A strange stripe of super-star with daringly uncommercial music

[rating]4[/rating]

James Blake is a strange stripe of super-star. His music – a protean post-pop vacuum frozen in autotune– is daringly uncommercial.

Yet the Londoner has climbed the ranks steadily. He supported Kendrick Lamar at 3Arena last year while his new album features cameos from certified a-listers Travis Scott and Outkast’s André 3000.

His own gilded status extends to his private life, with the 30-year-old happily settled down in Los Angeles with Good Place actress Jameela Jamil.

Their relationship would appear to be one of the inspirations behind Assume Form – a woozy act of soul-baring that, under the introspective exterior, is really all about being in love.

What prevents his fourth LP from dissolving into utter slush is Blake’s consistently interesting and challenging production.

Much as Bon Iver has updated folk music for the 21st century, so Blake takes the stripped-down piano ballad and rips away the lingering ostentation and formalism.

In its place, he injects spooky, out of body effects and lashings of cybertronic weirdness.

Consider the dystopian harpsichord deployed on the sweet and untethered Lullaby For My Insomniac.

Or the understatedly folksy I’ll Come Too, a throwaway ditty that finds strength in slightness (not every song has to plunge into the further recesses of the id).

The collaborations go much as might be expected. Scott’s just-out-of-bed delivery on Mile High is curiously attuned to Blake’s gothic beats so that it sounds like a rap -battle unfolding in a haunted house (this is obviously the best idea ever).

The André 3000 hook-up, Where’s The Catch, meanwhile scurries down a rabbit hole of sampled horns, creeping keys and sampled guitar.

It’s chain-clankingly odd and that’s before André turns up with his Honey Monster bars.

But it also marks Blake out as the best sort of original – one whose contradictions grow more fascinating the longer you spend in his company.