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One to Watch: Loraine James | Musique Non Stop

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Saturday, June 5, 2021

One to Watch: Loraine James

Enfield’s electronic adventurer produces dreamlike, fractured soundscapes flavoured with free jazz, jungle and more

You wouldn’t know it from her fragmented crushes of electronic sound, but Loraine James’s musical journey began with an unexpected choice: 2000s emo band Death Cab for Cutie. Then came the diverse tastes of her mum, who played anything from calypso to heavy metal in the Enfield tower block where James grew up, and where she also came out in her teens. The brightly hued Alma Road Estate appeared on the cover of her 2019 debut, For You and I, both a tender memory of her childhood and a chilling reminder of inner-city gentrification.

James’s work has been described as “fearlessly queer” but, if anything, its defining quality is its unwillingness to sit still: time signatures are out the window and rushes of beats twitch and glitch around each other like free jazz. Her productions are deeply textural, thuds of drum punching through the dense, deconstructed thickets that incorporate IDM, grime, broken beat, jungle and beyond. Often her songs also have a gentle, dream-like quality, marking James out as a Squarepusher for the xx generation, perhaps.

Reflection is out now on Hyperdub

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by Kate Hutchinson via Electronic music | The Guardian

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