Having followed suit with his pattern of releasing an album every three years, Ross From Friends‘ new offering under his Bubble Love alias is a silky, innovative and brain-tickling continuation of his club-steeped creations with one main difference. Unlike Felix Clary Weatherall‘s previous albums ‘Tread‘ and ‘Family Portrait‘, ‘Bubble Love’ is buoyed by melodies and sound waves that feel more elastic.
Ross From Friends previously released two albums on Brainfeeder in the Lofi-house subgenre. It allowed the producer to tour the world but it also hindered his output. Consciously bogged down by how a track would sound live to an audience, it stunted Weatherall’s creative process backing him into figurative walls. Spanning house, disco, RnB, electronica and rap, ‘Bubble Love’ is an exercise in following the tendrils of your imagination and creating in a raw format.
The birth of the Bubble Love offers up a dose of freedom and a reign of creative immersion on a project crafted purely from instinct and intuition. Together the ten tracks coast to a taut 40 minutes; it’s an exploration of more dreamy synth work and soundscapes, incorporating a variety of vocal samples that conjure an overriding nostalgic feeling, yet still somehow blanketed in idiosyncrasies.
There’s a lot packed in despite the breathless runtime. Whilst tracks such as ‘Hate’ feature warped synths, trance-infused vocal samples and potent basslines, standout track ‘Close Your Eyes’ with Cameo Blush and Jeshi, enriches the album with an energetic street-soul excursion. ‘Double Caper’ showcases an eyes-down, mid-tempo kick that swells with disco-adjacent instrumentation, whilst ‘Push Me’, the closing track, explores a more downtempo feeling with intricate brain-chemistry altering layers.
The interconnectedness of ‘Bubble Love’ makes for a seamless auditory journey despite the many different inflections embedded in these tracks. It’s a full-spectrum love letter to the art of individuality, and a shrugging off of prior artistic skins. ‘Bubble Love’ is proof that the process of re-opening up creative pathways is a necessary prerequisite to longevity.
8/10
Words: Harvey Marwood
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