Magazine Sixty Music Review with Whatever The Weather

Greg Fenton reviews Whatever The Weather – Whatever The Weather II – Ghostly International

Listening to the second album from Whatever The Weather is like reading a book where words are translated as sounds and electronic discourse plugs directly into your soul. Soul, meaning the human experience with all that entails from low to high and all of the bits simmering in-between. In essence, Loraine James captures both extremes by tearing up rules and delivering a wonderfully crafted series of musical events elevating the idea of forward rather than lazy nostalgia, all the more impactful given the music drips with personal memory travelling deep into her own story.

As atmospheric as ambient the music is much more cutting than that might suggest. It is compelling teasing out beauty in the corners of grainy emotional excess. Will you react in the same way listening to this in broad, bright daylight as you might at night? At times you even feel like you’re gate-crashing somebody else’s thoughts, try 20o.

Although the music is simplified, broken down to ever-decreasing degrees the consequences are even bigger as commanding modular synthesises rearranges brainwaves into shuffling, unconventional rhythms instantly making you feel right at home. There is a broken quality here too, such as the wavering keys employed across 8o. While the reassuring glow of 26o contrasts with pointed intensity, the word joy even creeps in. 12o questions what has fallen apart but only after 9o reignites trying to capture the past in dissipating, flickering celluloid. Or at least that’s the impression I’m receiving.

An exceptional, enlightening experience to savour.

Release: March 14
Download/Buy Whatever The Weather II on all platforms here
Loraine James