In Kenmore Square there’s no consistency or patterns in the way people walk. I often wonder what this would look like from fifty feet overheard, dots fluidly passing through each other, clumped in some places, in others separated, the random motion of parts of a whole. I wove my way through, crossing the Pike onto Lansdowne, making a game of “guess who’s going to the Sox and who’s going to the concert”. At every turn the mass of people around me enclosed and withdrew as I wound in and out of whatever opening I could find.
James Blake’s sound is all about negative space, about moments that are emphasized through the emptiness preceding them.
The crowd inside the house of blues began to thicken as the unremarkable opening DJ finished his set. James came out shortly thereafter and launched gently into “Air and Lack Thereof”, the track that first brought him attention and singled him out of the mass of UK dubstep producers desperately trying to get through the gates before first pitch.
From there the show unfurled hypnotically, with James often finishing one song and beginning the next without even a glance out into the crowd. I noticed a few things about his band. For one, they were a three piece; James handling almost all the keys, a guitarist/keyboard player, and a drummer. I use the word “drummer” loosely because this guy had a traditional kit save a pad set up on his snare with what seemed to be four different sounds, one in each corner. These sounds changed from song to song as the sound guy piped in which “kit” he’d be using. I happened to be standing right next to the soundboard and watching James’s stoically self-assured middle-aged sound runner move confidently from knob to peddle to slider was almost as fun as watching what was happening on stage.
He played several of my favorites: “Lindisfarne”, “Unluck”, “CMYK” (which he had chopped and screwed but retained its pulsing sensuality). More importantly, he played a lot of the new album, and in a live setting it sounded better than the old songs. There’s nothing particularly “catchy” about this music in a traditional sense, but when the bass dropped out at the start of “Voyeur” I was surrounded by closed eyes, reclined heads, and goosebumps.
On a sidewalk as crowded as indie rock, standing out is sometimes as simple as standing still. James Blake isn’t going to win any charisma contests, but that doesn’t mean his music is afraid to look you in the face, and if that makes you feel uncomfortable, you’re in the wrong neighborhood.
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