New York, NY (Top40 Charts) AKA British producer Felix Clary Weatherall-returns with Tread, his keenly anticipated new album, due for release on 22nd October via Flying Lotus' Brainfeeder imprint.
Lead single "The Daisy" exemplifies the spirit of the album. A bewitching club track that skips out of the speakers, the peppy 2-step drums cozying up to swollen pads that tug on your heart strings. Drawing its name from one of the opening steps in solving the classic Rubik's Cube puzzle, the single also comes alongside a video which peers into the world of competitive speed-cubing. Directed by Rudá
Santos and commissioned as part of Crack Magazine's 'Three Minutes' program, the video also features a cameo from Felix as a speed-cubing competition judge.
On Tread Ross From
Friends dials up the intricate and emotive qualities of his production style that have previously led Mixmag to praise his "idiosyncratic dexterity that not only makes your heart ache, but dance right out of your chest". An artist who demonstrates an ever-increasing mastery of his craft, Tread is a record that is at once sleek and melodic but also eminently danceable, nostalgic but brilliantly modern, with nods to sounds and styles that are not so much reflected but refracted and recontextualised through Clary Weatherall's lens.
Tread emerged as huge shifts took place in the world outside of music. Finding himself confined to over lockdown to a small stretch of the Old Kent Road in London-an area between his studio and his house that he walked each day-Felix discovered this was the same neighbourhood in which his Nan had worked in a sweet shop many years before, and where his Dad had attended various parties and squats in his heyday. As he wrote the record, he spent a lot of time reflecting on his own life around this area: the parties he'd go to, different friends, relationships, houses he's lived in and made tunes in. "In my mind it chronologically tied itself to the tunes I was listening to across that period too," he explains. "How things have changed over the past 10 years in South London can be mapped with the type of music I was listening to throughout various stages of living here. I've basically honoured all of these musical touchstones across the album, thinking about how those memories and the tunes attached have been etched into a permanent chronology that's completely personal to me."
This new way of working alongside Felix's inner reflections are inextricably intertwined. "I've amassed all of these memories from a time spent just messing around in South London, as with 'Thresho,' I've amassed all of these recordings from sitting around and experimenting musically," he says. "Tread refers to the marks that I've been permanently leaving, both in my memories and throughout the process using 'Thresho.'"
With "Thresho" being so integral to the album, Felix also made the decision to share this vast bank of recordings that were the foundations of Tread and in doing so, offer up a peek behind the scenes at the creative process of one electronic music's most individual and compelling voices. Coming soon, fans will be invited to explore this resource and share their interpretations, versions, iterations and interactions. An integral part of Ross From
Friends music has always been the blistering Ross From
Friends 3-man live show-comprising Felix, Jed Hampson & John Dunk-that delivers a killer blend of live musicianship (guitar, keys and sax) and electronics. With shows set to return this summer the trio will perform at Green Man, Lost Village and Field Day prior to headline tour in the UK & Europe.
