Mercury Prize winner James Blake on staying anonymous

At this year’s Mercury Prize, James Blake was the mouse that roared. Albeit a lanky 6ft 6in mouse. The DJ turned producer turned singer/songwriter was the surprise winner of the 2013 Album of the Year, his second album Overgrown taking home the gong and a cheque for £20,000. ‘It was fun,’ reflects the 25-year-old from Enfield. ‘Although it was good to get out of the country immediately afterwards. Two days later I flew back to America to continue the tour.’

Even if you’re a music biz veteran — the resurgent Arctic Monkeys, say, who at one point were favourites to win for the second time — the Mercury awards is an odd evening. First of all, you’re performing for the TV cameras. And when your music is a quietly gorgeous, occasionally abstract agglomeration of classically trained piano, choral vocals and the bluer edges of the dancefloor, it’s not likely to have viewers falling off the sofa. Secondly, as Blake points out, you’re performing to a roomful of people — ‘most of whom don’t want you to win’ — with each noisy table generally populated by kith and kin of the other 11 nominees.

What definitely doesn’t help is when you’re introduced to the watching millions by host Lauren Laverne as another artist entirely, James Blunt. Blake may be a shadowy, blurred kind of pop star, but he’s not that anonymous, surely.

‘It was funny,’ shrugs the preternaturally laid-back Blake, a smile twitching on his lips. ‘I didn’t actually hear her do it, but had I heard it, I would have gone onstage and done ‘You’re Beautiful’. I know the song, I could have performed it,’ he says sincerely. ‘I was kicking myself afterwards. There was the perfect opportunity to sing a song that had actually sold some records.’

This wry response is typical Blake. For all the rarefied beauty of his music, and contrary to the earnest reputation that precedes this private-schooled muso, he’s a down-to-earth, pithy chap. Ask him what he wants for Christmas, and he first replies: ‘My girlfriend.’ He’s in a relationship with single mum Theresa Wayman, singer and guitarist with LA-based band Warpaint. Then he says: ‘And a working boiler’ — for his newly purchased four-bedroom flat in Camberwell. As for any perks coming his way post-Mercury, the best he can come up with is: ‘My album sales went up 2,500 per cent in the week after the awards. But I’d only sold about four records.’

He doth protest too much, but not that much. While the critics — and famous collaborators such as Brian Eno, American rapper/producer RZA and Bon Iver — all raved about Overgrown and its self-titled 2011 predecessor (also Mercury-nominated, losing out to PJ Harvey’s Let England Shake), the wider public remains, at best, unknowingly appreciative of the foppishly handsome beanpole; at worst, oblivious.

‘I’m still getting the Tube unnoticed,’ he says. ‘I think I slipped back into the sub-conscious right after the award. Or even the complete unconscious. I’ve just bought a car, and the dealer eventually worked out that I was a musician and wanted to know what I did. I was able to tell him I was that guy off the telly who won the Mercury Prize. So he went to his iPad and played ‘Limit to Your Love’ in front of me.’ Blake’s toes practically curl. ‘He stopped playing it as there’s that silence just before the drop happens. And he went: “Yeah, that’s really good actually.” And in my head I was going, “Play the next bit.” But he didn’t.’ Did he give you a discount on the car? ‘No.’

We’ve met for lunch in Kensington. Blake keeps on his Martin Margiela coat and scarf, lending him a just-down-from-college-for-Crimbo vibe. There’s a seasonal menu on offer, but not much appeals: he’s a near-lifelong vegetarian. As the only child of a jazz guitarist father and graphic designer mother, he was, he says, ‘offered meat by my parents, but I just wasn’t into it. And now I haven’t eaten it for so long, my body rejects it when I mistakenly eat it. I feel a bit sick. Same with fish — the oils get to me. Being vegetarian is quite amazing actually. I never get ill from food, and I always feel pretty… well, solid. And I’ve grown way beyond the height of most people. So I feel like I’ve done OK.’

Courtesy of his dad, he grew up surrounded by music and musicians. He says he wasn’t overly academic — he only won a place at selective public school Latymer after his dad gave guitar lessons to an academic tutor in return for the tutor taking young James under his wing. Computer games and playing piano were the focus of his teenage years (‘I’m good at tennis, but I just wasn’t into contact sports’), and while studying music at Goldsmiths, he began hanging out at dubstep nights and released his first, more dancefloor-friendly 12-inch records.

He’s always worked largely on his own, in his bedroom studio. ‘It’s made the colours quite rich, I think, on the records. With every new person that’s added, things can be… compressed. When you’re putting every-thing into it yourself,’ he says, ‘it’s a pressure cooker. So it does drive you insane. And eventually you will hate some songs and feel like you’ve failed on a few. But as long as there’s an emotion there, whether it’s anger or ecstasy, it’s intense enough to carry it.’

Still, on Overgrown, he did open up to outside influences, collaborating with Brian Eno and RZA, who tells me: ‘James sent me the song [‘Take a Fall For Me’] and I liked the vibe and sound of it. He’s an incredible musical talent. He’s a performing artist who produces, and uses unique sounds to display his art. He has a quiet charisma that’s eternal.’