Carving Order from Chaos Since 1996

Blake’s musical journey began when, working late at a particularly boring job and distracted by the noises coming from a colleague’s radio playing in the next cubicle, he peered over the office divider only to find the colleague gone and the radio turned off.  Ever since, Blake has made it his life’s mission to organize the disparate sounds inside his head into a coherent body of musical expression. 

Blake’s musical influences are as wide-ranging as his listening habits and range from Folk to Fusion.  He credits the many nights spent dancing to loud music at alternative clubs in Toronto in the 80s and 90s with a strong sense of melody and rhythm characterizing his songs and an enduring case of tinnitus in his left ear.  In Blake’s music, you may hear the melodic influences of New Order, REM and The Smiths energetically driven by his dextrous rhythm guitar playing or awash in the contemplative waves of his dense fingerpicking technique.

Lyrically, Blake strongly believes that the subconscious delivers up the deepest truths and he is as tenacious in his mining of this lyrical source as he is devoted to the “found sounds” with which he assembles his melodies. While listening to one of Blake’s songs, it is not uncommon to question his grasp on reality, or perhaps yours, until the sense of the song clicks vertiginously into place, often much later with the song still playing in your head.

Seeking an outlet for his music, Blake formed the band Sweet Crush Apparatus in 1998.  SCA played Blake’s tunes with a thrilling abandon best described as “Circus Pop”, seemingly always on the verge of being torn apart by the multiple musical personalities of its members. SCA folded at the beginning of the millennium, leaving behind a handful of live recordings and a small but avid fan base who had witnessed their shows at such venerable Ottawa venues as The Whipping Post, Zaphod Beeblebrox, The Black Sheep Inn and Irene’s.

Blake recorded his first album, Geek in Love, in 2001 on a 4-track cassette player in his living room. Although the album has since disappeared from print, it has attained something akin to mythical status among his fans.  His first studio album, Downtown Baby (2003), recorded and engineered by Ross Murray at Happy Rock Studios in Ottawa, achieved a more full expression of Blake’s sound, where his songs were given brash, energetic renderings by a trio of experienced session musicians.  His lyrical concerns at this time tended to focus on sex and death.  These vied for position with Blake’s jazz-inflected trumpet playing, heard for the last time on record.

Retreating from the sonics of a full band, Blake recorded his next album, Music for Misfits (2007), from a wooden chair in the middle of the studio floor.  Showcasing just Blake and his acoustic guitar with no overdubs, Music for Misfits spawned such classics as ‘Weightlessness’, ‘New Religion’ and ‘Demystified’, songs which still make their way into Blake’s sets.  Once again teaming up with Ross Murray at Happy Rock, Together Again (2011), saw Blake returning to a full band sound, this time with a looser, more organic feel.  In addition to the title track, Together Again, contains such Blake mainstays as ‘Proud Man’ and ‘U in Love’, with Blake admitting that this latter song is the most emotionally unguarded he’s allowed himself to be on record. 

More recently, Blake has released an album’s worth of songs exclusively through his YouTube channel.  Written and recorded in his basement during the pandemic, the lyrical themes of these tunes unsurprisingly centre around the search for connection beneath the isolating glare of a dystopian future.  Taking advantage of the medium, Blake and his wife, Jill Chouinard, have produced videos for several of these songs set in and around their adopted hometown of Victoria, BC.  These videos echo the lyrical themes of the songs, whether it be the housebound helplessness of ‘Mistake’ or the expansive delusion of ‘purpose’, which features Blake’s misadventures set against the stunning natural backdrop of Canada’s West Coast shoreline.

Over the years, Blake’s music has proven itself to be highly malleable, its multiple facets revealing themselves when conveyed by a full band in a crowded bar, in intimate solo acoustic gigs, or with his current guitar/keyboard duo.  Ultimately, however, Blake would like to be known for writing lasting songs able to endure in the harshest of acoustic environments.  And nothing pleases Blake more than finding himself singing the same tune on entering and leaving the shower with nary a dropped note in between.