James Blake’s Alexandra Palace show was a live electronic masterclassBritish electronic music titan James Blake returned to London’s Alexandra Palace last night and delivered a career-spanning live performance that effortlessly weaved between all-out rave catharsis and stripped-back vulnerability.
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Having conquered Village Underground in 2016, and then Eventim Apollo in 2019, this was his second time commanding the 10,000-capacity Ally Pally (having previously played there in 2022).
As the lights faded to black, the melancholic yet hopeful opening sounds of Blake’s new record Playing Robots Into Heaven rang in search of connection, while James walked across the stage with the weighty machinery that adorns the album cover on his back – a cinematic entrance befitting of the soundscapes that followed.
James Blake at Alexandra Palace. Image: Getty
Joined by the James Blake live band – Rob McAndrews, AKA Airhead, on guitar and modular synth, and Benjamin Assiter, AKA Mr Assister, on drums – Blake teased early on that the set would consist “of a bit of everything.” The news was no doubt a delight to the audience, who had forked out £40 for tickets to the show and many of whom were sporting his newest merch.
The performance was evenly split between piano-led emotion (Overgrown, Fire The Editor) and energetic club-ready workouts (Tell Me), allowing Blake to showcase the many different sides of his artistry throughout the evening. Often, he paired old favourites with newer creations, subtly bridging between two decades: the stripped-back piano keys of Frank Ocean cover Godspeed segued seamlessly into the new record’s heartbreaking If You Can Hear Me. Similarly, the air sirens and flashing strobes of 2013’s Life Round Here blended into the recent heavy-hitter Big Hammer.
After some typically humble (and very British) ‘thank you’s, Blake made clear that every sound coming from the stage was 100 per cent live. “There’s nothing going on behind the scenes,” he told the crowd; “no laptops or weird automated shit you can’t see. I’m not just trying to flex, I’m saying that because I’m really proud of it and, to me, that’s what being in a band is,” he continued. Blake added that while in other music genres that aspect of a live show is “accepted”, it’s “harder to do in electronic music.”
James Blake at Alexandra Palace. Image: Getty
Even the lights were fully live, Blake explained, shouting out his concert lighting designer, Christopher Bushell. “It’s insane,” he commended; rightfully so, too: the cloud-like lighting that accompanied an indulgent Fall Back conjured the feeling of flying through a storm. “He’s playing in time with us, even though he’s miles away at the back of the room and is on a delay,” Blake added, astoundedly.
The historic venue’s cavernous Great Hall proved a fitting setting for the incredible light show and futuristic sonics that accompanied Blake’s career-spanning set. “The reverberation is great,” he declared later on, having sent his angelic voice soaring around the room during Asking To Break and I Want You To Know, while the chest-rumbling bass of the timeless Limit To Your Love proved strong enough to propel a helicopter. Similarly, a full-band rendition of CMYK was the ultimate treat for Blake fans.
“This is a very life-affirming sight from up here,” Blake said at the close, smiling. Undoubtedly, the thousands in the audience felt the same way.
Catch James Blake live and check tour dates via his website. 
Set list:
Asking to Break
I Want You to Know
Limit to Your Love (Feist cover)
Life Round Here
Big Hammer
Loading
I’ll Come Too
Fall Back
Love Me in Whatever Way
CMYK / Stop What You’re Doing
Tell Me
Voyeur
Retrograde
Fire the Editor
Godspeed (Frank Ocean cover)
If You Can Hear Me
Playing Robots Into Heaven
Encore:
Improv / Modern Soul
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From Ed Sheeran’s copyright victory to Songtradr buying Bandcamp… it’s MBW’s Weekly Round-UpThe five biggest stories to hit our headlines over the past seven days
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Omnisphere Fjall by The Very Loud Indeed Co. Omnisphere Fjall contains 120 patches that can be loaded into Spectrasonics’ flagship synthesis platform.

Epic Games sells Bandcamp to music marketing company, SongtradrMusic marketplace Bandcamp has been sold by Epic Games to music marketing company Songtradr just 18 months after it was acquired.

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Bandcamp was acquired by Epic Games, the makers of Fortnite, in March 2023, with the shared vision of “building the most open, artist-friendly ecosystem in the world”. Now, however, Epic Games’ stepped back from Bandcamp, having now sold the site to Songtradr for an undisclosed sum.
Songtradr, a music licensing and marketplace company, says it will “continue to operate Bandcamp as a marketplace and music community with an artist-first revenue share.”
According to Songtradr, it will work with Bandcamp to give artists opportunities to secure licensing deals. This includes deals with Fortnite itself, as it will continue to collaborate with Bandcamp for projects such as Fortnite Radio, says Epic Games.
The news comes as Epic Games also lays off 16 per cent of its workforce and is divesting Bandcamp and SuperAwesome.
The Vice President of Epic Games, Steve Allison, has said in a statement that the sale of Bandcamp will “make it easier for independent artists to connect with creators and developers looking to license their music and enable Epic to focus on its core metaverse, games, and tools efforts.”
In March, a number of Bandcamp staff, under the name of Bandcamp United, unionised in a push for fairer wages and greater transparency from its leadership. Bandcamp’s CEO Ethan Diamond later responded, saying, “following the NLRB’s process and timeline. Bandcamp will respect the election outcome and if a union forms, we will negotiate in good faith.”
See more industry news via musictech.com.
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Spitfire Audio Phobos Phobos is a must-have synthesiser for composers writing epic, cinematic electronic and hybrid compositions. Conceived by renowned composer and electronic music pioneer BT (The Fast and... Read More

Epic Games sells Bandcamp to Songtradr amid major layoffsIndependent music marketplace Bandcamp has been sold to music licensing platform Songtradr just 18 months after Epic Games acquired it. Epic says it will continue to collaborate with Bandcamp on. Continue reading
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Up Close and Personal: When the algorithm goes too far [MIDiA’s Tatiana Cirisano]Tatiana Cirisano of MIDiA Research dives into how the borderline mind-reading technology of social media is affecting the music industry. What happens when the algorithm gets a little too close. Continue reading
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The risks and rewards of cover songsPerforming and releasing cover songs can be a great way to excite fans and even reach a new fanbase, however there are some important things you should know before doing. Continue reading
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This software can turn spreadsheets into musicDoes the word ‘spreadsheet’ send shivers down your spine? Here’s a piece of software that might make your workdays a little better by transforming those tiny numbers into music instead.

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The brainchild of producer and developer Noah Pred, Sonification Tools is a trio of Max for Life devices that can help you create new musical ideas using real-world data sets.
Just type or copy and paste raw numeric data into the text entry field of all three devices to turn them into music, modulation, effects and audio. Data MIDI will convert any string of numbers into a MIDI sequence to create melodies and harmonies; Data Mod will turn data into modulation sequences; while Data FX allows you to control three audio effects – spectral filtration, wavefolding distortion, and impulse convolution – or even to generate raw audio using the input data.
Data can be typed in manually, randomly generated, or copied and pasted from pretty much any source. After which, select and loop the data as you like, with the lowest data value automatically corresponding to your lowest allowed output, and the highest data point automatically corresponding to your specified upper output limit – be it note pitch, velocity, length, or modulation.
Users can also adjust how the raw data is processed and transformed using the parameters featured in each device. Data MIDI and Data Mod allow you to trigger data at any factored or fractional metrical base rate with optional cycle reset for a wide variety of rhythmic patterns. Offset delay and swing further enhance MIDI output timing. You can also trigger data at a millisecond rate for more abstracted results, or via arbitrary note input.
Data MIDI is also equipped with a variety of ‘trigger modes’, allowing you to engage with its output in a variety of ways, all of which can be constrained via 69 scales in any key. Better yet, you can expand or contract the range of data pitch, velocity, or length output in real time to dynamically express the data in highly musical ways.
Data MIDI and Data Mod can also be Gated to only output MIDI above or below a certain threshold for more rhythmically complex output.
Available now for Windows and Mac, Sonification Tools is priced at €50.

Learn more at manifest.audio
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Rick Ross and Maybach Music Group strike partnership with Larry Jackson’s $1bn-backed gammaAlso joining gamma is Breyon Prescott, including his Chameleon Entertainment label and catalog
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Adastra Ambiences is a FREE cinematic soundscape library for Soundpaint
Adastra Ambiences is a new FREE cinematic soundscape library for Soundpaint. 8dio released Soundpaint around two years ago, launching it with a free Vintage Steinway Grand Piano. The innovative free sample player offers an eclectic range of free and paid libraries. Adastra Ambiences is a free library packed with epic cinematic soundscapes. The library comes [...]
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Roland unveil GAIA 2 synthesizer Roland’s latest synthesizer features a user-friendly panel layout that aims to make learning synthesis easy and fun.

Daft Punk to release drumless edition of Random Access MemoriesDaft Punk have announced the release of a drumless edition of Random Access Memories as part of the celebrations for the album’s 10th anniversary.

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The reworked version is set to arrive on 17 November, and will completely strip away all drum and percussive elements from the 13 tracks.
“Doing so brings out a timeless quality to the album, giving listeners the ability to dive deeper into the layers of each track,” a statement from the band reads.
Fans can also preview a percussion-free edition of Within, which is now out. The new version is said to highlight the track’s “timeless structure”, while lending Chilly Gonzales’ piano an even more “pensive, self-reflective quality”.

Random Access Memories (Drumless Edition) is now available to pre-order. The record will be released on CD, Double LP and digital formats including a Dolby Atmos spatial audio version.
As part of the 10 year anniversary of Random Access Memories, Daft Punk has also unveiled “Memory Tapes,” a look back at the album’s creation by collaborators including Julian Casablancas, Chilly Gonzales, DJ Falcon and most recently, producer Todd Edwards.
Discussing his experience working with the French duo, Edwards says that he wasn’t surprised when Daft Punk announced their split in 2021 due to creative differences between members Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem Christo.
“When they broke up, they were already going in different directions musically,” he says. “Guy-Man seems to be drawn more to the hip-hop realm. And Thomas was, you know, also a director.”
“It kind of felt like they weren’t on the same page anymore, anyway, so I wasn’t shocked.”
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