Defined by blurred, loose and visible brushstrokes that capture fleeting moments of colour, light and movement, Impressionism emerged in the late 19th century as a radical break from artistic convention. Finding affinities between the art movement and his own practice, British composer and music producer James William Blades speaks of his compositions in painterly terms. “There’s a language that can only really be described in the way that we’re talking about it,” he explains, “as a sort of painting.”
I meet with Blades at Young Space, a beautifully renovated former milliners in De Beauvoir Town, London, that is now home to the offices of his management as well as a creative incubator and salon for young composers and music producers. It is nearby that Blades, his wife, and their weeks-old son are spending the summer—a temporary reprieve from the cacophony of New York, where they are now based.
Rejecting the idea that something must be unnecessarily academic to be affective, while he credits his early studies with teaching him what to “break,” “change” and “fragment,” in technical fluency Blades sees not rigidity, but a means of liberation—an entry point to ambiguity, improvisation and spontaneity. Holding in equal regard the virtuosity of classically trained instrumentalists and the intuitive brilliance of those that are self-taught, he points to his own “jack-of-all-trades” understanding of instrumentation as enabling him to articulate his thoughts with clarity and intention—although he modestly concedes to hiring musicians who can “play way better than [he] can.”
Across a body of work that includes film scores for Letitia Wright’s Highway to The Moon (2025), Oscar Boyson’s Our Hero, Balthazar (2025), AG Rojas’ Pare de Sufrir (2024), Beyoncé’s Renaissance (2022), and Antonio Marziale’s Starfuckers (2022) as well as soundtracks for Wales Bonner’s Jewel SS26, Midnight Palms SS25, Marathon SS24, Dream Study AW24, Horizon Blues SS23 and Twilight Reverie AW23 shows, the cornerstone of Blades’ practice is collaboration. Speaking highly of his longstanding creative partnerships, including his ongoing work with British-Jamaican menswear and womenswear designer Grace Wales Bonner, he delights in stories of working with sublime instrumentalists and vocalists—whether harpist Ranie Ribeiro for Jewel SS26 at the Lycée Henri IV, masenqo player HaddinQo for Marathon SS24 at the courtyard of La Monnaie de Paris, or even receiving a voice note by the Grammy Award-winning lyricist and rapper Kendrick Lamar for Twilight Reverie AW23 at the Hôtel D’Évreux in Paris, France.
“Stepping back” and “tinkering” until the very last moment, Blades layers original scores and stitched samples until they become “abstracted,” “blurred” and “otherworldly.” More interested in capturing emotional essence than in literal depiction, his arrangements, compositions, and sonic landscapes do not merely accompany a scene or collection— they refract, shift and shimmer, at once universal and intimately personal to each listener.
I’ve always done music from a very early age. I went to study music production at Leeds College of Music, and once I was there I fell in love with composition. It wasn’t necessarily something that was offered on a [wide] level, but they did have a composition side—which I took—and my tutor was like, “You need to do this more.” Then I ended up doing a masters at the Royal College of Music, which I kind of felt I snuck into. It’s quite an established place. I was like, “I’ll try,” got in and then I did two years of composition [there], which gave me more of a foundation of sorts, but—because I wasn’t necessarily from that background or a more classically trained composer, I was producing music, I was in bands—it was quite restricting in terms of the tradition. Ultimately, I was really glad that I had that base level of an education to understand what you can “break,” so to speak. And so, that was more the academic side.
Everything else up to this point has been learned through collaboration, from people like Grace [Wales Bonner], or Khalil Joseph, or Theaster Gates. When I worked with Theaster Gates, I felt like it was just an education in how to approach music and sound. I was quite young in my career then and I was just in awe. You take on these things by learning from their approach. I’m very grateful, ultimately, to my collaborators over the years.
Yes, a bit of everything. A jack of all trades, master of none! [Both laugh]. I know everything enough to allow myself to be able to articulate what I need to articulate, but I’m smart enough to hire instrumentalists who can play way better than I can.
It’s not that I’m less interested in the technique, because the technique is really important, but I’m more interested in the emotion of music. I work with a lot of amateur musicians who have a really unique way of playing because they’re self-taught. I think self-taught musicians are really interesting to work with because of the emotion that they put into the instrument. I’ve [also] worked with some incredible musicians from the Juilliard and places like that, who are amazing, absolutely inspiring. Neither approach is better or worse, but it’s really interesting working with self-taught musicians because I often find that they have something else that is kind of indescribable. It’s just so personal to them.
My grandmother was very musical. Watching her play the piano on this very out-of-tune thing—she obviously doesn’t play as much anymore so whenever she would sit at the piano when I was younger, she would always be sort of “recalling” the memory of what she was playing, working it out, being a little bit slower. She [would be] in this room at the top of the house… I always remember being like, “This is amazing.” The way that the music was being played sounded different, because it was her playing it. It was different to a really amazing pianist being like, “I can play you this.” It was much slower and you could feel the space in between. I think I started playing like that. I was trying to work things out myself, trying to imitate that. I was always very aware of tonality and ambience, thinking about room tones and train tracks and just general noises. It’s interesting how perceptions can affect an experience, but not on a conscious level…
I feel like New York is just so rhythmic. It’s a city of rhythm. Wherever you are, there is so much conversation on the street. It’s way more overt.
It really hits you! From one block it could be Puerto Rican music, and from another it could be something completely different. There’s a sort of an amalgam of sound and music there that is really inspiring. When I first moved there, I became very obsessed with jazz clubs and the deep relationship of the city with jazz, especially coming from London where I wasn’t necessarily connected to the jazz scene. I know there is a huge jazz scene here, I just wasn’t very connected to it. I think the general rhythm of New York is very different to London—I mean, I wouldn’t say London is very peaceful.
Exactly. It depends where you are.
[London and New York] are very similar at the same time, there are real similarities. But I think if you close your eyes and walk through New York, you can just hear the fragments of music, of sound. Whether you’re walking through a bodega and it’s coming from a tinny radio or you come out and you hear a conversation. Weirdly, I was working on a project called Flypaper (2017) with Khalil Joseph when I was living in London. It was to do with Harlem and the Harlem Renaissance. I would be sent all these field recordings of the streets to try and put them in these soundscapes. Then I remember going to New York, where I hadn’t been for a really long time. Hearing it with my own ears was really amazing. It fine tunes you into the magic that is there—you know, the sirens creating overtones. There’s so much there.
I think with London, there’s just a different pace, a different rhythm, but it’s still amazing, still so much diversity in music and sound. I feel like I haven’t actually been here for that long recently, so it’s sort of strange to come back and feel it differently. But they’re very connected ultimately.
There’s a place called Ornithology in Bushwick, which is amazing. There’s a place called Smalls, which I used to live near to. It’s quite a famous place, but the 6pm shifts are for students who are some of the best musicians in New York (and therefore really the world). I think just sitting there—that’s one of the things I love about New York, it’s a walking city so you can pop in places quite quickly and easily on your own, which I always find [to be] my most inspiring moments.
I became very obsessed with the saxophone, just watching it so much when I first moved. I wanted to integrate it into all the scores I did, when I wasn’t really [being] asked, to be honest. I was just thinking about how it could be played differently. There is someone called Caleb Giles, who I have worked with a few times. He is a young saxophonist, singer, producer, who is an incredible artist. Tall Cats, who started out assisting me—they still do—and who I work with closely. They are an amazing composer and [music] producer. Matthew Jamal. There are a lot of incredible young artists who are doing their own thing. I’m not turning up at a concert and trying to give them my card. It’s not as romantic as that. It’s more the general community musicians who share sessions. It’s really exciting and inspiring.
Most recently, I did a score for a film called Our Hero, Balthazar (2025) directed by Oscar Boyson. I research instruments quite a lot and people who play instruments in interesting ways, and I came across this person [who played an instrument] called the Pandemic Box. He only had 22 views on Youtube, which is quite rare. He basically built this box, these contact microphones, these metallic instruments, which produced this otherworldly sound. It was crazy, kind of psychedelic, but acoustic as well. I was like “Fuck, I need to work with this guy,” but he had no contact information whatsoever. After three weeks, I eventually found an old page he had somewhere else and I contacted him. He turned out to be a casting agent living in LA, an amateur musician, and he was like, “How did you get in contact with me?” I was just like, “I love this instrument and I’m doing this score.” He was like, “But I’m not a musician.” I was like, “It doesn’t really matter, it’s fine. This is amazing.” It was only ever meant to form a small part of the score, but Oscar, who has very bold ideas, became obsessed with the instrument. He loved it as well and we sort of came to the conclusion that maybe we should build the entire score around this thing, which I was so up for. Then I realised what a bad idea that was. Geoff had already been like, “I’m not a musician,” and this thing can only be set up once because it’s to do with different microphones and different processing patterns, so it can never really produce the same sound twice nor can he copy himself twice because he will only record in long 20 minutes.
A lot of variables! It turned out to be one of the most incredible experiences, having to throw out every normally done thing in the process and build the whole thing around this strange instrument. It was incredible, and the results were amazing. We built a really amazing relationship… Film scoring is such a team effort and these people are so essential to the texture and fabric of the music itself. Without them it’s just not the same, and so I always really try and find these characters who can be part of the score, because they end up becoming part of the narrative as well.
I think he loved it. He’s a very humble guy, he’s a better musician than he lets on.
I feel like every process is different. I think it’s important not to be tied to one set approach, because I think different approaches conjure up different results. Before I even start creating music, research and experimentation are super important. I almost stay away from the music and making music for as long as possible and just come up with concepts and ideas. I like to read a lot and draw inspirations from different sources that can then be sonified in interesting ways. I think it’s about starting from more of a conceptual realm then, once the concept is feeling good…, it kind of takes on its own motor and everyone starts to buy into it. It becomes an ideology during the process and everyone is like, “No, this is the idea.” So I always think starting there is really good, but it’s also really important to be able to diminish it and be like, “Actually, we need to change it or break it.” Once you have that, at least it gives you a sort of home, a sense of where it naturally is… It allows you to be improvisational, because in the back of your head you already know what notes you’re going [to play] and why. It doesn’t provide any rigidity, it more so gives you a foundation to then explore from. It’s like a jazz artist, for instance, who is classically trained and knows all the scales. When they improvise they’re breaking it, but it’s still in the back of their head. I think that kind of approach is really good for creation, because it means there is a reason why you’re breaking it, or giving an interruption, or pausing for silence, or building things. It’s stemming from something.
Totally. When you’re surrounded by music all day, in those moments of silence there’s a sort of reminiscence in your head in which music is playing anyway. It’s this strange thing, you can actually figure things out. But I will also listen to things that bear no relation to what I’m working on, [in which] there’s no context and I can just listen. I can’t listen to anything that is at all related, because it will get my head going.
Silence is key. I really do appreciate it, and I think even in silence there is still music happening. It’s just more fragmented.
I like all different types of music. I have a real appreciation for everything. At the moment, I’m very inspired by music that is set in a sort of world, that is maybe a little bit more abstract: Pascal Dusapin, Tōru Takemitsu. Who else? Yesterday, I was working with this masenqo player called HaddinQo, who I first started working with alongside Grace. He plays this amazing string instrument from Ethiopia so I have been listening to a lot of that recently, but it’s everything really. It’s like reading. I’m just trying to read as much as I can.
Yes.
With music and sound, there are two ways—well three, but two that are the obvious. You can make music away from picture, and then the editor and director have the fun of placing it up against the picture. Or you have the picture, and then you’re essentially painting onto it. Both conjure up very different results, because with one I don’t necessarily know where it’s going to be placed and with the other it’s the same for the director, they have no expectations. I feel like music, sound and image are all to do with context, the way you frame something, and the infinite possibilities…
The variation in these processes is much dependent on the director and how they want to work. I have [worked with] directors who are very good at putting music to image and I am very confident at writing away and being able to sonify an idea through musical language and sound away from the dimension of picture. Music and sound can access different times, the way you layer different samples of music together can access different points. There are more dimensions to it. With picture it’s the same, but there’s a little bit more of a two dimension to it, just by the very nature of it, so the introduction of sound can give a new frame, a new perspective. When I’m working away from picture, I really enjoy just getting down to the sonics, but there is something really inspiring about working with picture as well. For the film Pare de Sufrir (2024) with AG Rojas, he already had the film. It was a silent movie. I did the whole score. It was the first time I had done that for a while, and it was a really inspiring experience because you feel like you are sort of painting onto it and adjusting it, changing the complexions of it—sonically. It’s how you think it should be. I never like sending across stuff that is half-baked, because I don’t want to get notes back on things that I already know. There’s a lot of pressure at that point when you’re going to deliver.
Yes, it feels real. Whereas, when you’re listening to music and you’re closing your eyes and you’re imagining, there are a lot of possibilities still and you haven’t seen an edit, you don’t know what’s there. There is something really inspiring about saying, “Okay, this is going to be it.” Sharing that experience with the director is really great.
Not at all. It honestly changes from project to project. One project I’ll be like, “Right, let’s do it.” And sometimes, even within a project, I will be like, “Actually, I need to just build this away from [the image] and think about how it relates to this later on, because emotionally that is what it needs.”
Images can be a kind of gravitational pull between things and my favourite moments of music and sound are when the music and sound are saying something else. There’s this sort of paradox that is happening on screen and those moments create an interesting tension. Sometimes, I think it’s good to just forget about the picture and then come back to it, but there’s no real preference.
With the show soundtracks, I get really excited by when different looks and different moments happen within the timing of the show soundtrack. In terms of pacing, Grace has an amazing language and vision for that and we always talk about the variations that can happen. I think it’s more about establishing a sort of—not necessarily a pace, but an emotion. The pacing of things is often related to emotion: when things become more intense, speed up, or slow down. Similar to visuals and any other kind of output, I think making music from an emotional standpoint will always connect everything else. When I think about the emotional architecture of a show, it will naturally consider or give consideration to pace, rhythm and tempo, and silence as well.
He’s very involved in the process. He’s an amazing artist and I’m always in awe watching him work and seeing him interpret the music. With the show soundtracks, the very nature of them, they get built with speed and they come together very quickly, so I do not affect what he does. He interprets everything. I think there’s a moment in rehearsals when everyone is taken into it. It becomes something else and you have to let it go.
I mean, Grace is so amazing with music. A lot of her work is very musical, she has an incredible archival knowledge of music. She is essentially a producer herself. She really is, she can produce music as much as anyone can. It’s been amazing working with her since about 2016 and just going through all the durations of her world and building up this sonic aesthetic, which she clearly has such a vision for. It’s fun because we’ve built our own language, our own way of working, of bringing in different collaborators. She’s got such an incredible eye for the nuances of sound. She spots things that other people don’t, the fragmentation of sound. It feels very magical, moving into this idea of something higher but in a more humble way. A lot of [the] process is about researching the collection, understanding her vision, trying to sonify different parts of the story, introducing different collaborators, and trying to stitch it all together in a way that creates a new mood, [which] has an association with it but is abstracted in new and interesting ways. I’ve learned so much through her and her approach…
I think the Marathon SS24 show was really exciting, just the way in which we developed working with a whole range of different samples and [stitching] them together to create something new. And then obviously HaddinQo, the masenqo player who did this composition at the end, which was based on one of Grace’s favourite tracks. That was a really special moment. For me, it was really exciting how it [came to be]. It was the result of a lot of other stuff that we had done culminating…
The most recent show was [Jewel SS26], where the harpist Ranie Ribeiro played. He was incredible. For Twilight Reverie [AW23], Kendrick Lamar [did] a voice note for Grace, which was such an amazing thing to be sent through at 12 at night. Being told to check your inbox by his producer. There are just a lot of exciting things. Each show has its own energy… It’s all to do with [Grace’s] incredibly ambitious and aspirational approach to music and sound. That doesn’t mean by being complex or unnecessarily academic, it’s just about really putting thought in. I’ve never known someone who puts so much thought into each nuance. She really knows her stuff.
Totally, that’s the thing we always talk about. The context of each space has such an effect on how the music is heard. Hearing different sounds in those spaces is a massive part of the experience and something we think about a lot.
I see it as colour and mood, and also depth. There’s a language that can only really be described in the way that we’re talking about it, as a sort of painting. Sound is obviously super abstract. If you literally think about it, it’s not an actual thing. [Both laugh]. So the way that it is formed conjures up images in everyone’s head and there’s an emotion there. Even within harmony, it can be quite impressionistic and I’m very interested in an impressionistic approach to music and sound, where you can blur harmony a bit. It can be pocketed here and you can introduce something else there [that] has a sort of opposition to what you’ve created. With the introduction of these different elements, you create this world.
Because of the linear way the track plays out naturally, if you stand back from a piece of music… you [can] see the start and the end. I would describe myself as a narrative-led composer. I like to tell stories with the music and ultimately, as a composer, serving the story is the most important part…
Yes. It’s this kind of tinkering. It’s the same thing, it’s stepping back. I think there are so many mistakes that happen as well. There are so many things you create and you think that’s the thing and then you’re like, “Actually no, what if I just completely change all that? Stretch it, that becomes a different fabric and thread, add something into it.” I think there’s something quite humble and exciting about that. It’s never going to be right. Everything you make is never going to be perfect. You’re going to be tinkering until the last minute, until it has to be done because it needs to be done, and then it’s just about getting onto the next canvas. I don’t think I’ve ever created anything where I’ve been like, “Oh, this is it.”
100%. I’m not going to lie. [Both laugh]. But I do love going back and listening to things and hearing them with new ears. Sometimes I’m like, “I can’t even remember how that was created,” which is really annoying. Like, “How did I do that?” I think it’s about putting a lot of detail into things but at the same time being able to revisit them and have the overall feeling, because, ultimately, I think that is what music is for people: a feeling, rather than anything too technical.
I’m interested in memory and amnesis, which is the way that sound and senses can trigger different memories, how music and also the space in between can do that. Similar to the way my grandma played that piano, I think for me it is ultimately about making sure that the music conjures up that feeling and makes the listener have their own representation. We can both listen to the same piece of music and it trigger different emotions and feelings. It’s deeply personal. It’s important to make sure the piece has some sort of reference point that is not just nostalgic, but forward facing. It at least has a way of being able to draw the listener in and give them a new experience.
I think about music and sound as a way to create synapses to other fragmented points of memory or emotion, to try and create something new that is relatable while still making sure everything is slightly blurred, not any one thing… Ultimately, it’s about having the music evoke a sort of memory for a listener…If you can create [something] and then watch an image or listen to something where you are hearing through a new lens, I think that’s the most inspiring thing. That’s really exciting to me.