and the Black Monks: Amalgam Vinyl.” Gagosian. 2019. https://gagosianshop.com/products/theaster-gates-and-the-black-monks-amalgam-vinyl-album

Schneier, Matthew. “Grace Wales Bonner, a New Designer Who Looks to African and Indian History.” New York Times. June 17, 2015. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/18/fashion/mens-style/grace-wales-bonner-a-new-designer-with-ancient-history.html

“Deep in the forest: Theaster Gates at Tate Liverpool.” Inavate. https://www.inavateonthenet.net/case-studies/article/deep-in-the-forest-theaster-gates-at-tate-liverpool\

ADDITIONAL CONTEXT ABOUT THE WORK

Curto, Justin. “Voguing Our Way Through Renaissance A track-by-track dance reference guide to B7.” August 2, 2022. https://www.vulture.com/2022/08/beyonce-renaissance-samples-credits-dance-music.html

Fountain, Rasheena. “Beyoncé’s Renaissance Proclaims Blackness and Black Sound Beyond Mainstream Borders.” Medium. August 5, 2022. https://medium.com/climate-conscious-collabs/beyonce%CC%81s-renaissance-proclaims-blackness-and-black-sound-beyond-mainstream-borders-560f7a93bd8

Verner, Amy. “Theaster Gates explores the troubling history of a coastal community forced out of home.” Wallpaper*. October 10, 2022.

“Theaster Gates: Amalgam.” Tate. December 13, 2019. https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-liverpool/theaster-gates-amalgam