Happenings: Vancouver-based Music Icon Kuma Releases His New Album I Grew up in Spectral Places

Today sees the release of producer and dubstep pioneer Kuma’s new album, I Grew up in Spectral Places. It’s his third long-player for Frosti, the UK label helmed by Sulk Rooms main man Thomas Ragsdale. Over nine tracks the album explores dark soundscapes and a multitude of delicately sculpted moments of spectral stillness.

Kuma (aka James Graham) offers up these words about the album “We are living in a golden age of luminous darkness. Haunted times require haunted sounds, and this is your soundtrack for 2024.”

Adds label boss Ragsdale, “Are those ghosts? Kuma’s vocal looping and processing that has been taken to a whole other level with this record. Is that someone yelling at you? Could be or it may just be the spectral flickering of tapes drawn from a vast collection of field recordings. Are shadows encroaching? That could just be layers of synths so thick you can feel them.”

He continues, “Now, this is dreich. What is dreich you ask? The Scottish define it as long, drawn out, protracted, grey, and gloomy. Now if you’ve ever spent time in Kuma’s home of Vancouver, you get it. A city that the sun tends to avoid is going to generate a specific kind of music. This is the reflection of sound driven by a city covered in rain for most of the year and surrounded by its own brand of darkness.”

I Grew up in Spectral Places is out now to stream and download, while the CD edition of the album is available on Bandcamp. To learn more about Kuma and his music, be sure to head over to his Instagram page and give him a follow.

Header photo by B. Otto