Another act we’re psyched to see at this year’s Mira festival is UK’s Loraine James who has been hard at work in 2022. First she released her self-titled debut under the alias Whatever the Weather before heading out and touring the record, but next month sees the release of a totally different project.

Teaming up with Phantom Limb records, James has been been given direct access to the material of Queer NYC composer Julius Eastman for her own reinterpretation and reimagining, entitling it Building Something Beautiful For Me. Eastman who was associated with musical minimalism was known for pieces such as ‘Gay Guerilla’ which saw him turn Martin Luther King’s hymn ‘A Mighty Fortress Is Our God’ into a gay manifesto. Being prolific in the 70s and early 80s, Eastman sadly became addicted to drugs, was evicted from his home and died in 1990.

Now James has been handed the keys to the vault of Eastman’s works by his surviving brother. The press release goes on to say, ‘Speaking in similar tongues as young, gay, Black, independent creatives in a challenging environment, the two musicians are bound closely together, despite a six-year gap between their lives ever intersecting. James includes the original Eastman title in many of her tracks, appending the source material in parentheses to mark the lineage of the work – a clear, traceable thread from the heavenly to the sublime.’

Last week the second track from the album was released entitled, ‘Choose To Be Different (Femenine)’ and the album, Building Something Beautiful For Me is available to pre-order now via Bandcamp before its 7th October release.