James Clay is a composer and improviser from Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, whose practice blends contemporary classical, electroacoustic, drone and durational musics. James works largely with chamber ensembles, musicians, and venues based in the North East to present New Music and promote local early-career composers in the region. 

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James' music explores place experience as a means of informing practice, and how our memories and experiences help to negotiate the identities and meanings we ascribe to place. Quiet, slowly-developing textures made up of overtones, detunings and interference beats give way to spaces for introspection and a renewed understanding of temporal experience. James often employs historical approaches to composition to inform contemporary practice, such as the incorporation of protracted chant melodies within the tapestry of durational works and the recycling, erasure and reframing of older musical material, offering new ways of expressing and interpreting material produced in earlier periods. 

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As a performer, James works primarily with electric guitar and pipe organ, drawing on a range of approaches to create complex, undulating harmonic textures and structures, and exploring embodied, visceral approaches to improvisation and noise-making. As an improviser, James performs and releases albums under the pseudonym Elsmer.