It might not be her most obvious influence, but the London-based artist and producer Loraine James has some serious emo roots. As I learned in a fun phone interview with the artist, her formative history with music has less to do with some of her city’s local flashpoints and more with a post-geographical version of music discovery that should be familiar to any internet-native millennial. James spent a lot of time digging on YouTube and logging music on the website last.fm.

Since those heady days scrobbling Midwest emo, James has built up an impressive, hard-to-define catalog of music. Her 2017 breakthrough, Detail, was created as a school project. It led to a relationship with the legendary British label Hyperdub and a run of exploratory records that zig and zag around many themes in contemporary electronic music without ever committing to any one lane or set of conceptual parameters. And that’s not to mention her Whatever The Weather project, which recently put out its great second record on Ghostly International. We talked to James about all of this and more.

Growing up in London, it seems like your mom put you onto a lot of music initially? 

Loraine James: Yeah, she did. But to be honest, I don't think I really appreciated any of it until I got older. 

Was that just the childhood thing of thinking anything your parents were into was lame? 

I don't know, I think I liked it, but I guess I associated it with older people. I think also, I was figuring out what I liked myself. I liked it, but I didn't want to go around listening to what my mum listens to, that kind of thing.

Is there something from that era that you can really appreciate in this current moment? 

A few things. When I was younger, UK garage was very big. I always liked it, but I definitely appreciate it now. I appreciate the early 2000s, R&B stuff we had as well. Even just the Christina Aguileras, the Britneys. I don't think I was a particularly big fan when I was younger, but going back around to it—actually, like, yeah, this is pretty good. 

Some of the production on those Christina Aguilera records, it's almost this fake Timbaland style. 

Yeah, exactly. 

Were you listening to pirate radio at all growing up, or was that more something you associated with your parent’s generation? 

Yeah, I didn’t massively listen to pirate radio, to be honest. I think probably it was something I was seeing a bit with my mum and stuff.

How did you get into Midwest emo?

It was definitely the time of internet music discovery. I would download last.fm and make sure it was scrobbling every single track. I'd get annoyed if it missed like five songs or something on the bus route home. That and YouTube were big things in making me find out about new music and yeah, the math rock, Midwest emo thing was a lot of that. 

Was any of that guitar music influential to you when you first started making music?

Yeah, it was, big time. When I first started making music, producing music, I was 16. I uploaded a very bad, because I can't play guitar or anything, MIDI guitar, electronic EP thing to Bandcamp in 2013. It's no longer there, I deleted it many moons ago, but it was trying to blend what I was listening to and it just never worked. So yeah, I've always tried to bring like the Midwest or whatever stuff into music, but I’ve just failed a lot of the time miserably. 

Is that something you can appreciate or get influenced by now that you’re removed from it? 

There's been times I was bored and I've listened back to them and yeah, they're still very bad. But I think I'm still very much inspired by that kind of music and it definitely influences particularly the way I play the keys. I spent a lot of my teenage years jamming on the keyboard and trying to mimic guitars or even just the drum patterns of those kinds of genres. I'm trying to actually kind of go back into that. I feel like I've got a bit rigid in terms of the DAW, so I’m trying to go back to ten years ago and just play a bit more loosely. 

How has your studio setup changed through the years? And how important is that in shaping actually what you're making? 

Oh, yeah, it's changed quite a bit. I still make a lot of things on the computer, but I've definitely gone outside of that. I've gotten into pedals, I kind of got into that through a musician called Fauzia. I had a session a few years ago where I saw her running a Chase Bliss Blooper thing through her phone or something. I was like, what is this? And then I bought one right away, now I have about eight or ten pedals. It’s nice to not look at the computer and, yeah, just get outside of that because it can be kind of boring, you end up doing the same thing that you know how to do. So that's definitely changed. I experiment more with that, because to be honest, I don’t know how to use a lot of these things properly, but I also kind of don't want to, I think it leaves the fun for me as well. 

What was your setup looking like around the time Detail came out? I'm curious about your headspace at that time, an emergent moment for you.

Yeah, I made that album in 2016, 2017, just mainly for my final end-of-year uni project. I had to have a project or something, so I was like, Okay, I'll do an album. Definitely the album was more about—it's very technical. I listened to a lot of Japanese IDM artists, so I was very much focusing on the finer details in my music. It's way less emotional than it is now. But I'm still pretty pleased with the album. Yeah, I just made it all on Ableton, usually on the sofa in the living room while my mom was watching TV. Or probably made a bit at uni as well, I think. Yeah, just me and the laptop, to be honest with you.

Is that something you're always trying to negotiate when making music—that balance between precision and emotion? 

It depends, because the emotion can come later, when the pieces kind of fit and I can understand what it's about. But also, I try and think about the details later because I think I can just nitpick all day and it becomes less fun. Even having the Whatever The Weather thing, I'll record something once or twice and I won't really edit. I try not to edit things too much, especially in the more melodic playing. The drums, yeah, I'll tend to go into. But the melodic stuff I try to do in one take, two takes, maybe mess with it later, but I like to keep that balance—of fine tuning and leaving it a bit more rough.

I don't like my music particularly perfect. I don't really like perfect, clean music. But I think that also goes back to a lot of the Midwest emo bands and stuff. A lot of them I discovered from Bandcamp, and they were recorded in their garage. Sometimes when they got a bit bigger, they would re-record it, and I'd hate that it sounded much cleaner. I just prefer when it’s scrappy and the vocals are a bit all over the place. So I like to, in my own way, keep that kind of thing as well. 

You've collaborated pretty extensively. I'm curious how that has shaped how you think about making music yourself. 

Yeah, I think collaboration definitely expanded on my ideas. I used to hate the idea of collaboration, I don't really know why, I was not a fan of it, but now I think it's great. For each project, I have a list in my head of who I'd love to work with. But when I start making it, that’s when I kind of know who I'd like to reach out to. I like to think of it later, I don't want to force something. So a lot of the time, I like to maybe chuck in an acapella and be like, Okay, this needs singing, or actually maybe it needs less of a vocal performance like that. So downloading acapellas of pop stars and chucking that into my work helps me structure things better. 

Have you had a moment where you're just totally bowled over and surprised by what a collaborator has added to your track?

What Morgan Simpson did on the “I DM U,” initially that song, it was just electronic drums, but I thought it'd be cool to have a drummer on acoustic drums and yeah, Morgan Simpson's one of the best drummers around. So I messaged him, he did a few takes, but I really liked the first take, so I kept that, didn't touch it. There's a song, “Running Like That,” I used an Ariana Grande acapella as a reference for my friend, Eden Samara—like, Oh, it doesn't have to be like Ariana Grande, because her voice is, you know, very grand. But then Eden sent me the vocals and I was like, What the fuck, this is amazing. So I remember being truly, kind of goosebumps when she sent me the vocals for that one.

Do you have any dream collaborations? 

Yeah, Kaki King, I'd love to do something with her. Kelela. I feel like it chops and changes and I can't think right now. But yeah, Kaki King would be really sick, she’s such a sick guitarist.

What can you do with Whatever The Weather that you feel like you can't do when you're making music under your government name? 

I mean, it's probably a boring answer. I feel like I can be more free with it. I think there's less expectation with Whatever The Weather, so I'm kind of like, Well, I'm just making music in my room and then I can put it out. So it's nice to have that outlet and I guess explore landscapes differently than I would with the Loraine thing. Yeah, a lot of it doesn't have drums. And I think drums are quite signature in the Loraine stuff. 

Do you ever have the desire to fully, properly rock out? 

Yeah, sometimes my brain is like, Oh, it’ll be sick to just do something very, very leftfield, like a band, kind of noisy or something. And then I also feel like I'd be terrible at it. I don't know why I would. I’m like, Oh, one alias is enough. But I'm also like, I could do something completely leftfield under my own name. I don't think I need another alias, necessarily.

Are there any scenes you're not a part of in any way, but have still been inspiring you lately? 

Yeah, there's this different kind of drill music that's been popping up here. I don't know what it’s called. There's this really sick producer, called .nathan., and his stuff has blown up on TikTok. I don't even know what kind of drill it is. It's quite different from the regular UK drill that's been going for a few years. And that stuff has been super interesting to me and kind of influencing me a little bit on what I've been making recently.

What does it sound like? 

It’s a genre, I think in a part of Africa that I don't know, inspired drill. And that’s a really poor way of explaining it. It's not all Amapiano-ish, but it's something different. And it’s much more bouncy. I don't know, it's fun to play. I don't know how to describe it.

So, it's melodic?

There's one particular guy who's kind of been on that TikTok kind of thing, and then there's been these people very strongly mimicking it now. But his name is .nathan., he has two full-stops on either side of his name.

Any major non-visual influences at the moment? 

I like to say yes, but honestly, I'm trying to get back into watching more films and reading again and sort of being inspired that way, but I always kind of—I will do it for one day and I just won't for many months. So I don't really have any particular bit now. 

So it's all music all the time? 

Yeah, very boring, but yeah.