15 questions with… LORAINE JAMES

Electronic producer Loraine James had just produced what many critics cited as the ‘album of the year’ when a certain pandemic hit… and all with a 50-quid keyboard and freeware. What to do? Produce your way out of a pandemic with another album of the year, that’s what…

Four years ago Loraine James released her debut album, Detail, to widespread critical acclaim, but it was her next album on Hyperdub, For You And I, that earned the London-based producer even more praise, including ‘album of the year’ in both DJ Mag and Quietus. Live gigs followed including headline shows and support slots for Telefon Tel Aviv, Jessy Lanza and Holly Herndon. Such is life, though, and just as you’re breaking through, a certain pandemic comes along and puts a halt to proceedings. But no matter. James has used the enforced lockdown to produce her finest album yet. Reflection is just that, a personal and honest journey produced “in a world that suddenly stopped moving”. It veers from an intriguing “BeachBoys-in-space weightlessness” to tracks with just about any label you care to try and stick on them (trap? grime, electro, jazz? – “I don’t know”, she laughs) with many produced with various guest artists including Xzavier Stone and regular collaborator Le3 bLACK. Perhaps it’s the perfect way to get through enforced solitude: produce, produce, produce. And the best part of all? Reflection was done on a laptop with a whole bunch of free plugins…

1 Tell us how you got into music production in the first place?

Loraine James: “I’m a producer from London, and have been making electronic music since I was 16, when I left secondary school and enrolled on a production course at college. I’ve been around music since I was young; my mum plays the steel pan and I started learning to play the keyboard at the age of 6.”

2 When did you start to feel you were getting somewhere”?