James Blake Ignites a Fire at Radio City

James Blake - Best New Bands

New York - “I request another dream / I need a forest fire,” James Blake sings on his latest album The Colour In Anything. Playing to a sold out audience at Radio City Musical Hall, Monday night, he demonstrated another dream: igniting a fire, demonstrating what a concert can and should be like in a 6,000 seat theater. The phenomenal concert also featured performances by soul singer Moses Sumney and Southern California rapper Vince Staples.

When James Blake arrived on stage, nearly every seat was full. In his one hour and thirty-five minute set, he frequently dazzled and surprised, shifting between old and new tracks, from roaring deep house and glitchy dubstep to some of the more effortless ballads that pepper The Colour In Anything.

Early on in the set, the glittering synths of “Life Around Here” captured my attention. He also managed to amplify many of his newer tracks for the large space at Radio City Musical Hall, in part by using clever lighting and staging, which used colors and abstract projections that shifted as the songs undulated between soft and precise to loud and messy, especially using it to great effect on “Timeless.” One of the other big surprises was the looping illustration by Quentin Blake, the illustrator famous for the Roald Dalhl books and the designer of The Colour In Anything cover art. The spiraling light matched Blake’s atmospheric falsetto.

Perhaps my favorite moment was when Blake performed “I Need A Forest Fire” (which features vocals by Bon Iver). The song is easily one of the best, if not the best, song of 2016. The slow buildup of the electronics, Blake’s voice that crescendos and spirals upward, running through your body like electricity, and that radar blip underpinning the beat, so unexpected, both a heartbeat and a warning signal, were all gorgeous. His arrangements blossomed, becoming all the more dynamic and inspired.

Blake, however, seemed to take his biggest vocal risks with his earlier tracks. “The Wilhelm Scream” closed out the set, with the lines “I’m fallin’, fallin’, fallin’, fallin’ / Might as well fall in” still sticking with me as I write this. By the end of the nearly three hours long concert, fans filed out to Blake singing a looping chorus in his encore… the effect was almost spiritual. In the lobby, with its soaring ceilings, it was hard not to wax poetic. Radio City Music Hall is one of the epicenters of classic music in New York City, and this night, that space was turned into a warehouse of electronic experimentation.

The first act of the night was Moses Sumney. Though he’s only released two EPs, including last week’s Lamentations, Sumney has opened every concert date for Blake and has had a breakout year performing at Primavera Sound, Pitchfork Music Festival, and Eaux Claires Music Festival. Moses Sumney’s style is hard to pin down: he mixed drums and guitar with a soaring, soulful falsetto, but he also put his own voice and instrumentation on loop, creating a layered effect that give him the power of a standalone band.

“Incantation,” from Sumney’s new EP, was one of the standout tracks of his set – a Hebrew song on Rosh Hashanah, whose quiet power left the audience silent, in rapt attention. “Plastic” from his previous EP, combined seductive jazz riffs in his upper register. If only one complaint could be lodged, it was that twenty-five minutes wasn’t enough.

Next up was Vince Staples, who was scheduled to play only two cities with James Blake. Staples, like Sumney, is establishing himself as an artist to watch. His 2015 LP Summertime 06’ was one of the year’s best, and his recently released EP Primma Donna features dense, electronic arrangements, produced in part, by Blake.

Staples also didn’t disappoint. Even if a seated venue like Radio City wasn’t necessarily conducive to some of his bigger dance-inflected numbers, the sound system, and bass in particular, carried the intensity of his rapping. One of his Staples’ greatest skills is that he’s chameleonic; he can shift his flow effortlessly depending upon the beat, spitting fast raps or more vulnerable musings about Black masculinity.

Vince Staples played some of his hits, like “Norf Norf,” whose haunting refrain “I ain’t never ran from nothin’ but the police” speaks topically to the Black Lives Matter movement. But one of the night’s biggest surprises was his remixed version of “Ghost,” an electronic song produced by With You. The lyrics and video suggest a hallucinogenic party scene, and Staples smartly amped up the intensity and speed of the song for a live setting, creating a feverish, layered, and heart pounding dance track.

James Blake, Vince Staples, and Moses Sumney shouldn’t work together, but they did. Though Moses loops his own voice and instrumentation over himself to create dense, larger-then-life melodies, Vince Staples raps wildly off industrial house beats, and James Blake lingers between walls of noise and the most pared down crooning, all three take risks by putting together sounds which don’t traditionally together, but when you hear them, you realize they were always meant to go together.

James Blake is on tour now. A list of tour dates can be found on his websiteThe Colour in Anything is available for purchase via Polydor. Follow James Blake on Facebook and Twitter.

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Kyle Bella

Kyle Bella

Kyle Bella is based in Brooklyn, where he works full-time at a racial justice nonprofit. In his free time, he listens to all kinds of music, with a particular interest in experimental hip hop, electronic, R&B and pop music, though he'll always have a soft spot for Dolly Parton. He is also an avid movie buff, enjoys contemporary art, loves tacos, and wishes he could be traveling somewhere new all the time.
Kyle Bella

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