Pale Blue Dot, Talk To Me You’ll Understand, and Romeo, Romeo, are just a few of the tracks that have seen Ross From Friends catapult into being one of London’s most beloved house artists during the past three or four years. The British producer returns to Flying Lotus’ Brainfeeder imprint this month, where he celebrates the release of his new studio album, Tread. The project comes in a little over 52 minutes in length, with 12 tracks in total on the tracklist. The bulk of the album delivers
the typical Ross From Friends aesthetic of simplified, straight forward and laidback house music, with plenty of dreamy synths, crisp percussion, and filtered chords on display. While the remaining inclusions offer some dub-rhythm arrangements and a slightly more experimental meets ambient approach on tracks like Run and Morning Sun In A Dusty Room. Throughout the album there is a coherant glue-like sense of harmony, which radiates off the multi-layered combination of airy break drums, filtered melodies and recorded samples, it’s especially apparent on tracks like A Brand New Start, Life In A Mind, and Daisy – which while all bringing something different, also sound like they came out of the same studio session. It’s an excellent follow up to his 2018 Family Portraits LP (which also came out on Brainfeeder), proving that he’s a serious producer who’s here for the long term, and one who wants to bring something unique yet wholesomely familiar with each outing.
Where to start:
The Daisy: Harmonising mix of skippy rhythms and reverb soaked vocal chops
XXX Olympiad: Throbbing sub bass sits beneath blocky drum sounds
Life In A Mind: Emotive bursts of melody and broken drum beats
Previous from Ross From Friends:
Family Portrait LP (2018, Brainfeeder)
Epiphany EP (2019, Brainfeeder)
If you like this then check out:
Bicep – Isles (2021, Ninja Tune)
Baltra – Ted (2019, Baltra)
Ross From Friends – Tread LP is out now on Brainfeeder.