james K, Friend, 2LP – Pink / Clear

James K follows up on AD 93 with her third album, Friend. The oneiric fogs of james K lifting into vision have stirred and shaped the landscape of contemporary music since her first release. It is not hyperbole to say that K has consistently beta-launched sounds and perspectives that have rippled across many mediums for years, defining a way that is both singular in vision and marked by collaboration and shared dreaming. Known for her polychromatic hypersensitivity, K’s hauntological dream pop is making ‘music that slows the anxious heart while holding a mirror to {the} deep-rooted angst we prefer to leave unspoken.’
An opening of the portal, Friend is the culmination of a decade of K’s work; the gates of which gleam like a slow drip of melodic infusion, at once a remedy and an inquiry. Friend encapsulates a lifelong praxis of intuitive music making, delivering a more precise and controlled sound, with versions of songs shifting into focus like recovered memories. Feeling her way through textures, a return to, and a melding of, the voice and technical mastery, these soundscapes lay down a framework over time that traces the history of her practice. james K has been a cosmic point of the aesthetic underground across the world, as a vocalist, producer, artist and collaborator. Her breathy, lilting vocals have floated across some of the past year’s best music. Expanding and ethereal, they make you feel like the call is coming from inside the house.
You can trace touch points across her lengthy catalogue, spanning from the foundational urgency of 2013’s debut Rum EP, to the prismatic elasticity of PET (She Rocks!/Dial), to the strange-faced, visceral and, at times, sepulchral intoxication of Random Girl (Incienso), from the universal ecstasy of trip-hop lullaby ‘Scorpio’ (AD 93). To this day, her transmutative career has led K to amass a bouquet of collaborations with artists like Heith, Moin, Fergus Jones + Huerco S., Priori, Yves Tumor, Drew McDowall, LEYA, and others.
Friend is K’s return to the core; with a vault of hard lessons and inimitable love to draw from. Based in New York where she was born and has lived most of her life, there is a constant evolution of the city which she embodies sonically, like the growth, decay and push, pull of relationships and spaces. At the crux of these crossroads is the homespun and ever-evolving DIY rave culture which continues to embody and cycle through lives of its own. This ecology spans across geographical lines and remains the touchstone and core of the james K vocation: the backbone and infrastructure from which her distinctive command of interwoven guitar and electronic arrangements ultimately coalesces. Grafting fragments of the real and the surreal is the provenance she draws from in her thoughtful and emotive international performances including Dekmantel, Sustain Release, Mutek, iii Points, and more.