The pitch: “To encapsulate it into a phrase: love in a time of chaos,” James Blake tells Apple Music about his seventh studio album (and his first as an independent artist). “I was struggling to reconcile what it feels like to be someone with their own experience with their own life—their love, their friends, their passions, their depression, their whatever it is that you’re going through at the time—with the collective anguish and the collective experience that’s going on in the world.” The story: Since emerging in the late aughts as the poster boy for post-dubstep, the British musician has become impossible to pin down: In a few years’ span, he released an AI-powered ambient soundscape to help listeners sleep (2022’s Wind Down), a solo record that returned to his electronic roots (2023’s Playing Robots into Heaven), and a full-length collaboration with Lil Yachty (2024’s Bad Cameo), meanwhile producing hits for everyone from Travis Scott to ROSALÍA. The 37-year-old musician grapples with an increasingly fractured world, seeking refuge in love through all its ups and downs—all in a moment when he’s also been vocally contemplating how artists can thrive, or even survive, in the current landscape. Focus tracks: “I don’t know how we got here/But I think we might be sleeping/I think we might be walking/To the death of love,” Blake sings over the slow creep of “Death of Love,” a song that’s snuck into his live sets in recent years. “It was written at a time where I could sense people’s empathy for each other dwindling. The internet became quite a scary place. I’m not sure if I’ve had a conversation in such bad faith as I’ve seen online. And the algorithm is just promoting constantly rage, completely incentivizing that type of behavior and that kind of interaction.” Will our relationships with those we love be enough to save us? The title track “Trying Times,” a space-rock love song at the end of the world, seems to think so. “‘Trying times’ is also the biggest understatement of where we’re at possible, and that comes with an English sort of sarcasm to it as well,” Blake says. “You know, in the way of, like, the absolute worst thing can be happening in England and you go, ‘Trying times.’” The last word: “I’m obsessed with this album; it is my favorite album I’ve ever made,” Blake says. “I know every artist says that, but I think this is, it’s the strongest possible foot I could have put forward. It’s what I get up in the morning to really do. And I can do that with confidence because I spent 25 years doing it.”