Yesterday, it was announced that James Blake’s edits of grime MC Trim – recorded under his Harmonimix alias – would see the light of day, through R&S.

Great news, right? Right: the tracks, particularly ‘Confidence Boost’, are brilliant, and after spending the last two years existing in the ether of YouTube and radio rip blogs, it’ll be a pleasure to own them on wax. For Martin ‘Blackdown’ Clark however, of Keysound Recordings fame (he also writes for FACT and more), it represents something more bittersweet. As he explains on his blog, Blake’s Trim edits represent a Keysound EP that never was, and it was Clark who originally licensed the acapella from Trim’s camp, back when he thought he’d be releasing the tracks. As it turned out, Blake changed his mind, expressing the view to Clark that he “wanted the tracks to remain as lost dubs, perhaps caught in the same kind of mythical limbo as fans had experienced with dubstep’s lost anthems”, and as “events began to accelerate for [Blake] in a different direction”, the two drifted out of contact.

Of course, none of this changes the end result: that regardless of label, a very good record is coming out here, and that’s rarely anything but a very good thing. And there’s certainly an argument to be had that this sort of thing’s better off staying private. But it’s still an interesting story, regarding what’s sure to be one of 2012’s most interesting records. Read the full post here.