The Island Keeps Its Distance

Lindisfarne is a tidal island off the northeast English coast—cut off from the mainland twice a day, historically famous for a Viking raid in 793 that sent shockwaves through the Christian world, and for a 1970s progressive folk band that named themselves after it. When James Blake released two EPs bearing that name in early 2011, he was twenty-two years old and already making music that sounded like it was being transmitted from somewhere unreachable. Sparse, processed, his falsetto buried in reverb and chopped into half-syllables—it was music that understood distance as its primary subject. I came to Lindisfarne the way you come to places you weren’t sure you were allowed into. Quietly. Not knowing what you’d find. Not quite able to leave once you arrived.