This aptly named second album from Loraine James’ more ambient/impressionistic side is a bit warmer and less beat-driven than its predecessor, resembling an unearthed classic from the late ‘90s/early 2000s golden age of glitch-worshipping innovators like Oval and Jim O’Rourke and their more melody-centered peers like Telefon Tel Aviv. Fittingly, Josh Eustis was again involved on the mastering end, but there are also some interesting ironies as well, as these pieces are all named after rather chilly temperatures and James’ throwback to the early days of the laptop IDM era is actually deliberately hardware-focused.
More specifically, James tried to limit her gear to synths and pedals and kept overdubbing to a minimum. That spontaneous, in-the-moment approach composition, coupled with a fondness for using recorded sounds and voices from her surroundings, imbue the album with an endearing and tenderly diaristic feel. Some of the found sounds give these pieces an evocative sense of place, suggesting the echoing interior of a train station or the shouts of an epic snowball fight unfolding just outside James’ studio, but there are also some fun curveballs thrown into the mix, like the trippy collision of buzzes, James’ own pitch-shifted voice, and a stammering acoustic guitar motif at the end of “12°C” or the wonky, chopped-up arcade sounds in “15°C.”
Unexpectedly, my favorite piece is the brief interlude “23°C (Intermittent Sunshine),” which is an absolutely sublime bliss-fest of gorgeously smeary overlapping melodies, but “18°C” is yet another improbably beautiful stunner that recalls the best bits of Oval’s lush, dreamily skipping chords and loscil’s blearily hazy dubscapes. That said, the real magic of this album transcends easily graspable elements like songcraft, cool arrangements, or well-chosen influences, as the most transfixing moments tend to be crafted from billowing, dreamlike chords so achingly beautiful that I want to live inside them forever.
