Whatever The Weather, '17ºC'

There's a prickly, dark intensity to U.K. producer Loraine James' experimental club music, as severe and stimulating as the feeling of a hand brushed against barbed wire. Her 2021 Hyperdub release, Reflection, demonstrated her talent for mapping anxious textures, all fogged, insecure vocals and skittering trap beats.

That anxiety still permeates the music of her new "ambient-minded" project, Whatever The Weather, but here James tames her aggressive style into a cooler electronica. On single "17ºC," she layers a background of subdued street recordings in between sputtering percussion and moaning synths, for a dazzling new interpretation of her sound.

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