Loraine James in conversation with Shannen SP

ASSEMBLY artist in residence Loraine James talks artistic practice and process with DJ and curator Shannen SP in relation to her new audio work for this year's experimental music series.

Having released both acclaimed 2019 full-length For You and I and recent follow-up EP, Nothing, through pioneering label Hyperdub, electronic producer Loraine James speaks to Shannen SP, co-curator of the label’s experimental club night and artistic platform Ø.  

Broadcast in advance of the premiere of Loraine James’ new sound work for ASSEMBLY, this talk provides an insight into the workings and approaches that have helped form Loraine’s commission – a long-form composition comprising of pieced together musical fragments and songs, arranged and produced for spatialised immersive listening.

About the speakers

Shannen SP
Shannen SP is the co-curator, alongside Kode9, and resident of London’s mid-week monthly Hyperdub event Ø, as well as a NTS Radio resident. As a DJ, her sets explore club sounds through an afro-diasporic lens, ranging from kuduro, gqom, batida, dark dancehall and more. While Shannen SP easily aligns with techno and dance music’s zeitgeist, she focuses on layering afro-polyrhythms with political narratives for a fierce, but entrancing and ritualistic dancefloor experience.

Shannen is also 1/4 of the Nine Nights collective, started during lockdown and during the wave of protests that followed after the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. The Nine Nights collective platform black artists and contributors to music, visual and performance arts in front of and behind the scenes, and have orchestrated a series of live streams exploring blackness in its different forms in London and Berlin, including DJ Stingray, Flohio, Obongjayar and more. 

Loraine James 
North London native Loraine James is an electronic producer who effortlessly blends Electronica and IDM with whispers of jazz and ambience all wrapped up in the artists key avant-garde aesthetic and sensibility. Having released ‘Button Mashing’ on New York Haunted, Loraine went on to sign with Hyperdub for her next project, 'For You And I', released on 20 September, 2019, which claimed No. 1 Album of the Year with DJ Mag and The Quietus.