Boiler Room: James Blake pres. Before (DJ Mix)

Until mid-October 2020, James Blake hadn’t played a Boiler Room in seven years. It’s hard to overstate how much changed in that time. His last appearance had come close on the heels of 2013’s *Overgrown*, the Mercury Prize-winning album that definitively launched him beyond the UK bass scene, yet his set still leaned toward the shadowy textures of artists like Mount Kimbie and Burial. By 2020, Blake’s album *Assume Form*, with its features from Travis Scott, ROSALÍA, and André 3000, had confirmed him as one of modern pop’s upper-echelon singer-songwriters—even as the coronavirus shut down the venues and festivals he’d become used to headlining. The title of Blake’s *Before* EP inspires reflections on the time preceding the pandemic; fittingly, so does this Boiler Room engagement, in which Blake takes to the decks in front of an empty room at Los Angeles’ Regent Theater. But one of the hallmarks of Blake’s music has always been its warmth, and he makes powerful use of it here, filling the cavernous space with a lush mix of purring trap (Chynna’s “mood”), velvety electro-pop (Marie Davidson’s “La Ecstase”), and all four swoon-inducing tracks from *Before*, which couch his romantic falsetto in restlessly experimental production. But while you can take James Blake out of the dance music scene, you clearly can’t take the dance music out of him: Cuts from Hemlock labelmate Randomer, bass heavyweights Boddika & Joy Orbison, and American dance music heroes Theo Parrish and Robert Hood underscore that even with locks on the doors, Blake’s heart remains in the club. Throw in dancehall, 2-step, and a jubilant climax from Outkast, and it all adds up to a portrait of a selector at the top of his game.