If you've wound up here you presumably already know the ins and outs of the life of
James Blake up until this point in time. You'll know he never learnt to share, that his brother and his sister don't speak to him despite Blake being an only child and that Goldsmiths didn't really float his boat, whilst dreamy hand-picked support act
Cloud Boat most certainly do. If you've never had the pleasure of an audience with Blake, best rectify such status as soon as humanly possible, before you'll be in need of inhuman aid, or military binoculars to make out his gangly fingers as they squiggle and squirm atop his Prophet '08. Amidst intimacy, cloaked in gloaming spotlight however is the setting in which he glimmers most radiantly, sipping from his now-emblematic mug that is later stolen to be treasured as disturbing souvenir. Opening as has become customary with the flickering rhythms of Unluck, Blake's gargantuan palms and elongated digits capable practically of spanning the entirety of his keyboard dual-handedly quiver, fumbling their way through muffled bass vibrations, whilst an austere and eldritch Give Me My Month is gloriously claustrophobic, a cobwebbed relic dusted down to resemble mellifluous virtuousity.
If Blake choked somewhat under the weight of hype and hyperbole, luminous glare and fixated gaze last time our paths crossed, he now tinkers and plonks away with veritable equanimity, airing a distorted, mutated take on Klavierwerke having been prompted to delve into the shallow depths of his none too distant, even less expansive EP back catalogue. Furthermore where Limit To Your Love was discarded somewhat whimsically previously, the cover that kicked off his commerciality has now been tentatively embraced, as vociferous thuds segue into a radically murky dub denouement, a when in Rome-like concordance with the grimy surrounds of South Bristol. A mournful Lindesfarne, accentuated by mellow guitar tones provides an understated and unexpected highlight, before a minimal, dubbed-out sub-disco take on Digital Mystikz' Anti-War Dub sees Blake howl: "We don't want no war tonight, we don't want a fuss and a fight" through muted fist. Whilst we'll leave the brawling and bruising to the Bristol outskirts, Deptford's finest promises to create forever more fuss and kerfuffle if the live show continues intensifying quite so exponentially.
