Loraine James, “Detached From The Rest Of You” (Hyperdub, 2026)
As evidenced by the many intimate and autobiographical passages about self-doubt, numbness, and creative frustration it contains, this latest album from James was “forged from the fire of internal struggles.” Fortunately, all that inner turmoil ultimately resulted in an absolutely killer album that feels like a massive artistic breakthrough, so I guess it was all worth it (though James herself may strongly feel otherwise). The catalyst for James’ reinvention unexpectedly came from her work producing Anysia Kym’s Confession EP, which “gave her the experience of a more ‘pop’ setting and the tools and insight to work her instrumentals into more conventional shapes.” The ingenious bit is that James’ new embrace of pop-inspired song structures provides an accessible shape to some very ambitious, radical, and non-pop enhancements in her production techniques and beat crafting skills. The final piece of the puzzle is that James tagged in a host of eclectic guest vocalists who seemed to know exactly what was needed to transform her stuttering, blurred, and shapeshifting instrumental tracks into sensuous, hook-packed left-field pop magic.
The most unexpected of the many guest vocal performances is unquestionably Low’s Alan Sparhawk, who urges everyone to make love (rather than war) over a backdrop of gently rolling rock drums and bleary electric piano. To his credit, Sparhawk makes a surprisingly credible soul vocalist in this unfamiliar context, but “Peak Again” is definitely an outlier for a whole host of reasons. On the considerably more outré side of the spectrum is the Miho Hatori-featuring “Flatline,” as Hatari sensuously sings in both Japanese and English over pitch-bent synth chords and a skittering, convulsive, and glitch-ravaged groove. The straight-up hip-hop of “Ending Us All” is another wild detour, as Le3 bLACK raps over lo-fi smeary synths and some killer live drumming from Fyn Dobson. Elsewhere, Anysia Kym takes the mic for the album’s hottest would-be single, as “Score” is a perfect marriage of intimately underproduced vocals, jazzy electric piano chords, gently trippy flutes, and squelchy futuristic percussion. Tirzah contributes a simmering and seductive gem as well, as “Habits and Patterns,” beautifully blends hushed and melancholy heartache with invasively destabilizing and jackhammering loop spasms.
While many of those guest performances admittedly come perilously close to stealing the show, there are some great solo pieces as well. “A Long Distance Call,” for example, opens the album with a kaleidoscopic and hallucinatory swirl of skipping and jackhammering loops, hushed and hiss-veiled vocals, pitch-shifted snatches of conversation, and an impressively chopped and wonky groove. The sensuous and soulful “The Book of Self-Doubt” is even better, as a host of streaking synths, blooping electronics, and layers of panning vocals steer it into increasingly disjointed and hallucinatory terrain.
James also shares the mic with Sydney Spann on the album’s lead single “In a Rut,” which arguably resembles a gorgeously wistful Voice Actor gem until the bottom drops out for a more skittering and industrial-flavored interlude. The whole damn album feels like an unbroken highlight reel, however. The first half might have all the best hooks, but that is only because the second half sinks deeper into more freeform and gently hallucinatory terrain that resembles R&B blurred and dissolved into a sensuous and sibilant mirage.
As much as I loved the songs, however, I was most blown away by the sheer virtuosity of James’ production skills and her intuitive and unconventional mastery of pop songcraft, as she playfully avoids ever doing anything the easy way: the song structures are unpredictable, the grooves feel organically shapeshifting and alive, and the melodies are understated and hypnagogically bleary yet the hooks and repetition always seem to hit at exactly the right time so it never feels like things are slipping off the rails into indulgent or self-consciously obtuse territory. The lesson here is that you can be as freaky and experimentally minded as you fucking want if you can manage to keep a cool groove going and very few artists can do that more convincingly than James does here. This album genuinely feels like a glimpse of electronic music’s cutting edge beamed back from like three years in the future.
Listen here.
