The Predatory Wasp
Purelink embrace liquidity on their second album Faith, washing live instrumentation and exposed vocals over their patented cascade of dubbed ambience and ebbing rhythmic experimentation. With a vocal appearance from Loraine James, Rookie stands out even amongst all the other floaty excellence, her voice floating like smoke over pattering rhythms and airy synths
Loraine James released two of the best albums of last year, so news of a new LP is real welcome on this blog. Landing in September on Hyperdub – her third for the label – Gentle Confrontations will feature collabs with George Riley and keiyaA and others, and has been touted as “a teenage Loraine would like to have made” and described as “positively languid”, which is excellent news. Lead single 2003 certainly fits with this description, and has echoes of Tirzah in both the haunting, loopy simplicity of its production and low-key vocal delivery.
https://lorainejames.bandcamp.com/album/gentle-confrontation
Loraine James’s new album Building Something Beautiful For Me lands today and fucking hell it is amazing. I never really clicked with last year’s Reflection, but loved her ambient album as Whatever The Weather from earlier this year. Building… seems to sit somewhere between these ambient and club spaces and comes across almost like a work in progress, with tracks stopping abruptly or changing tone midway through. There are so many highlights picking a single track was very tough, but I went for Black Excellent (Stay On It) due to the simplicity of its construction – pretty much just a single, undulating synthline throughout – resolved perfectly by the bleak beauty of its final third.
Unlike pretty much every other person in the world, I didn’t really enjoy Loraine James’s 2021 album Reflections very much. It’s obviously really good, I just found it a bit jarring and after a few time thinking “everyone loves this, so you should too!” kinda just stopped trying. It felt too much like hard work, which absolutely does not apply to her new album recorded as Whatever the Weather, which seems tailor-made for me: all the rough corners of Reflection sanded down to a soft sheen, and the machine-driven claustrophobia replaced by hazily shimmering vistas. Opener 25°C is about as calming as music gets, and that’s what I need in my life right now.
The Predatory Wasp 