Mercury RetroGrade

3 April 2013 | 7:19 am | Bryget Chrisfield

“Well I hope they realised I was human before. But, I mean, if that’s what people want – if people want me to mess it up, I can do that all day."

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If James Blake's gracing the stage, even venues that usually attract raucous audiences transform into places of worship. Dare to share mid-song approval in hushed tones and you'll most likely cop mass over-the-shoulder hairy eyeballs plus fusty, librarian-style shushing. As such, it's hard to imagine the British musical sensation ever being targeted by hecklers. “I've had loads of them,” Blake counters. “You can't do live music without having hecklers and things like that. There was one guy who, during Lindisfarne, the first Vocoder-y part with no accompaniment, kind of accompanied it by shouting, 'This is shit!' over and over again. Um, which actually made it – it was quite nice, it sounded better for it.” Blake could have potentially looped it, then. “Yeah well, he looped it naturally by just repeating it. He was live looping profanities.” Blake reveals this happened not very long ago and then cheekily adds, “That was in Glasgow, as you'd expect.” 

During his recent whirlwind promotional visit Down Under, Blake seemed much more at ease onstage and chattier in between tracks. “I'm a bit more comfortable onstage,” he allows, “and when I do interviews, I'm not so much like, 'This is my music, I'm not compromising and I refuse to – blah-blah-blah,' it kinda got a bit boring. I think the interviews I've had before, and my stage presence before, didn't really reflect what I'm like in person so I decided to not be so uptight about – not uptight but, you know, just put a bit more of myself into those things instead of, like, treating them as just what they are, you know?” While Blake agrees it's hard not to imagine how what you're saying during interviews will translate to the page, he muses, “but sometimes I feel like when I'm actually just myself I can come across more harsh – not more harsh, but, ah, on paper your personality doesn't really come out but the words do. So you have to be careful.”

Blake is very thoughtful with his answers, often taking an extended “ummm” or repeating the question before responding. So what's the margin of error when you're live looping? “Pretty small, really, as in if I very slightly miss that then I have to restart it. It actually comes down to me not really having properly learnt how to use it.” This kind of self-deprecation punctuates our chat and it's refreshing coming from an artist of his standing. “I don't really enjoy the technology of it so I've not really sat down with it properly yet,” he continues. “It's just timing, you know. It's not difficult per se; it's just, again, if you get the timing wrong then you're stuck with it. Although I'd prefer that over being linked to some sort of external clock, which really kinda takes all the humanity out of the performance for me.”

When told that audiences love witnessing the odd stuff-up and therefore realising that their musical hero is human, Blake chuckles, “Well I hope they realised I was human before. But, I mean, if that's what people want – if people want me to mess it up, I can do that all day. There's nothing worse than a performance where nothing strays from the beaten path so, yeah! I can understand why people like it.”

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Retrograde – the first taste from Blake's second LP, titled Overgrown – is enough to make your soul ache and to this pair of ears is the sonic equivalent of crying with happiness. Blake laughs and then changes the subject, almost as if praise makes him feel uncomfortable. “What's the opposite of crying with happiness? Laughing with sadness? I suppose it's crying with sadness actually, isn't it?” Although the idea of laughing with sadness is appealing, Blake admits, “It's not something that really happens. Oh, maybe comic relief, but…” How about schadenfreude? “Mmm, nah, that's more laughing at other people's misfortune, isn't it?” he corrects. “Or to take pleasure from laughing at other people's misfortune.” Sounds like a great name for a James Blake track. “'Schadenfreude', yeah,” he considers. “Well it's something I'd do as well, so thanks.”

Back to Blake's exquisite song. Did it come together easily? “What, Retrograde?” Yeah. “Um, yeah it did actually. The initial loop happened really quickly and then the song itself kind of got formed within a few hours so, yeah! I would say it did happen quite easily and, um, that's always a good thing.” Blake “couldn't say that there's just a formula” for composing masterpieces, “but [he] would definitely say [his] favourite way of making a tune is something that feels really natural”. It also helps if the song springs from “your favourite thing about music”. “So that might be a melody that really soars, like it does in Retrograde,” he offers by way of example. Um, you know [demonstrates the vocal melody] that kind of thing. I really like those kind of trajectories in melody. It reminds me of this melody that Joni Mitchell did in A Case Of You, um, which, it goes, [bursts into song] 'I could drink a case of you-ou-ou-ou-ou-OU DA-a-rli-i-ng,' she does that, and that's [pauses] not really the inspiration for the tune, but definitely I like – 'cause most people, those kind of runs, or, you know, that kind of technical, quite fast scale: most singers sing those things downwards, and what I like about Retrograde really is that it does the same thing but upwards, it's kinda reverse and, yeah! So, I really like it.”

[Excuse me, I'm sorry for the interruption. You've got one minute remaining] Blake bursts out laughing. “Have you ever played Portal?” he asks. “The voice that just came in then sounded a bit like the voice on Portal, which is distinctly alien and robotic.” Suddenly realising the operator may still be on the line, Blake quickly adds, “Sorry, no offence.”

Blake has been touring as a three-piece of late and shares: “We kind of blur the line between just being a band and doing electronic music, so I don't really know which perspective people are coming at me from… But, I mean, some people can't believe that we're not tied to a MIDI clock, because basically Ben [Assiter] is a ridiculous drummer. Some people are kinda like, 'Well that must be synched to something,' but it's just Ben [laughs]. So all credit to him for making it seem like we're better than we are.”

Assiter may be a virtuoso behind the kit, but he still can't escape Blake's sardonic sense of humour. “I do threaten him with a drum machine sometimes. It's the deepest, sort of code red, threat that you can give him. And it's just saying that, you know, 'If you don't fucking get this right, we're gonna bring in an 808 and there's nothing that you can do about it.' It keeps him on his toes.” But a Roland TR-808 can't perform stick tricks. “No, but it can do a lot of other things that he can't,” Blake jests. 

Overgrown is out now.