The moment I saw the sleek, sale black and minimalist flyer for the James Blake and Nosaj Thing tour, I told my roommate that we just had to go. I was amped to be spending a night in the swirling splendor of such chill and beautiful musicians, with the hope that a darkly brilliant fusion of James Blake and Nosaj Thing would occur on stage in front of me (it didn’t.)
As we sat on the T headed for the show, I pondered, “Hey, it’s weird. I can’t remember the last time I’ve been to the House of Blues.”
“Me too,” she said. “I wonder why.”
And now I remember why.
The challenge that Los Angeles based up and coming DJ, Nosaj Thing, and James Blake had that night was maintaining their signature demure and collected sound, while still trying to keep a crowd that had been at school or work all day awake on a Tuesday night.
Nosaj Thing spun his turntables in a dark ambiance; he was posed on a black stage beneath only the slight illumination of a teal spotlight, with his skinny frame arched over the tables and his long arms moving in time to the darkly melodic electronic beats, he looked reminiscent of Kamaji– the boiler room half spider half man from Spirited Away. I’ve long enjoyed the incredibly unique sound of Nosaj Thing, a hip hop influenced producer who uses deep bass and eerie high pitched beats to create a haunting overtone to his electronic music.
He attempted to keep the crowd stirring by playing some uncharacteristically up tempo remixes, entering an unfamiliar territory with renditions of songs by The XX and other female vocalists with lighter, quicker electronic beats – classic of any DJ trying to win back the attention of a distracted and fading crowd. He ended his set with ‘Aquarium’, which is famously sampled in Kid Cudi’s ‘Man on the Moon’, but this failed to keep the crowd quiet, instead they began to speak more – “Hey, is this that Kid Cudi song? Wait is it? I love that song..”
Another unfortunate thing about Nosaj Thing’s set was the sound. Though House of Blues typically has sound quality covered, something about Nosaj Thing’s setup seemed ill equipped to be playing for a venue so large, and his sounds, so powerful and intricate when closely listened to, seemed weak, the layers dissolving and sounding awkward, not mixing well with one another.
As Nosaj Thing bid the audience goodnight with a sweet “I love you,” to the crowd, I was immediately shoved by a throng of extremely aggressive James Blake fans. As I was being jostled, I was mostly confused. “Why are they so angry?” I asked my roommate, squished between two tall men who seemed to have appeared out of thin air, “This is the chillest music ever.” The mob’s mentality seemed to be that if you didn’t instagram James Blake, it’s like you never even saw James Blake.
James Blake, of course, did not disappoint. His cinematic entrance onto the stage was marked by dramatic intervals of eardrum vibrating bass, to the final dramatic blue illumination of the stage, the buildup had me looking upwards, half expecting Blake to be suspended from above and then gently descend onto stage in a shimmering angelic spotlight.
Blake opened his set with the rousing ‘I Never Learnt To Share’, but all I could hear was ‘my brothe-’ before it would be cut off each time by either enthralled screaming and cheering, or the off key spirited singing of the drunk fan in front of me.
My knowledge of James Blake is limited to the honeyed falsetto and dulcet R&B based slowness of ‘Overgrown’ (2013), but his live performance seemed mostly based on the edgy and slightly dubstep — think not Skrillex please, but rather the original dubstep style of underground London — style of his initial self titled album, ‘James Blake’ (2011). Blake engaged the fans with a large range of musical styles, going from slow and delicate, to almost tribally quick beats and bass. His vocals were obviously stunning, tenderly, Blake brought out each note, singing with the smoothness of a drip of molasses, and then taking the notes into a powerful arch in time with a dark and stirring bass, for an overall deeply dramatic effect. Blake just barely tweaked the tempo for his songs so that they maintained their slow delicacy, but with a slight uptempo in percussion variations so that they came alive. Together with glowing lights and the whole sounding audio quality of the House of Blues, Blake’s audio masterpieces on the album seemed almost two dimensional in comparison to the robust and rich versions of them live. The feelings brought on by the recorded songs seemed almost weak, in comparison to the powerfully sweeping waves of feeling emanating from the live performance. Major credit should be paid to the guitarist and percussionist that performed impressively with Blake that night.
Unfortunately, I had a difficult time enjoying the musical spectacle that was occurring in front of me — a number of factors had gone astray: I had been lucky enough to be elected by a drunk couple to be pushed aside, who reeked of the sweet drinks they had ingested and I know this as they danced not in front of me, but on me. I then proceeded to be pushed into a group of strangers who had decided to take ecstasy for their first time, and even if I was able to ignore the frenzied dancing slash back massages that was going on in front of me, my view was unfortunately eclipsed by the tallest of the tall bros. The duration of Blake’s set was a constant mental war for me, trying desperately to focus my already flighty attention to the performer. But the moment that one of the “ecstatic” fans decided to play the air drums with, judging by the expanse of which he opened his arms to play, a 15 piece drum kit, it felt almost hopeless.
But who is to blame here, really? The commercialization of indie and with that, the viral-like spread of James Blake fever? The fact that I came at 8 and also wanted to get close enough to instagram James, hence why I voluntarily ended up in the notoriously crazy front and center section? Or was it just the sheer hypnotic ability of Blake’s crazy talented voice that makes people lose their shit? James Blake even sings ‘I don’t blame them’ in one of his songs, so maybe he’s privy to the phenomena. It all just seems to be a bitter truth, that all concert goers must learn someday, that the venue can truly slay an experience, and some artists are better off performing in the comfort of large, high class headphones during a beautiful walk outside. James Blake and Nosaj Thing create wonderfully intimate and special sounds, but the venue of House of Blues was the exact opposite — intimate in all of the wrong ways.