A Solitary Soul Whose Pained Voice Heads Into Strange Realms

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/09/arts/music/james-blake-sings-with-piano-at-terminal-5.html

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James Blake could easily have been a ballad singer. He showed how with his last encore on Tuesday night at Terminal 5, alone on piano, singing and playing “A Case of You” by Joni Mitchell in his sustained and tremulous voice, rapt in melancholy and need. But Mr. Blake has other ambitions.

He’s equally enamored of dance music — the technology of looping, layering, sampling, harmonizing and pitch-shifting; the programming of sounds and beats; the visceral presence of deep bass; the way sounds can arrive out of nowhere; the meltdown of song form to turn a single phrase into a hook or a mantra or an incantation. (At Terminal 5 he drew squeals of pleasure with the introduction of each new effect.)

There’s a paradox at the core of his music: The tools that are most often used to bring communal momentum and joy to a dance floor are the ones that carry his songs deeper into solitude. His method isn’t as simple or obvious as putting a big beat behind a sad song. It’s an eerier, more amorphous blend, in which his pained and very human voice can at any moment be swept into strange and obsessive realms.

His songs aren’t for dancing. They’re generally slow, even glacial, often starting like piano ballads with a few minor chords. There may be a verse or two. Sooner or later, however, they arrive at a line for him to ponder.

It may be words — “Our love comes back in the middle of the night” — or a wordless fragment of melody to be increasingly surrounded and buffeted. Thick, throbbing bass notes suddenly materialize and heave up, dubstep-style; a drumbeat announces itself, patters for a while, suddenly disappears. Nothing brings comfort or resolution.

Onstage Mr. Blake made little attempt to brighten the songs; he spoke shyly and modestly between them. He was at his keyboards and computer, joined by a drummer (mostly using sampled sounds) and a guitarist (usually playing textures rather than chords, though he did sometimes add folky fingerpicking). They played material from both of Mr. Blake’s albums, “James Blake” from 2011 and the new “Overgrown,” and from EPs he has released since 2010, using samples and sounds from the tracks, but elaborating on them differently, apparently making choices live. They weren’t hemmed in by programmed material.

There was considerable variety within the songs — in the beats that appeared and disappeared and in dynamics that encompassed both hushed introspection and harrowing, overwhelming crescendos. But the mood was consistent and enveloping. It was the sound of a man alone and inconsolable, no matter how much technology he controlled.

<NYT_AUTHOR_ID> <p>James Blake returns on Thursday to Terminal 5, 610 West 56th Street, Clinton; (800) 745-3000, terminal5nyc.com.