British producer Ross From Friends - AKA Felix Clary Weatherall - has announced a new album, Tread, which will be released on 22 October on Flying Lotus’s Brainfeeder label.
This is preceded by The Daisy, a skittish new single that marries 2-step rhythms, warm synths and otherworldly vocal hooks and effects.
The album is notable for its reliance on Thresho, Weatherall’s own Max for Live creation, which he shared in 2020.
This is a utility device that records up to four stereo audio inputs automatically based on a user-defined dB threshold. Once the audio reaches that threshold, Thresho begins recording; once the audio drops below the threshold, and the ‘decay’ period has been completed, it stops recording.
The device enabled Weatherall to take a new creative approach; he could simply jam away on his synths and other instruments, safe in the knowledge that everything would be recorded. Then, when the time came to start putting the album together, he had a huge library of timestamped audio to draw on.
"Sometimes a whole tune could come from an idea within a recording or sometimes I’d just dump a random recording into an existing project and see what happens," he explains.
To celebrate the release of the new record, Weatherall will be giving fans the chance to explore the bank of recordings that he amassed during its creation, and they’ll be invited to share their own “interpretations, versions, iterations and interactions”.
Ross From Friends’ three-man live show - featuring Weatherall alongside Jed Hampson and John Dunk playing guitar, keys, sax and electronics between them - is set to return, too.
The Daisy is out now, and Tread is available for pre-order.