James Blake May 15, 2011

It is not the first time a DJ has saved someone’s life, and it won’t be the last, but when a teenage James Blake first visited the London club night FWD>> (pronounced “forward”) in 2007, his mind was well and truly knocked for six.

Down in the pitch-black basement of Plastic People the DJs played grime and garage, and James liked it. Loved it, in fact. He’d never heard anything like it before. He’d been to drum ’n’ bass nights with schoolfriends, but the music here was different, the atmosphere unlike anything he’d experienced. This was what James had been waiting for – he just hadn’t realised. “I thought, this drives me so far into my own head, much more than anything has ever done,” he says, “and it was so loud and dark in there.”

This midnight epiphany in a Shoreditch cellar led, in a few short years, to the James Blake of 2010, a surefooted 22-year-old composer whose extraordinary tracks are not so much breaking down existing musical barriers as leaping over them and creating an entirely new kind of pop that belies its author’s tender age. Loosely tethered to dubstep, but displaying an astonishing grasp of songwriting and electronic production, James’s songs possess uncommon grace and soulfulness. Whether intended for the FWD>> dancefloor or, like new single ‘Limit to Your Love’, destined to melt hearts and prick ears, his music is characterised by a playful and arresting honesty, a human touch that naturally aligns him with contemporary artists such as Bon Iver or Laura Marling or the xx.

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