James Blake

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James Blake (born October 1988) is an electronic musician and singer-songwriter from London, England, United Kingdom. Blake is primarily considered a dubstep producer and is frequently heralded as a leading figure in the "post-dubstep" community, but he is also noted for his prominent soul influences. Blake was nominated the Critic's Choice award by the 2011 BRIT Awards and the Sound of 2011 award by the BBC, and won second place in the latter.

James Blake began his final year at Goldsmiths in September 2009 studying popular music while recording songs in his bedroom. In July 2009, he attended the Latymer School and released his debut single "Air and Lack Thereof" on Hemlock Audio. It was a firm favorite with Gilles Peterson from BBC Radio 1, and Blake was invited to do a special mix on Peterson's worldwide show, which included an exclusive Mount Kimbie track.
Blake released his debut EP The Bells Sketch on 8 March 2010 on Hessle Audio, followed soon after by CMYK on 31 May 2010 and Klavierwerke on 10 October 2010, both on R&S Records. All three EPs were met with significant critical acclaim: BBC's Nick Grimshaw chose CMYK as his Record of the Week, the title track of CMYK was ranked 24th on Frontier Psychiatrist's top 40 songs of the year, and all three of Blake's 2010 EPs were collectively ranked 8th on Pitchfork's top 50 albums of 2010.
On 4 February 2011, Blake released his self-titled debut LP, James Blake, via ATLAS and A&M. Three singles were released for the album: "Limit to Your Love," "The Wilhelm Scream," and "Lindisfarne"/"Unluck". The album was very well-received by critics: on 29 September 2010, BBC's Zane Lowe made "Limit To Your Love" his "Hottest Record in the World," Pitchfork awarded the album Best New Music and ranked it the 12th best album of 2011 on their year-end list, and it was nominated for the 2011 Mercury Prize.
On 7 October 2011, Blake released his fourth EP, Enough Thunder, via ATLAS and A&M. Two singles were released for the EP: "Fall Creek Boys Choir," a collaboration between Blake and Bon Iver, and "A Case of You," a cover of Joni Mitchell. On 12 December 2011, Blake released another EP through R&S, Love What Happened Here.

New Zealand yachtsman and explorer who , was the winner of the two most important yachting competitions—the Whitbread Round the World Race (1989–90) and the America’s Cup (1995 and 2000)—and in 1994 in the ENZA New Zealand won the Jules Verne Trophy when he set a nonstop circumnavigation world record of 74 days 22 hours 17 minutes 22 seconds, which went unbroken for three years. He later combined his enthusiasm for sailing with his environmental interests and investigated pollution and global warming in Antarctica and South America. Blake began sailing when he was a young boy and at age 16 participated in his first long ocean race. In 1973–74 he served as a crew member in the first Whitbread race—and the first of the five in which he sailed—and when he finally won, in Steinlager 2, he did it by being the first competitor ever to win all six of the race’s legs. Blake made an unsuccessful effort to win the America’s Cup for New Zealand in 1992 but saw victory on board the Black Magic in the next challenge three years later. For his success in winning the cup, Blake, who had been created MBE in 1983 and OBE in 1991, was rewarded with a knighthood in 1995. He went on to manage Black Magic’s victorious defense in 2000, but he also had already begun his environmental activities. He served as head of the Jacques Cousteau Society, formed his own company, blakexpeditions, to promote interest in the oceans’ ecology, and was appointed special envoy of the UN Environment Program. Blake, on a pollution-monitoring exploration of the Amazon River and the Rio Negro in Brazil, was murdered when robbers boarded his boat and he rushed on deck to try to protect the vessel and its crew.

Twenty-five years ago James Blake picked up his father’s old medium format Yashica camera and has not looked back. After exploring this new medium, he became fascinated with photographing  people. From athletes to people on the street, he uses his camera to search out and capture their  strengths and vulnerabilities.

In 1991, Blake began a long-term project of documenting identical twins. Because there is a strong desire by many twins to be viewed as individuals, he sometimes asks them to dress alike in order to capture that unique trait that separates them. This body of work focuses on the parallels and individual dynamics of identical twins.

Born and raised in London, Ontario, Blake lives and works in Toronto. A graduate of the Ontario College of Art  and Design he studied photography and graphic design. He is an active member at Gallery 44: Centre for Contemporary Photography, an association he has held since 1988. His photographs have appeared in publications including the Jazz Report, Eye Weekly, The Globe and Mail and NOW Magazine. Blake exhibits at Gallery 44.


James Blake was famous as an up-and-coming tennis player before breaking his neck in 2004. Now, after making headlines with his against-the-odds recovery, he's a star again, winning the 2005 Stockholm Open, the 2005 Pilot

In 2002, James Blake was named the world's sexiest athlete by People magazine. If he wasn't already a tennis player, his good looks could have made him a successful model. As it is, Blake has a modeling contract with IMG models, posed in GQ and Teen Vogue, and modeled fashions for DKNY and Kenneth Cole.

Sadly for those women who think James Blake is a dream come true, the sexy tennis star currently has a girlfriend, Jennifer Scholle. The two met in 2004 when Blake's face was still half-paralyzed by illness. "This one I think might be around for quite a while," Blake recently conceded.

James Blake went from being the No. 1 college player of the late 1990s to a rising star in the world of professional tennis, ranked as high as 22nd in 2003. But perhaps his greatest accomplishment was coming back from a broken neck to scare the crap out of Andre Agassi during Blake's best performance to date at the 2005 US Open. In addition to his breakthrough match against Agassi, Blake has also won the 2005 Stockholm Open and the 2005 Pilot Pen tournament.

While Blake's disastrous accident in 2004 seriously derailed his ascent into the upper echelons of professional tennis, his stunning comeback in 2005 has made him even more famous. Already well known before his broken neck -- he had been featured in People and various sports magazines, and even met Pope John Paul II -- Blake's post-injury comeback has solidified his star status with profiles on 60 Minutes and endorsement deals with Prince racquets. Blake's time in the limelight, like his tennis career, once again seems far from over.

James Riley Blake was born on December 28, 1979, in Yonkers, New York, but grew up in Fairfield, Connecticut. His parents, Thomas, an African-American, and Betty, a white Briton, first met on a tennis court. After they married and had James and his older brother, Thomas, Jr., they took their sons with them whenever they played. "I think they were too cheap to pay for a babysitter," Blake later joked, but luckily he and his brother loved tennis right away.

James started playing tennis when he was only 5, taking lessons in Connecticut and traveling with his father and brother to the Harlem Junior Tennis Program every Sunday. By the time he was 11, Blake's bratty behavior and temper tantrums were alienating his instructors, but one perceptive coach -- Brian Barker -- took the budding tennis star under his wing. Obviously, Barker's keen sense for talent was right, and he has been coaching Blake ever since.

As a teenager, Blake learned discipline and humility from his battle with scoliosis. The common treatment for the disease, which required an operation to insert a rod in his back to correct the curvature of his spine, threatened to end any chance Blake had at playing competitive tennis. Since Blake didn't consider this an option, he chose the more nontraditional treatment for scoliosis, which required that he wear a back brace 18 hours a day over five years. Despite this impediment, Blake kept playing tennis, never lost a high school match, and eventually followed his brother to Harvard.

At Harvard, Blake had an excellent freshman year, ranking first in the US Tennis Association Boys' 18-year-old category. But balancing economics classes with a rigorous playing schedule was tough, and Blake, then the No. 1 college player in the country, left Harvard in his sophomore year to turn pro. It would still be two years and an accusation of racial favoritism before Blake would gain the attention of the world's media.

In 2001, while ranked at number 95, Blake squared off against Australian Lleyton Hewitt at the US Open; Blake lost, but Hewitt's outburst that a black linesman made an unfair call in Blake's favor caused a media storm.

Just as the Hewitt incident was putting Blake in the spotlight, his game was improving. Blake was a rising star through 2002 and 2003, ascending into the top 25. Many thought that he was on his way to a top-10 ranking when disaster struck. At a practice session in Rome during the 2004 Italian Open, Blake lost his footing on a damp clay court and slammed into the metal net post. He had broken his neck and had narrowly avoided paralysis. Blake then returned home to discover that his father had stomach cancer. In the end, Blake confessed to being thankful that his injury gave him the time to say good bye to Thomas Sr. before he died.

Although Blake had healed enough to play tennis again by mid-2004, he soon began suffering from pain and dizziness. The stress of the previous months had caused him to contract zoster, a condition similar to shingles that paralyzed half of his face.

Finally, Blake gave in to his doctors, and took the rest of the year off to heal. In 2005, Blake was back, and he made an incredible comeback in the international rankings, moving up from number 210 to number 49. At the 2005 US Open, he amazed fans even more by beating second seed Rafael Nadal, then narrowly losing to Andre Agassi in the quarterfinals. Apart from his high-profile loss to Agassi, Blake turned 2005 into his most successful year to date, with triumphs at the 2005 Stockholm Open and the 2005 Pilot Pen tournament.