- Emerging as a key player in the latest "post" subgenre, post-dubstep, London producer and singer-songwriter James Blake has blazed a trail far wider than that musical enclave's limited diasporic reach would have you think. He's done this, I suspect, not just because he's been celebrated by key figures in the wider electronic music community (like Gilles Peterson), but also because he brings an almost folk-y pop sensibility to his work. So for someone, like me, who finds dubstep (and its discontents) intellectually enticing yet emotionally uninvolving, Blake provides a compelling sonic bridge to explore more.
Preceding him in his first ever Sydney show, taking place at Newtown's Factory Theatre, was Marques Toliver, a Florida native whose classical training has led him to pull together a violin, vocal and foot (i.e. true "kick drum") approach. This seemed well suited as a lead in to Blake's own minimalism, and he provided some lovely and intensely emotional moments with semi-camp R&B vocal stylings interspersed with everything from quotes from the great African American abolitionist Frederick Douglass to knowing pastiches of the unconvincing Southern accents populating the True Blood television series. Running through songs like "Butterflies Are Free," "Deep In My Heart," "Anticipation" and the track he wowed with on Jools Holland's BBC2 show, "White Sails," he created remarkable warmth and musical depth with such a small toolkit.
Once Blake came on with Rob McAndrews (guitar) and Ben Assiter (percussion), the sparseness of the musicality suddenly shifted to a different plane. Every click, every silent moment, every pop and hiss suddenly seemed to have presence and relevance. The sub-bass was in turns enveloping and propulsive, the keyboards warped between organic and digitalised, and the vocals were either achingly real articulations or looped and refracted to within an inch of their lives.
Opening track "Unluck" pulsated with distortion; the keys and vocals on "Give Me My Month" channelled Joni Mitchell; "I Never Learnt to Share" was dominated by a punishing kick, relentlessly rising and falling; "Lindisfarne II" and "To Care (Like You)" had small bits of sonic data engulfing the entire room; and "CMYK" piled layers of reverbed vocal samples on one another. A soaring rendition of "Limit to Your Love" stole the show, and from there it was "Klavierwerke" to "The Wilhelm Scream," all building inexorably towards a finale, when we were all awash in an almost palpable tidal wave of sound. When the screamed-for encore took place, it was wisely restrained: Blake solo on keyboards performing "Tell Me, Are You With Me."
Blake's shy and deferential stage presence works well live. He decentres himself in the service of the music, which somehow creates expansiveness out of spaces and interruptions. But his confidence in his project can't be missed. High expectations had led to two sell-out shows in Sydney (the second at the much larger Metro Theatre). They were well and truly met at The Factory.