For Loraine James the magic of music making is all about the journey rather than the destination. By throwing all her musical loves into the pot – whether that be pop, grime or ambient – the prolific producer unashamedly ensures that the end result is the only possible artistic statement. Her new album, ‘Detached From the Rest of You’ is a stunning case in point. “I do it for my own enjoyment,” she tells an impressed Anton Spice…

“I love making albums because I never know where they’re going to end up,” muses London-based producer Loraine James. “I have an idea, but it never goes that way, which I’m always very down for.” 

It’s just as well. New album ‘Detached From the Rest of You’ is James’ fifth in seven years, and fourth for Kode9’s Hyperdub label. Throw in a handful of EPs, two LPs under ambient moniker Whatever The Weather and a regular NTS show – where she’ll happily play anything from DJ Screw and Autechre to Björk and Deftones – and a picture emerges of an artist who is following her instincts at lightspeed.

And yet, James doesn’t give the impression of being in a rush. Over a ginger and apple juice at Café Oto in east London, she unravels the intentions that have shaped this new album. Electronic experimentalists Aoki Takamasa, Ryoji Ikeda and Oli XL were inspirations, pushing the limits of what others might call IDM, but which James skews with her own off-kilter pop twist. If she is moving quickly, it’s because each release should be as true to the moment as possible. “I don’t think I could spend a year-plus on an album,” she continues, “because I would just be bloody different from when I started.”

As on previous projects, James enlisted an eclectic range of collaborators to bounce off. Some, like Anysia Kym (with whom she released the 2025 EP ‘Clandestine’) and old friend Le3 bLACK, she’s worked with before. Others, such as Tirzah, Sydney Spann, Cibo Matto’s Miho Hatori and Alan Sparhawk of Low, were new and sent her in unexpected directions.

It’s no surprise then that James didn’t know where this album was going to end up. That’s not to say it came easy.

James describes ‘Detached From the Rest of You’ as the most challenging she’s made yet. Self-doubt, writer’s block and creative restlessness all bubble beneath the surface. “For some reason I doubted my ability much more than I ever have,” she says, speaking about the album in an interview context for the first time. Questions simmered about how much guitar to use (“unknown territory”) or whether to foreground her voice (“I love singing, but I’m not a singer”). Others might have shied away from the answers. “Yeah, I could never do that,” she responds, laughing.

Rather than derail the process, James made these questions its subject. Preferring to work from home, she won’t be hurried. If it’s not a vibe, she’ll leave it and do something else, maybe play a bit of online chess and return with a fresh angle, synth line or drum loop. This distracted nature is implicit in the skittish rhythms and warped melodies of ‘A Long Distance Call’ or ‘Forever Still (Steel)’ and the lyrics of ‘The Book of Self Doubt’ or ‘In a Rut’, where Sydney Spann repeats the refrain, “How do I write with no ending in sight? Try as I might, looking out the window”. What does James see out there? “Just the carpark and the bins!”

The more she talks about it, the clearer it becomes that ‘Detached From the Rest of You’ has sent James on a journey back onto herself. “To be honest, I grew up with that kind of view making ‘For You and I’,” she remembers of her 2019 Hyperdub debut. “But then I was on the second floor and I could also see the sky.” Listening to it again for the first time in years put James right back in that space. “I was a teaching assistant, I was 22 and I made a lot of it on the laptop on my sofa with headphones on while my mum was watching TV, still very much a kid.” Albeit a kid with somewhere to aim for. 

‘For You and I’ was a quiet revelation, an album that distilled James’ mix of personal narrative and leftfield production, skirting grime, jungle and ambient tropes to reach for something essential about her experience. DJ Mag and The Quietus crowned it album of the year. But ‘For You and I’ also did something more enduring, establishing James as a producer who, despite describing herself as shy, makes music that is often intensely intimate. Features on Pitchfork and Bandcamp called her “fearless”, as ‘So Scared’ confronted the vulnerability she experienced as a Queer Black woman walking the streets of London, countered by the tenderness of a love song like ‘Sensual’. James chose a photo of the Ponders End Estate in Enfield, where she grew up, as the cover.

Released during the pandemic, 2021’s ‘Reflection’ was clubbier in mood, pulling in flares of drill and R’n’B, but still weird enough to keep most tracks off the dancefloor. The following year came ‘Building Something Beautiful For Me’, inspired by minimalist composer Julius Eastman and released on Phantom Limb, before James returned to Hyperdub for ‘Gentle Confrontation’ in 2023. At once powerfully autobiographical and vividly light, it was significant in James’ broader musical evolution. “It was the first time I was very proud of what I did,” she reveals. “And so I was like, what do I do from here?”

That ‘Detached From the Rest of You’ doesn’t carry explicitly heavy themes has exerted its own weight. Not to dwell on content, James turned instead to form, digging out the music she made when she was at college. “A lot of it is bad, but there would be four or eight bars of this and then it would completely switch,” she explains. “And I thought, why don’t I go back to switching stuff?” 

So nothing ends up where it started. ‘Flatline’ she describes as going in at least three different directions, while ‘Habits and Patterns’, featuring Tirzah, feels like it’s speaking two distinct sonic languages simultaneously. “I would sit manually cutting up drum parts and randomly removing bits, duplicating and pitching stuff, not knowing what it would sound like. And then I’d press play and hope for the best,” she explains. “Why not glitch it up?” 

If this sounds off-hand, it’s not intended that way. There is freedom, curiosity and bravery in the risks James takes, all of which make her music feel stunningly alive. When it comes to collaborations, James’ approach is similar. 

“Sometimes if I have a person in mind, it challenges me to go in a slightly different angle as I would normally go,” she says. “I was intrigued to know, what would a me-and-Alan Sparhawk song sound like?” Throw in Death Cab For Cutie drummer Jason McGerr and you get ‘Peak Again’, a rumbling plea for peace that splinters into a thousand shimmering fragments. Genres need not apply. “To combine worlds and see what happens,” James says. “That’s always exciting and intriguing for me.”

In the press material, James calls this her “IDM popstar album”, which reads like a bit of a provocation to the instrumental heads who like to keep their drum programming pure. When working with vocalists she might send over a Beyoncé a cappella as a guide. (One can only hope Sparhawk was the recipient). “People are afraid of vocals on stuff where the beat is a bit more left or less straight,” she offers. But James is most at home out of her comfort zone.

Despite her reservations, ‘Detached From the Rest of You’ features more of James’ voice than before. “I don’t really care about people’s opinions on whether it sounds good or not. I do it for my own enjoyment,” she says defiantly. “I think it’s an evolution of slowly building confidence in my life.” You can sense her pride, even if this does mean she’s going to have to sing live more than ever. James will soon play an ambient show in the round at the ICA and a club set at Corsica Studios, moving between spaces, bridging worlds and comfortable with the in-betweens.

 Having turned 30 in December, James has been taking stock. “It’s weird to have so much work to listen back to,” she reflects, in part because she can hear in each record the person she was when it was made and, subsequently, how far she has come. “I am more nervous about this one than ever before. I definitely feel lighter after finishing it.” This perhaps is the biggest case for just getting it done. A discography that is an archive of your life and times, as messy and difficult as it may feel in the moment. And so ‘Detached From the Rest of You’ became the only record it ever could have been. 

“I like pop stuff, I like singing, I like rap, and it’s not a straight IDM thing. Why can’t they all coexist?” she asks, although the answer is already clear. “I just make my own mish-mash and pop it up a little bit. As long as I make something that isn’t boring me and I’m pushing myself differently, that’s it for me.” 

Right now, there’s nothing more Loraine James than that. 

‍

This article first appeared in Disco Pogo issue 9