Whatever The WeatherUK
If Loraine Jame’s Reflection was a turbulent expression of inner space, her Whatever the Weather outlet is a meditative counterpoint; cleaner and airier, though with less sense of a place. Evidently, it’s made up of outlier tracks that didn’t quite fit in with the music she was putting out under her own name, filed away throughout the years until the idea of a separate, ambient-focused project came to her. These tracks make up the self-titled debut album, an immersive assemblage of processed keyboard improvisations and vocal experimentation, forgoing percussive structure in favor of shaping atmosphere and tone. As a longtime fan of ambient-adjacent Ghostly International artists such as Telefon Tel Aviv, HTRK, and Lusine, James saw the label as the ideal home for this LP of fleeting transport. The album, whose titles are all of varying degrees, opens at “25°C;” a sunshower of soft hums and keys, and closes at “36°C”—-while a sweltering heat by any standards the track eases along comfortably on a chorus of synth waves, acting as an apt bookend for this evocative, sky-tracing collection that started in a similar state.
Whatever The Weather works in degrees; simple parameters allowing Loraine James to focus on the nuances as a mood-builder. Her suspended universe fluctuates; freezing, thawing, swaying and blooming from track to track, with an intrinsic fluidity to them, akin to sudden weather events passing over a single environment — the location feels fixed while the conditions vary.
Who
Whatever the Weather: the ambient-focused alias of Loraine James.
Labels
Ghostly International
Latest
Whatever The Weather (Ghostly International, 2022)
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Across the eponymous album’s 11 tracks, James subverts forecast and expectation, for instance by charging a gentle “17°C” with frenetic drumming, and letting the frigid “0°C” stand in as the record’s most danceable.
