The sound world that Loraine James creates often seems pinched by a certain sadness or psychological strain. That pervasive quality as well as a mottled and vaporous sound palette can make her feel like a somewhat difficult or uneasy artist to approach.
Yet time and again whenever I take the plunge, what I find and come away with is music which to my ears is not only beguiling and introspective in the manner of raindrops on a windowpane but something gauzy and diaphanous, fabrics which allow light to pass and show consistency with just that precious little bit of lycra stretch. Her productions are accessible, sparked by a certain playfulness or at least a diversity of interests, while her vocals are intimate and have the habit of drawing the listener in.
Her new album Detached from the Rest of You is her first under her own name since Gentle Confrontation three years ago. Whereas her influences might run from the ecstatic minimalism of Julius Eastman to the intelligent dance music of Aphex Twin and Squarepusher to footwork staples like DJ Rashad, Jana Rush and Jlin on Gentle Confrontation she embraced some of the formative music of her adolescence like Dntel, Lusine and most notably Telefon Tel Aviv.
In the meantime she returned for a second outing under her Whatever the Weather monicker, searching for a summer that seemed always to limn the horizon as she inserted field recordings from favourite locations like Tokyo and Paris and made evocative sketches out of the mostly moderate climates, with budding and granular synthesizers stretching out between ice cream jingles and passages of softly strummed guitar.
Detached from the Rest of You seems like a thorough contradiction. The message that accompanies the album appears to be encapsulated by the title of the lead single ‘In a Rut’. James has portrayed the record as a kind of stubborn or recalcitrant working through of internal strife and musical indecision as though the overarching process here was one of plugging away at a blocked drain, the result not so much one of satisfaction as of ground teeth, sweat stains and exasperated relief. Yet for all that she has also described this as her ‘IDM popstar album’ while perhaps not coincidentally it stands as her most collaborative record to date.
‘A Long Distance Call’ opens the album through the sound of synthetic drilling, a glitching and vaporous jackhammer sound as though some rogue computer element were using brute force or burrowing its way in a bid to enter the shielded heart of the piece. Between those vertical bores of the composition she begins to unfold a gauzy missive somewhere in the vein of Burial, Tirzah or Klein but from the halfway point of ‘A Long Distance Call’ that drilling recedes and gives way to a lovely lifting rhythm.
Loraine James has cited glitch or the Clicks & Cuts compilations of the early 2000s as the foremost influence on Detached from the Rest of You. In particular she has nodded in the direction of the Japanese producers Ryoji Ikeda for his deft beat studies and glacial soundscapes and Aoki Takamasa for his glitching abstractions, house rhythms and sometimes pronounced bass. Yet beyond such touchstones and some of the Clicks & Cuts regulars like Alva Noto, Kid606 and Vladislav Delay the rhythmic earworm on this opening track ‘A Long Distance Call’ echoes just as much an Afro-Caribbean tradition or dance floor outpourings from Chicago and Detroit.
The rhythm carries traces of the calypso music her mother would play on the steelpan while James was growing up plus some of the impetus of footwork even while the cladding remains one of IDM or glitch electronics. I hear too some of the levity of Opiate on say the track ‘Quick Save on a Sunday’ from his cult turn-of-the-century classic Objects for an Ideal Home or even some of Childish Gambino around the time that Donald Glover was embracing the tropics, as the breeze of Guava Island ceded to an overriding penchant for clipped ideas and chilly electronica.
There is nothing stilted and nothing clipped beyond those glitchy beats on Detached from the Rest of You even though the second track continues to trade in self doubt. The piece bubbles gently in an emergent but murky kind of way. ‘In a Rut’ with vocals by Sydney Spann sounds more pristine, even crystalline in its opening phase – redolent of that song and its gameleste from the Björk album Biophilia – before the track takes on the tone of crossed wires.
A certain wind rustles through the piece, an emergent warmth that remains emergent. There is an animating force there that never quite heats up. ‘In a Rut’ is another track that shows James’s capacity for stringing together references and evocations as the rhythmic texture becomes industrial and the vibe even calls to mind witch house. Meanwhile as Spann speaks of ‘looking out the window’ her vocals suggest the Aoki Takamasa and Tujiko Noriko album 28 plus Noriko’s silvery two-parter Crépuscule or the windswept works of Julia Holter, with Spann a chanteuse as ‘In a Rut’ adopts the woozy shimmer and blurry or in this case faintest nostalgia of something like ‘Outside the Outside’ by Helado Negro.
‘Score’ features vocals from Anysia Kym and winsome flute melodies from Mélodie Blaison. The production leaves more sense of wires being crossed and modems stalled, et cetera while once again the beats remind me of ‘Crystalline’ and other songs from Biophilia courtesy of their plosive, subvolcanic nature.
The short intervallic ‘Seems Like I’ finds James bemoaning how ‘every day is just the same’. With a sense of despondency, not quite a threat, she suggests that ‘some days I think about quitting this whole thing. Seems like I sulk in my own shit’. Then on ‘Flatline’ with vocals from Miho Hatori pitch-shifted voice and keys imbue the track with a woozy and juddering quality. ‘Is it now?’ the voice ponders absently over the piano accompaniment before some nice interplay occurs between the shifting patter and varied pitches of Hatori’s phrases in English and Japanese.
‘Peak Again’ is more propulsive thanks to an appearance from Jason McGerr the longtime Death Cab for Cutie drummer. The indie rock band and its electronic spinoff The Postal Service were some of James’s defining early influences but the presence of McGerr does not make the lyrical content here any more definite. Instead it is the Low frontman Alan Sparhawk who repeats the line ‘instead of waging war’ with a pregnant pause as though he were struggling to grasp the alternatives.
‘Instead of waging war . . . you should be making love’ he finally concludes, almost belatedly as though he has hit upon the idea after some groping and wondering. Then as the vocals become more blurred already he seems enervated or spent. Stuttering alien footwork consumes the track from the middle point, still crested by a lulling music box melody despite the sporadic rock theatrics which emanate from the drums. Sparhawk in wilting fashion wants to ‘hit some sends’ and unconvincingly pleads for some alone time with his baby.
Fittingly enough ‘Habits and Patterns’ features Tirzah whose music with its small surges amid downcast glances feels like a spiritual kin. Made up of sworls and landspouts, smears and subdued loops or repetitions, here on ‘Habits and Patterns’ everything from the beat and rhythm to gradually even the vocals themselves seems choked and smothered, in a way that certainly tangles with the emotions while suggesting real physical restraint. Tirzah handles the vocals, with laden piano keys coming to the fore until more drilling effects shake the ground and send tremors through one’s headphones or speakers.
Another shortie in ‘Wish I Was Like U’ lurches forth while ‘Ending Us All’ erupts with pots and pans, a crash and glide of metallic percussions. The drumming here by Fyn Dobson reminds me of past solo work by Eli Keszler, combining that experimental or ambient jazz with the noise rock of Boredoms and their redoubtable drummer Yoshimi. But the synths eventually glimmer on top of the crashing waves of percussion to offset a standout vocal from the alternative hip hopper Le3 bLACK.
‘Forever Still (Steel)’ maintains the freeform drum swagger which bats against a scratchy, whirring rhythm. The words suggest a mix of Lucia Berlin and everyday life in London as James describes circular bus rides and partaking of sausage rolls at Greggs. In fact Lucia Berlin the short story writer and her collection A Manual for Cleaning Women might capture as well as anything the pith or atmosphere of James’s music and its blend of functional breeziness, stylistic playfulness and laden sentiment. ‘Forever Still (Steel)’ is the punchiest as well as the longest track on Detached from the Rest of You and eventually as the beat dwindles to a shuffling remnant James repeats ‘I will be forever still’, a phrase which proceeds with insistency to suggest her alloy toughness.
Then the album closer ‘See Through’ begins with twinkling chimes, again like from a music box or celeste. ‘I can’t think much, I just answer to myself lately’ the singer and producer dwells, mucking together through music and phrase the hopeful with the murky and circuitous or listless. Waves of static splash against mostly submerged keys and the vestiges of the idiophones or metallophones. And at last James falls faintly, as through the eye of a snowstorm or on some kaleidoscopic descent.
