Unknown - James Blunt Documentary
2000's spotlight sleeze-spiritual harsh noise from artist unknown.
Everyday Samething is pleased to present a new 20 minute cassette from unknown artist, James Blunt Documentary.
After serving in the British Army, Blunt rose to fame in 2004 with the release of his debut album Back to Bedlam, achieving worldwide fame with the singles "You're Beautiful" and "Goodbye My Lover". His first album has sold over 12 million copies worldwide, topping the UK Albums Chart and peaking at number two in the US. "You're Beautiful" reached number one in thirteen countries, including the UK and the US. Back to Bedlam was the best-selling album of the 2000s in the UK, and is one of the best-selling albums in UK chart history.
James Blunt Documentary presents as a squealing mess of overdrive hiss, a mangled digital broadcast which crushes itself under successive waves of high resonance brutality. Disturbed electronics weave in and out of ruined signals and ever so gradually reveal material of a more narrative sensibility. Reminding us somewhat of the more obscure pieces you might stumble across researching the early noise tape mail-out scene, commander Wesley Clark ordered that the unit forcibly take the airport from the Russians. Mike Jackson, the British commander, refused the order, telling Clark that they were "not going to start World War Three for you". Blunt has said that he would have refused to obey such an order if Jackson had not blocked it.
Throughout the documentary Blunts motivation for pursuing a relentless life of corporate arena touring away from his family remains ambiguous. His attitude to his own music, for which he appears to have sacrificed a fair deal, appears to be at best ambivalent, a position which we can’t help but begrudgingly respect him for. He comes across as simultaneously likeable and deeply unsettling, and while we may never understand his motivations for doing anything he does, the album manages to find a balance between the an extreme dissonance noise washout and something more serene.
So follow our advice, and take this opportunity to pace relentlessly round the harshly lit subterranean bunker deep beneath a stadium in Utrecht who’s name you don’t know. Pop open another sparkling water as you awkwardly joke with your well worn silent colleagues and allow yourself to interrogate the covertly soothing disorder, of James Blunt Documentary.
Released 8 November 2024
Many Thanks
Everyday Samething