A product of Enfield, north London, Loraine James is one of electronic music’s more adventurous artists, lauded for effortlessly blending grime, jungle, and IDM with woozy ambiance and jazz. Nowhere is this more apparent than on For You And I, her debut album exploring the complexities of being in a queer relationship, released on Hyperdub.
The artwork for that album, a photo of James holding a photo of her estate from 10 years ago, serves as an indicator of how her sound pallete took shape. James found music through her mother, a teaching assistant who instilled in her a voracious musical curiosity that she satisfied by indulging in the multiculturalism of the British capital. This took her into jazz, electronica, drill, and grime, and later taught her the basic tools for digital production while studying at University of Westminster. She began to document her exposure on 2017’s Detail, a self-released collection of ambient tracks that pricked Hyperdub’s ears.
Where Detail was a exercise in applying her production skills, For You And I was more reflective. It’s rhythmically free-flowing and sprawling, produced with a jazz mentality. She followed it up with Nothing, a four-track exhibition in integrating diverse influences into cohesive and emotive pieces, and she celebrates it with an EDMjunkies podcast.
At one hour in length, James’ EDMjunkies mix is filled with her favorite tracks from lockdown, coming from close friends or discovered on Bandcamp. It’s fully improvised, and contrasts the delicate and abrasive as it rips through IDM and glitch from LSDXOXO, India Jordan, and Hence Therefore. It’s the latest demonstration of James’ unbridled creativity.
EDMjunkies has now joined Mixcloud Select, meaning that to hear the podcast offline you will need to subscribe to our Select channel, or subscribe to EDMjunkies+ to download the file. The move to Mixcloud Select will ensure that all the producers with music featured in our mixes get paid. You can read more about it here.
Full EDMjunkies+ Members can download the podcast below.
Editor’s Note: A tracklisting and questions will be added soon.
