Whatever The Weather - Whatever The Weather II (Ghostly International, 2025)
Whatever The Weather II’ is another rich ambient-linked IDM trip through which Loraine James hurls transversal UK bass beats. It’s a flirtatious palette between her intimate beats and an understatement that you can feel in her work, but countered by the chaos she likes to throw herself into. It won’t be easy to keep these two worlds apart at all times, no matter how much James focuses on it. Unlike the debut ‘Whatever The Weather’, released in 2022, which she recorded at the same time as ‘Reflection’, this time the focus was on simply finishing ‘Whatever The Weather II’. As on the previous record, the titles are temperatures. As she explains, the emotional temperature of the song when it was recorded, as she felt it. It pushes you in one direction if you stick to the track list, but you can also just get lost in the sonic emotions James is hiding in. Standout tracks like ‘20°C’ and ‘9°C’ are the moments when James pulls together a variety of ideas and creates ingenious sonic worlds with an immensely diverse palette of sounds. Songs where voices shimmer over broken beats. Sometimes she gets a little lost in the simplicity of a song, like on ‘5°C’. For it is precisely in this absurd complexity that she excels. Yet they remain small indulgences, trying to assert themselves as fine interludes in a record that presents inner peace, but above all wants to embrace you like a warm bath. Whatever the weather.
Released on Ghostly International,