James Blake and 1-800 Dinosaur trolled us all last night

Kicking off at Bristol's Lakota last night, the Measure of Albion 'road trip' appears to have been less a spectacular evening of big name stars churning out hits, and more an elaborate prank by the esteemed collective of producers. Earlier in the day they announced, widely, that BOYSDONTCRY - almost unanimously expected to be Frank Ocean due to the recent reveal that his new LP might be titled BOYSDONTCRY - would be joining the tour. We thought he'd be there - after all, we had it on good authority: "the collective can now announce special guest BOYSDONTCRY to the lineup", said the press release - but we were wrong. Sorry, our bad. Apparently the 'lineup' in this case meant just being in the building.

What Blake meant was that Ocean, or at least people from his upcoming magazine, would be documenting. What people expected was a Frank Ocean set, at least in some form. It all could've easily been rectified early in the day when the floodgates opened and the blogosphere went into overdrive, but for reasons unknown, 1-800 Dinosaur didn't decide to make that public knowledge until about 20 mins before the event... when people were already queuing and the event was long sold out. It was definitely a good way to shift the tickets if nothing else.

CRACK weren't keen on what eventually did transpire: "Blake’s track selection is erratic, abruptly jumping from genre to genre. The set includes "As" by Stevie Wonder, Sizzla’s "Run Out Pon Dem" and some of his own tracks, including "CMYK"... we’re pretty sure Blake has mixed a 4/4 techno track into D’Angelo’s "One Mo’ Gin"."

By the time people had given up almost every shred of hope that Ocean would actually be turning up, it was almost 3am. CRACK say that "besides those on stage, there’s not too many people in the venue who look like they’re enjoying themselves at this point... the music ends. The crowd are booing."

Blake was eventually pretty stern about the fact that neither he nor Ocean were actually performing live, but that didn't stop people crossing their fingers and hoping for the best anyway. Trim really didn't seem to really help matters during the event, asking "Who's ready for Frank?" and saying "We got Frank!" to the packed masses, raising hopes knowing full well they'd be dashed like glass-bottomed boats against rocks.

If there's one thing that everyone's learned from this, it's that the allure of Frank Ocean is too good to resist, and that you probably shouldn't mention him at all unless it's a dead cert he's performing on stage, as the Chinese whisper rumour mill will lurch to conclusions.

Blake & Co. play Manchester tonight and then London on Sunday. It'll be interesting to see if they sell out.

It'll be even more interesting if Ocean does turn up after all this.

Head here to read CRACK's blow-by-blow account of the evening. Check out Blake's post from last night below.

As previously said earlier today, Frank and I are not performing live or on tour - we're on a 1-800 DINOSAUR road trip,...

Posted by James Blake on Thursday, 9 April 2015