LORAINE JAMES ANNOUNCES NEW ALBUM AND SHARES LEAD SINGLE “2003”
When I was seven, my dad went to heaven, Possibly
Loraine James announces her fourth album, Gentle Confrontation, out September 22nd on Hyperdub. The new album features contributions from Marina Herlop, keiyaA, George Riley, and many others. To celebrate the announcement, Loraine shares the lead single “2003.”
“2003” focuses on the moment of trauma which establishes the soul searching that permeates Gentle Confrontation. Loraine's wavering vocals directly address the day, 20 years ago, when her father passed away and lays out the album’s themes; the album explores relationships (especially familial), understanding, and giving back a little grace and care. There's a sense she's trying to get a view on the life she's led since, expressing gratitude and unpicking her feelings. The music gently soothes around her as she delivers her unfiltered memories.
Just as raw as the song, the video presents Loraine as she is, seated and spilling her feelings as scenes of her life in London flutter around her. Simultaneously busy and familiar, it offers a glimpse into the fears and comforts of a young artist making sense of the world through the one they know best.
With Gentle Confrontation, Loraine's third album for Hyperdub, she lets us into a new chapter of her real and sonic life in which she examines her past and present. She says this is the record a teenage Loraine would like to have made, with musical tendencies that reflect that time, too. It's a positively languid, enjoyably disjointed set made while listening to her teenage favorites: math rock and emo-electronic such as DNTEL, Lusine, and Telefon Tel Aviv, which drew her back to her adolescence. Featuring an ever more diverse set of peers, the album places them into Loraine’s unusual musical settings and draws out sensitive and reflexive performances. At other times the album stretches out into a drifting ambience as if trying to find a sense of bliss in the everyday.
Gentle Confrontation Tracklist:
1. Gentle Confrontation
2. 2003
3. Let U Go ft KeiyaA
4. Déjà Vu ft RiTchie
5. Prelude of Tired of Me
6. Glitch The System (Glitch Bitch 2)
7. I DM U
8. One Way Ticket To The Midwest (Emo) ft Corey Mastrangelo
9. Cards With The Grandparents
10. While They Were Singing ft Marina Herlop
11. Try For Me ft Eden Samara
12. Tired of Me
13. Speechless ft George Riley
14. Disjointed (Feeling Like a Kid Again)
15. I’m Trying To Love Myself
16. Saying Goodbye ft Contour
Photo by Ivor Alice
Loraine James sees the grand possibilities in our horizons. Growing up in Enfield, London, the young producer honed her craft while gazing thoughtfully at the skyline out her window, enthralled by the view and observant of how it shifted. There, Loraine refined her sound, a mix of jazz, electronica, UK drill and grime, a mix she attributes to her mother’s taste and her hometown’s multiculturalism. It’s the sound of queer anxiety, righteous fury, and wonder channeled reassembled through her intuitive skills and intimate, almost diaristic approach to music making. Both the Quietus and DJ Mag chose her second LP, For You and I (2019), as the #1 album of the year. A busy live schedule headlining and supporting acts such as Telefon Tel Aviv, Jessy Lanza, and Holly Herndon followed, as well as demand as a remixer, before Covid ground everything to a halt.
Loraine took advantage of the lockdown to work on her next EP Nothing, followed by her third album Reflection for Hyperdub, made in the summer of 2020. Undaunted by the success of both releases, James launched herself immediately into another project, masterminding a self-titled album under the Whatever the Weather moniker that sidestepped club-adjacent pop in favor of American Football-influenced math rock and ambient motifs. Since that release in spring 2022, James returned to her busy tour schedule, playing at Berlin's legendary Berghain venue for CTM, and appearing at Rewire, Unsound and many more European festivals. She also found time to release a genre-blurring EP of collaborations with her lockdown-era studio mate TSVI that Pitchfork described as "an intimate picture of two friends shutting out the world and seeking a common language." Following that, James was invited by the Phantom Limb label to reinterpret, reimagine and respond to the work of iconic NYC composer Julius Eastman on Building Something Beautiful For Me. A trans-generational dialogue between two fiercely independent, boundary-pushing musicians, the album reconciles their respective creative languages, underscoring the revolutionary power of gay, Black artistry.
Loraine James
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