The Dream Logic of james K

James K doesn’t so much begin as she seeps in – like mist on the edge of morning, or a voice heard underwater. Listening to her music feels like being held steady by the ankles while the rest of you is lifted into a spiral, like that breathless instant before sleep when you feel yourself fall. There’s a living tension in james K’s practice: dew-drop lyrics glancing off interwoven guitar and electronics, the hum of improvisation folding into the sharp knowledge of someone who can build a microphone from a stethoscope. She is not only a musician but a composer and visual artist, drifting between mediums with ease. Over the years, she has slipped into many alter egos and characters – masks that fracture and refract – but what unites them is a process that feels closer to intuition than to deliberate construction. Her collaborations with figures like Heith and Yves Tumor only expand this shapeshifting instinct, as she folds ambient techno, dream-pop, shoegaze, and club textures into new forms. Now, with her new album Friend coming in early September, she ushers us once again into that elsewhere. We spoke with james K as the record’s release approaches; her answers, true to form, unfurl in winded river-like passages, revealing the fragmentations of her identity, abstract lyricism, and the parallels between her creative process and the act of dreaming.

Hey! Nice to talk to you. What have you been up to lately?
I’d been touring until the beginning of July. Since then, I’ve been trying just to take it easy. I went upstate and hiked, and spent time with friends. I’m surrounded by friends constantly these days, and literally right now, my cat is just sitting next to me. I hang out with my cat pretty much every day. Besides that, I’m also getting ready for the album release. We’re finishing up on some of the artwork for it, and I’m going on tour in September. It’s going to be a long run, but I’m looking forward to it.

Sounds like there are lots of monumental moments coming up ahead. How are you feeling leading up to the release?
I’m super excited to have it come out finally because I finished the music a while ago, in January 2024. I feel like I’ve been hoarding it for a long time. I think so far, all the songs I’ve been putting out, people have been enjoying, which is super cool to know. I’m also stoked to perform it live.

We’re marking our calendars. Given how much time has passed since you were working on the music, do you find yourself viewing those songs differently today?
I can’t really say if I look at them differently. I’ve been performing some of them live since I wrote them, and I’m still really excited to play them, which isn’t always the case. I’ve had it happen where I’d start incorporating songs into my live sets, and by the time they come out, I don’t want to perform them anymore. This time around, I definitely feel connected to the music, and I’m able to tap into the state I was in when I was making it.

Can you tell me more about this state?
The state is related to the title of the record, which is called Friend. It’s about being a bit more comfortable, in myself and with myself. I’ve always used music as a catharsis and a way to process my emotions, and with this record, I was able to go into really deep places, but  with more care, kindness, and ease with myself and the process than previously. I can’t really say why that is. Maybe it was about maturity, or maybe I was just ready to show myself a bit more. I think a major aspect of the record is that it’s a bit more direct than my last record, both sonically and lyrically. It’s a bit more melded. References are scattered across the record, and while they blend, they are a bit more direct. With this, there’s a bit of an access point to me and my emotions, but not necessarily to myself as a person.

I was asked a question the other day about when I started to pursue music. I honestly can’t remember a point, and the response I wrote down was that music was really like always a friend to me. I was a bit of a weird kid – I didn’t have a ton of friends, and I was a bit of a loner. And my mom was always like, “oh, she’s just like independent”, but maybe I was having a hard time. But still I was always singing, and music was always a friend to me. For this record, there was a childlike state that I was able to go back to and channel into my songwriting. I was really a songwriter before I became an experimental electronic producer, which my previous releases have been more focused on. Returning to writing music on the guitar also brought back my inner child in a lot of ways.

It sounds pretty fitting bringing back your inner child, with you also mentioning extending a certain kindness to yourself. I think that’s also a nice circle point when you grow up and start feeling more connected to who you were as a child.
Definitely. And a lot of it had to do with the major shifts in my life, especially around COVID, which was obviously a shift in the world. Even before that, in 2019, I already felt the urge to return to songwriting and go back to basics, and when COVID hit, it became an immediate need for comfort and connection. For me, the record is about creating spaces for connection – safe spaces to be whatever self you are. There are many iterations of myself in the music, so I can’t say it’s one sound. It’s still melding different elements, but the through line is comfort, warmth, safety, and love.

You’ve channelled your art through different alter egos and characters across the web, and it’s interesting to hear you say that this record opens a bit more of a direct access to you you. What is your relationship with yourself like right now?
I’ve used personas over the years as a way to delve into certain aspects of myself. I see a persona as a mask – something that lets you move more freely into zones you might not feel comfortable exploring as your legal-name self. I’ve always been interested in different aspects and iterations of myself. Over time, I’ve become more aware of this fragmentation, and as I’ve gotten older, those parts feel more in conversation and less separate. And so, this record carries that. Relating to the catharsis of music, I also used to make visual artwork about 10 or 15 years ago. A lot of it was conceptually about the internet’s play on the construction of identity and fragmentation in that sphere, and online personalities. On a deeper level, it was also about trauma, which fragments identity, and I came to terms with understanding that I was also talking about that within myself. Part of the process of healing was about understanding those fragments of myself and learning to get them to work together. Even when I was choosing a project name, I wanted to be me, which is why I went with James K. It’s a nickname people have called me since I was a kid, with “K” being the last letter of my name. It felt like an umbrella that included all facets of me – still facets of myself I can tap into when needed, but not my legal name, not exactly me. I call that the pet persona, which has a pop-star, internet quality. Even in Friend, there’s a character play, even down to the voice. There’s a dichotomy in that track: surface-level immediacy and pleasure, but also tragedy. That tension is what I love about great pop music. It feels familiar and immediate, but carries sadness too. The song is about losing a friend and accepting that loss, which made it a fitting space to explore that character and pop idea.

Thank you for sharing that. I think it’s really important that you brought up how trauma fragments identity. It’s such a common coping mechanism, and I feel like it’s just not talked about enough.
Absolutely. It’s something that I didn’t realise at first. Making art has always been my natural form of therapy, and it took almost eight years to realise, “oh, that’s what I’m dealing with and working through”. With music, I don’t start with a fixed idea of what it will be about – I just go into things, finding a channel state where I can communicate with whatever tools I have. I try to not put too much of a container on what it’s saying. Then, years later, I might realise, “oh, that’s what I was saying,” which is kinda funny. I love that process of teaching myself what I’m trying to get at, letting the process guide you. 

It’s definitely something I feel and resonate with in your work – the sense of fluidity and take-it-as-it-comes process. What does your creative process look like? When does a work feel finished to you?
People ask me this a lot, and it’s funny because it’s difficult for me to explain. I just know when it’s not finished, and that I need to keep working on it. There’s a Kathy Acker quote I love: “I hate the beginning.” I always need a start, and I find it sometimes helpful to listen to something or make something very simple, for example. Then sometimes you reach a wall, and you have to take a break. Eventually, there’s a point where I feel a piece is done, and I fear that if I work on it for longer, it might tip over into overwork. I do very detailed work on my music – it’s hyper-edited, and every detail is considered meticulously. But I’ve also learned to hold a balance, stopping before the work loses the spark of its initial conception. Overworking can make it flat or feel empty. I trust that line and know which elements keep the work interesting and unexpected, because that’s the main thing you want to have. For example, there’s something in that first take – instrument, voice take or lyric – that I always keep because it captures that immediacy of an emotion, thought or moment. The band and I have conversations of what to keep in and sometimes they say, “No, that doesn’t sound right. We have to take it out.” But no, we’re keeping it in; it’s good it doesn’t sound right. I like that it might sound like a mistake. It makes it interesting and real.

Do you ever struggle with letting a piece go?
I don’t have that hard of a time letting go. Unless I feel like it’s not done, of course. But as far as knowing when it’s finished, it’s something you have to practice. I’ve learned it over time, what I know to be the final project for myself, and no one else is going to know that besides me. 

And when it comes to lyrics, is it a similar process for you?
Yeah, lyrics actually are the one thing that I change sometimes even after they’re already out. I also have a very specific way of writing lyrics. As I’ve mentioned, I still sometimes write guitar songs. What I would do is flesh out the songs I have in my notebook, one by one, together with my guitar, which is maybe a more traditional way of writing songs. Since I became a producer, I started writing kind of a base for a song. I’ll usually do about one to five takes singing freely over the track, letting anything come out. I’ll do a little meditation and some breathwork beforehand to get myself into the right state. From there, I find zones within them, and start constructing vocal structures from that. Once I have this base, I’ll start adding more melodies, flesh it out, and build upon it. And eventually I have what is a kind of “noodle language” – a vocal melody structure that sounds like words but it’s not really. Eventually I try to extract the right words for that emotional line that I’ve created. Sometimes, it’s like the song writes itself, while other times, it’s more floaty and fragmented, more dream logic narrative. I’m really interested in abstract lyricism, and creating words that are containers for an emotion in a more abstract sense. While there are sometimes pieces of narratives, I like to keep things unfixed, so there can be multiple interpretations. I believe a lot of people don’t even hear lyrics. I know my partner literally never heard a lyric in his life. But he knows what he’s listening to, and he understands it without the words. I want to also let lyrics be textures just as much as I want them to be words for the people who need them to be words.

I can definitely relate to that, it’s such an effort for me to listen to lyrics. But I’d like to believe that I always feel them even on some subliminal level.
Yeah, there’s this Japanese singer Mariah with this song that’s literally my favourite song and I don’t know any of the words. I’ll full-on sing to it, but I don’t know what it’s saying. It’s just so beautiful. If I didn’t have the editing process, I would definitely just be writing the way I was writing when I was younger, which is more linear. Editing transformed my work completely, in so many ways, especially the layering. I first started learning Pro Tools at the end of high school. I met someone with a studio who showed me how to record, and that’s when I had this “aha” moment – realising that you can layer all these things, creating spaces with sounds and your voice can be 10 voices at once. I mean, it feels pretty obvious now, but back then it wasn’t because these softwares were not as accessible. It was all super eye-opening. Before that, I was just writing on guitar and singing, which I still love. I still keep it in my live set because it’s a breather and you can really connect. I think people really enjoy that moment. I honestly can sometimes cry just doing it, it’s a really emotional thing for me. But at the same time, it’s so exciting for me to be able to create these landscapes and these portals with sound editing programs. Thank God for computers. 

You were born in the right era, haha. Speaking of dreams and dream logic – it’s a word that often comes up in relation to your work. Do dreams inform your artistry in any way?
Yeah, definitely. I have written songs about dreams, and some of those songs are really strange because my dreams are quite weird. I wrote a song one time about a dream where… maybe I’ll get cancelled by saying this, but I was making out with Richard Branson. We were in a shower together, and I was missing this party that my friends were at. And it was just bizarre, I was like, “I have to write this down”. It was a crazy song. I don’t think I ever released it. That being said, my dreams are super informative for me. I remember pretty much all my dreams vividly, and I always have. I think I inherited a really good memory from my grandmother. More so than anything, I relate the process of music-making to dreaming. I’ve also tried lucid dreaming and the practice of writing dreams down. What’s happening in a dream is your brain is kind of going through and mixing up all these different memories and locations and events. And it’s very emotionally charged, and sometimes very visceral. I think my process of making all forms of art, not just music, is very akin to that process. I’m really about taking all these references and letting them float around and coalesce into something that holds a lot of emotion. There are dreams that I wake up from crying, and am upset for the rest of the day. I’ve seen people who have passed to the other side in dreams. That intensity resonates with how I make art. I love chasing that state, and embracing the strangeness of it, letting things be weird and not too obvious, the way dreams always are. 

If you weren’t a musician, what would you be?
I would probably be a snowboard instructor or a river rafting instructor – something in nature. I do snowboard, but I’ve never tried river rafting, but I would learn it so that I can teach that during the summertime. If you’re a snowboard instructor, you have to have a summer gig as well. I’d probably also be a bartender on top of that. 

You have it so thought-through.
I’m not sure I’m risky enough to do it. But who knows, maybe someday I will.

Who knows…