More about: Ross from Friends

Ross From Friends has a reputation as a hard worker. The British DJ and producer, aka Felix Clary Weatherall, is known to take 20 hour days in the studio and tours relentlessly with his three-man live show, which combines guitar, sax, keys and turn tables. Tread, his second record, emerges three years on from his impressive debut, Family Portrait.

Opening track ‘The Daisy’, an enthralling, glitchy 2-step club track, with a synth pad that fills you with nostalgia in a similar vein to many of Bicep’s songs, is a stand out in Weatherall’s catalogue. The album flows excellently, a feat that dance records can often fall short on. Slower moments interspersed throughout the album allow for moments of reflection and curiosity. The boom-bap-esque drum beat and soul sample in ‘A Brand New Start’ wouldn’t be out of place on a J Dilla record. Right when you’re starting to think a rap verse could somehow appear, ‘XXX Olympiad’ begins, returning to a more familiar sound of sleek, intricate rhythms and weaving, gentle synth pads. 

There is more exploration here than on his debut record, and the creation of his own software plug-in, Thresho, is the most obvious and fascinating example. Creating a software that only starts to record once audio has hit a user-defined threshold, and then stops once it goes below that threshold, Weatherall spent the first six months of the album process simply experimenting with Thresho and creating a vast library of samples to which he could return to. 

Spending six months experimenting on Thresho is a display of Weatherall’s renowned work ethic, and on Tread, his meticulously-crafted second album, it’s clear that all the hard work has paid off.

Tread is out now.

More about: Ross from Friends