London-based electronic artist Loraine James fuses methods drawn from an expansive range of musical sources into singular electronic works that channel her personal history and queer identity via sonics charged with feeling. Her emergence arrived via the 2019 album For You and I, an intimate homage to her formative years that merged strands of grime, jungle, and IDM. In the years that followed she maintained a steady output of EPs, remixes, and joint projects before delivering the equally candid and wide-ranging full-length Reflection in 2021. That same year also brought the self-titled ambient release under her Whatever the Weather alias together with Building Something Beautiful for Me, an album drawing on Julius Eastman. Her next Hyperdub effort, 2023’s Gentle Confrontation, centered on family ties and early creative touchstones.
Raised in London’s Enfield borough, James encountered music early through her household’s broad listening habits that spanned metal and calypso. Her first EP, Settle Down, appeared in August 2015 and was quickly followed on Boxing Day by the second EP New Year’s Substitution. In 2016 she issued her debut mixtape Bits and Bob’s Your Uncle along with the Ambient Troubles EP. Mid-2017 saw the arrival of her first album, Detail, on Fu Inle Records, with the B-sides collection Not So: Detail appearing later the same year. Mid-2019 she joined Kode9’s Hyperdub roster ahead of her second LP, For You and I, which surfaced that September and earned widespread acclaim for its open-ended take on genre-fluid IDM.
She began 2020 with the free EP New Year’s Substitution 2, featuring contributions from patten, J. Albert, Shapednoise, and additional artists. Two further EPs and a set of demos and outtakes preceded her next Hyperdub release, the October 2020 EP Nothing, which included work with Jonnine Standish of HTRK and Lila Tirando a Violeta. Reflection followed on the same label in 2021, with appearances from Baths, Iceboy Violet, and Eden Samara. Later in 2022 Ghostly International issued Whatever the Weather, the debut album under her ambient/IDM project of the same name, while Phantom Limb released Building Something Beautiful for Me, constructed around Julius Eastman compositions. She returned to Hyperdub in 2023 with Gentle Confrontation, a reflective album revisiting her upbringing and initial musical influences, featuring guests KeiyaA, Marina Herlop, Morgan Simpson of black midi, and George Riley.
