The consistency of Friendly Strangers is both its greatest strength and its biggest weakness. It’s the first release for the new U.S. based label, [Unnamed Label] Records, run by a couple of teenagers with high ideals and a fair amount of commitment. The group of tracks they have assembled are impressive and they have mastered them into a fairly seamless sonic whole. If you were given the blindfold test on listening to the album, in fact, you could very easily be forgiven for thinking the album was the work of a single artist.
The overall mood of the compilation is of gentle textural movement. The rhythms are generally skittering bursts of small sounds. Synth lines meander, some grainier textures contrasting the often lush reverbs. While all the tracks are strong, some personal favourites include Mick Chillage’s ‘Livin’ Large’ with it’s more robust rhythm (courtesy of Public Enemy), ‘It All Started At Marshalsea’ by Innerise which uses quiet field recordings to further emphasise the gentleness of its muted synth chords, and ‘Electrah’ by Remorse, who introduce some slightly more forboding synth textures and fuzzy rhythms.
So while the album is certainly a strong one, and a great listen, there is an overriding issue to my ears. If such a variety of artists, from around the globe, can produce such a consistency of tone and mood, surely that is a signifier of some level of identikit fashion at work. And while I can still enjoy the compilation at face value, I just can’t get that nagging thought out of the back of my mind.
Adrian Elmer
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