One of the most exciting young voices in electronic music today, London’s Loraine James has a musical approach displaying voracious curiosity and a peerless style.

Photo: Suleika Muller

Her wide exposure to jazz, electronica, UK drill, and grime, reassembled through her intuitive skills and intimate, almost diaristic approach can be heard on the colourful mix-up of her Hyperdub debut album For You And I. Released in late 2019 and critically-acclaimed, it garnered features from Pitchfork, Line of Best Fit, and Mixmag, as well as album of the year in both DJ Mag and Quietus in the UK. 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.

  • Forma, by Lucy Railton

  • Forma, by Lucy Railton

Her next EP, Nothing, came out on Hyperdub in 2020, along with several self-released EPs on Bandcamp and using a steady flow of remixes, for Jessy Lanza to Gordi and others. She also started a monthly show on NTS radio and performed at Adult Swim's annual music festival.

James also completed and delivered her third album Reflection for Hyperdub, made in the summer of 2020. It's a turbulent expression of inner-space, laid out in unflinching honesty, offering gentle empathy and bittersweet hope. Pared down and confident, it also leans further into pop music in her own way and takes the listener through how a tumultous year felt for a young, Black queer woman and her acolytes in a world that has suddenly stopped moving.