james K is hopping between soundworlds with curiosity and precision

Inspired by the communality of the club,  james K’s vision of connection coalesces on her latest album Friend – a pop-forward hybrid evoking both nostalgia and futurism.

There’s a part near the middle of Hypersoft Lovejinx Junkdream – a highlight from james K’s transcendent new album Friend – where she slips into a cover of Duvet, the 1998 single by the little-known British indie band Bôa. While the interpolation will pass most listeners by, a select few will recognise it as the opening theme to Serial Experiments: Lain – a cult Y2K anime series about a teenage girl psychologically ensnared by a mysterious computer network. Not only do the series’ themes of technology, mysticism and social alienation align neatly with james’ broader oeuvre, but the track also points to her meticulousness as an artist. In many ways, james K is a producer for our times – capturing our current malaise and distrust by dissecting genre with near-academic precision. And like Lain’s technology-induced hallucinations, nothing is ever quite what it seems.

Bôa’s original song is perfectly enjoyable late-90s soft-rock fare, while james’ version brims with unrestrained originality. After initially soothing our senses with shimmering but warped synths, muted breakbeats and samples of cicada chirps, james layers her high-pitched voice to sound like a ghost trapped in the mainframe – both ecstatic and eerie. It draws you in almost against your will, like a siren’s call. With elements of trip-hop, shoegaze, dream pop and even a dash of new age, it’s a fitting introduction to the world james has carefully curated – where her visual, audio and cultural references evoke both nostalgia and futurism.  

“These sounds have always been of great influence to me in that I feel they embody both elements of ‘rock’ and ‘club’ music,” james says, as she tunes into our call from her New York apartment, slightly raspy and nursing a cup of tea as she recovers from a summer cold. She speaks like someone who has a lot to say but is very careful to say exactly what they mean – common for artists whose work is as thematically dense as hers. “It’s ‘rock’ in the sense of the instruments, and ‘club’ in the sense of its sampling and dance production techniques and creating spaces for connection and raw emotion.” 

‘Emotion’ and ‘connection’ come up a lot in our conversation – concepts that serve as anchors in james’ music, tethering her sometimes heady, abstract sound to real-life feelings and the physical places she yearns to experience. “Discovering shoegaze, trip-hop, electronic and club music in my teens had an influence in my search for spaces where this music exists, which led me to art communities and club scenes. Learning production in my late teens and into my twenties is ultimately what connected all of these influences and allowed my work to embody more ethereal spaces through layering, effecting and structuring the sound into ‘spaces’ of depth.”

If this sounds a bit erudite, well – that’s because it is. Music has always been a part of james’ life, and her deep understanding of genre interplay is one reason her work draws from so many seemingly disparate reference points. Born in New York City and raised upstate on a diet of classical music and classic rock (“My parents were Deadheads,” she says nonchalantly, as if they had been accountants or dental hygienists), she studied violin as a child, which led to guitar and, later, production. Simultaneously launching a career as a visual artist, she attended the Rhode Island School of Design. During this time, she recorded a series of folk-rock albums under her government name, Jamie Krasner, and performed with her band SETH – an experimental electro-rock outfit whose ethereal energy and sprawling soundscapes anticipated the future james K sound.

In contrast to her previous life as a singer-songwriter, james’ relationship with dance music developed in a much less linear way. From 2013 to 2017, she lived and worked in Berlin – a move that was necessary for her to figure out what she was trying to evolve towards, both musically and socially. “The scene in New York at that time was the beginning of how people operate now – genreless,” she says, citing early 2010s parties like GHE20G0TH1K. “People were mixing all of these different ideas and references to create something that was like an amalgamation and a feeling of what the time was. But I had a moment where I realised I needed to experience sound system culture – to hear things in a club setting, where you can stay up for two days and just listen to music. That wasn’t happening in New York, so I had to follow my heart.”

It was in this new environment of Teutonic techno and Berghain all-nighters that the electronic-leaning james K project we can hear today began to take shape. “I really liked to do my homework to jungle mixes in high school, because it’s calm but turbo. It’s kind of the feeling of… I don’t know, maybe taking Adderall,” she laughs, explaining how niche dance music steered her evolving taste. “It’s focused, but it keeps you moving. From there, I found Aphex Twin and Squarepusher and the London scene, and then got more into techno and DJ Hell and Miss Kittin.” The influence of the post-genre NYC and career-raver Berlin scenes gradually fused in her nascent james K project, culminating in her 2016 debut album, Pet. “I think there’s this dichotomy in my music of my background as a singer-songwriter, but then having a deep interest in electronic music and trying to create that hybrid of an electronic folk song,” she explains.

Pet is a holographic dreamscape of corrupted machinery, eerie falsettos and pulsing electronic beats. Its tracks – as well as those from james’ 2022 album, Random Girl – pull more from techno, experimental noise and industrial influences than Friend, which washes the listener in waves of james’ teenage dream pop. “I was doing that last record solely on my own,” james explains. “I was interested in longform compositions, and just a lot of abstraction and experimentation. I mean, every record I make is just a description of a moment I’m in. I don’t decide, ‘I’m making an album now,’ and then sit down and write it. I’m working on music all the time; I start to see connections, and then I realise: ‘This is going to be a larger piece of work.’”

While Random Girl was a way for james to test herself creatively, Friend feels like she’s taking those fortified skills in an entirely new direction. It stands out from other james K releases thanks to a team of collaborators who helped round out its sleek, pop-forward sound. A large swathe of the album was co-written and co-produced by Adam Feingold, Francis Latreille and Patrick Holland – a trio of musicians in Montréal who hit james up with the idea for one of the album’s most stellar tracks: the exuberant and catchy Play. Special Guest DJ lends his touch to Blinkmoth (July Mix), one of the most openly 90s throwback moments on Friend – its laid-back, slowed-down house beat and lilting vocals could unironically belong on a Pure Moods compilation. Special Guest DJ’s frequent collaborator Ben Bondy is behind the reverb-soaked guitars and angelic, blooming synths of Collapse (Falling Forward Blissfully All the Time), the album’s closing track – a warm, rippling pool of sound echoing one of james’ main influences, Cocteau Twins. “I love that their lyrics are kind of just containers for feeling,” she says. “Endless meanings can come from them. I love that bottomlessness of emotion.” 

By james’ own assessment, moving from the self-imposed isolation of Random Girl to a highly collaborative process was key to capturing the emotional depth she was aiming for. “What I’m describing with my music is just certain moments in my evolution as an artist, as an experiencer of the world. A lot of it is just me translating my experiences at the time,” she explains, alluding to both Friend’s guitar-heavy instrumentation and spirit of cooperation. “It was always my intention to make a record like this.”

“I couldn’t have made it without other producers,” she continues. “If you listen to Pet, there are a lot of similarities with Friend, but I produced that record on my own for the most part. It was pop, but I didn’t have the skill set to be fully direct. Collaboration has become really important to me, because often it’s when I’m the least controlling. These artists are my friends, and they all have their own unique skill sets I don’t have, and that I’m not going to have. And that’s a beautiful thing – to let go and realise: this is a collective work. In a way, that’s always what has inspired me, and what drove me to club music – being in a space that’s about the collective, not the individual.”

james’ collaborations reach beyond music, too. “I finished the record two Januarys ago, and I’ve been working on the visuals since then,” says james, who devotes as much time to album artwork and music videos as she does to songwriting. She’s been working with the artist Isha Dipika Walia on a language of symbols, the first of which is emblazoned on the cover of Friend. “I had just read the 33 ⅓ about Led Zeppelin IV, and I wanted to create a symbol. Isha and I came up with this fuzzy, vibrational spiral – it’s kind of a leash, it’s kind of an embryo; it’s a bunch of things. That’s the symbol for Friend, but also for the word ‘friend’. There are so many references that go into making artwork. I’m collecting images constantly… It’s similar to the music – I’m collecting sounds; it’s just a different way to express those same feelings of belonging.”