NYC’s james K has been a staple across Yves Tumor’s discography, collaborated with industrial vet Drew McDowall, and made music alongside a hefty list of artists in the electronic space that are at its very forefront. Last month, however, the writer and producer directs the focus further inwards, with the newly released, kaleidoscopic and deeply experimental LP, Friend.
Across the 13 tracks, james K paints a full-color portrait of her art and the worlds it’s built over the last decade, and the delicate web she’s spun — while weaving in many of its origins: her contemporaries, collaborators, and those truly closest to her. On the album, james K has found, or founded rather, an idiosyncratic, elusive space in the center of a dizzying Venn diagram featuring trip-hop, industrial, post-punk, dream pop, drum and bass, and electronica — all while conveying a host of emotions with immediate and impactful depth and weight.
Read more: If Yves Tumor is anything, it’s everything
Rather than unpack the project on her behalf, we went deeper. Sitting down with AP, james K takes us through the tracklist song by song — in her own, forever striking, words.
“Days Go By”
Time stretches, bends, flickers, and fades. Watch the light pass, and live inside it. Soon, we will, too. Death is certain, and it’s beautiful to know that when you are truly living in love, hold onto it. Let it go. “When we die, we don’t know, so I’ll try to let it go.”
“Blinkmoth (July Mix)”
There is pain, uncertainty, and loneliness, and the search for answers is constant. The struggle to cope is as well. Lean into love and the answers will reveal themselves, move like music. “Fate is always saving my life. And now I don’t rely on my knowing where to go. Passing by from window to window, feeding my life full of love.”
“Doom Bikini”
I’m hypersensitive when I’m way down in my doom. I can flip down further or up the other way around and come out on top. Living in my head all the time, sometimes I’m stuck, sometimes I’m free — doom or bikini. I always remind myself that there’s no such thing as wasted time! This song is a practice in how I shake off the dread head. This song, like this practice, took the longest for me to settle into, and fun was the key. Have fun with yourself. Life is serious, and it’s silly.
“Idea.2”
A modern lullaby in round; sound disintegrates, electronics stutter and glitch, as if the track itself is remembering, forgetting, and reimagining. Two voices, two roads, two ideas — always all at once. I feel completely sat in all of them. They are me. Actually, there are many more than two, but I like the simplicity of duality for this song conceptually in that “two become one.” This is a dance of figure 8’s across time, both sonically, lyrically, and conceptually — distinct lyrics in parallel, open and converge into unison, creating a dream-logic narrative, equally emotive and cerebral. The voice, a flicker of truth, luminous beneath melting circuitry. “Let a light right on.”
“N’Balmed”
Smear the vaseline on your lips, fall into the cenote. Fall into your head, this is a bath, this is a bed, completely wetted. I am a triple water sign, welcome to my waking dream. “Let it all pour over.”
“Rider”
Infinite and timeless, endless and mysterious, voices in the forest, choral and ancient. As the Silmarillion begins, the world begins with a song. “Love lay in me, riding.”
“On God”
Truth has a smell, and this car positively reeked. Memory haunts and heals and continues to be available to teach you if you are willing to listen. Spirituality is a choice, and I will choose to believe in something larger than myself over and over again. Trust the process is always happening around you. Always be ready to be taught. Faith is not knowledge.
“Even if you know, you don’t,” and that’s on God. I wrote this one in a few hours. Adam sent me a phone recording of him playing the same chords. I heard the song immediately, but the chords were not in the right order. We quickly switched the order of the chords around, wrote the song, and added a basic beat. Then, in the studio, we translated that into live drums and many layers of guitars — “band-in-the-bedroom” rock with a magnetic pull.
“Peel”
I sang this to one of the closest people in my life as she passed away. She is with me every time I listen to it and every time I sing it. It carried her into the other realm. A true story that changed my perspective on what life is forever. “And when we say we’re alone, I lie, but when we say I know, I might. Over the years that I’ve loved, I fall, crying so weak that I land.”
“Lude (unwind)”
Palette cleanser. Scrubbing through songs and samples of time and memory. Bending the tape down, washed.
“Play”
Release the puppy power. Have you ever flipped anger into ecstasy? That’s what’s up. “Right now I feel that I am found, right where I know that I feel the ground…Where did the view go, hold onto your home, or lose it!”
“Lung Slide”
Gaseous. Let the dub-gaze hallucinate. Whelmed in life, in love, in words, in song, in time. The sounds slide through me, up and down, and I’m consumed by the essence of it all. “When you say to me, ‘is it real?’”
“Hypersoft Lovejinx Junkdream”
In 2024, two broods of cicadas emerged — one that lives on a 13-year cycle and the other that lives on a 17-year cycle. It was at the same time — a rare synchronized event. It happened in the Southeast and Midwest, and I wanted to go record it, but I couldn’t find the time to travel there.
I recorded the cicadas here in NY, and layered it with a recording of the double-brood I managed to find online. I chopped up some breaks and mimicked those sounds with synthesizers. When I brought this to the studio to be mixed, I asked Francis to add some of those synth sounds as well, since I knew from his productions that he is excellent at mimicking buggish sounds. He also suggested adding the breakbeat at the end, which I think was a great idea to make all the broken breaks come together in harmony at the end to make the forest dance in unison.
This song was first created for the forest for a set I played at Sustain Release in the forest in upstate NY. I wanted it to feel like the space around you was talking, that you were hearing the voices, and they were singing your favorite song to you. “And my dreams, they will shadow.”
“Collapse (falling forward blissfully all the time)”
Heart-wrencher-gusher. This is the part where, if you haven’t yet, you should cry now. Wet fingers pulling strings to your heart, and let them all fall down. Bliss. Freedom from the known. “And if you asked me now, would I be arms in the weight of your love? Then I’ll ask you now, when I’m collapsing down, and maybe I will land right.”