There was a palpable air of tension throughout the night. A crowd, surely most of whom hadn't already seen him, consumed with anticipation fanned higher by opener-Active Child. Especially intriguing because as Blake noted, this seething anticipation does not exist in places other than New York City. At 10:15 "Stillness Is The Move" was interrupted (as if that small detail mattered to everyone), and three men walked onto the stage. The room went silent, literally.
Blake and his band sat down in the silence; a few people cheered and others shushed them. The crowd was most confused at the start and the impossibility that we had all already seen him--and knew how to act--felt not so unlikely. We still felt unsure of ourselves though, alternating awkwardly between moving and standing still. For dubstep, Blake is certainly not dance music.
The looping vocals of "I Never Learnt to Share" picked up cheers and the crowd's division between noise and quiet grew stronger. Blake chuckled as he heard some cheer louder and others shush them still. A cellphone rang in a moment of complete silence, a collective giggle was heard the way they are in high school classes.
This was an experience in sound more than discography. No one seemed bored by songs they had never heard before because they were consumed with simply feeling the sounds being made. The audience worked together to protect the breaks and preserve the silence, so fragile that it could be broken by a camera shutter. The focused attention for Blake was as startling as the audience's awe of him. They stood like children at a zoo watching a lazy lion, cheering when it moved.
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