"Though she's an established collaborator in New York's experimental and club scenes, Jamie Krasner's solo work as james K has always felt much more hermetic. Her collagist style holds complicated emotions in dreamy suspense, conjuring a zone apart where she alone controls the weather. Swerving between dusky trip-hop, pummeling shoegaze, and hazy ambience, her music captures fraught feelings in queasy panoramas."
"The third james K album, Friend, is remarkable enough as a piece of pop craftsmanship, but its real achievement is in how beautifully Krasner is able to chart a path from her private realm into our own. She distills the musical eclecticism of her earlier work into a crystalline interpretation of dream pop, using the surface blur and forward motion to keep weighty ideas in flight."
"Her production is still suffused with mist, but it's grown bigger, brighter, and more fun. The pillowy atmosphere supporting her voice now has a rapidly shifting and dynamic ground floor beneath it, one that veers from drum'n'bass to downtempo, IDM to G-funk. With some slight tweaks, the musician preserves the signature hazy dream logic of her lyricism while coming more fully into her own complications."
Jamie Krasner's third album Friend refines her collagist approach into a clearer, more accessible dream-pop form while retaining atmospheric mist and emotional complexity. The record condenses previous eclecticism—dusky trip-hop, shoegaze, hazy ambience—into crystalline arrangements that let weighty ideas hover over forward-moving beats. Production expands with brighter, larger textures and a dynamic rhythmic foundation shifting between drum'n'bass, downtempo, IDM, and G-funk. Collaboration with Patrick Holland, Priori, ex-terrestrial, Ben Bondy, and Special Guest DJ adds cinematic sweep and propulsion. Moments of clarity feel spellbinding as Krasner comes more fully into her presence without losing signature hazy lyricism.
Read at Pitchfork
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