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 an intimacy and clarity of voice with a melding of refined technique, 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), to 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; each song anchored by the past, present and future: all inherently connected, yet each compressing its own raw emotion, transmuting across a spectrum of fully realized manifestations. K holds a prism to the personal and reflects it outwards, illuminating her blues with a vibrant acceptance of love. 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. Her international recognition has guided her to the stages of both her contemporaries and pioneers: some of these including James Ferraro, Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe, Morton Subotnick, Nick Leon, Arushi Jain, Malibu, and Priori, among others. Friend was written and produced in studios between New York and Montreal; featuring collaborations with contemporaries and friends, Special Guest DJ, Francis Latrielle, Ben Bondy, Patrick Holland, Hank Jackson, and Adam Feingold. The new record is anchored by K’s penchant for melody at the forefront, which feature her ‘heavenly vocals. Her delivery glistens with the Elizabeth Fraser effect: carried foremost by feeling, the curvature of her indecipherable lyrics capture the fleeting moment in which euphoria sinks into quiet melancholy,’ and a dreamy flow-state of softly-textured, finitely detailed hi-fi production. K’s willingness to be vulnerable - to delve into/feel her way through rangelessness is her signature: exploring the contours of all genres, and laying the framework for new conversations between artists.
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