Loraine James to Release 'Gentle Confrontation' Album This Friday

Loraine James releases her new album, Gentle Confrontation (Hyperdub) this Friday September 22nd. Earlier this spring, Loraine shared the lead singles “2003,” “Déjà Vu,” and “I DM U.” Later this month, she embarks on a string of North American tour dates, tickets available here.

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.

​​North America Tour Dates

9/27 Monarch, Toronto, ON

9/28 POP, Montreal, QC

9/29 Public Records, New York, NY

10/1 Empty Bottle, Chicago, IL

10/3 Polaris Hall, Portland, OR

10/4 Barboza, Seattle, WA

10/7 Public Works, San Francisco, CA

10/8 Echo, Los Angeles, CA

About Loraine James

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.

Photo Credit: Alice Ivor

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