Ross From Friends is the emotionally-charged house producer making an Impact

Impact is a series that's dedicated to profiling raw talent that's about to turn dance music on its head. Next up: Ross From Friends

Felix Weatherall aka Ross From Friends is a leading figure in the emergent lo-fi scene, which has evolved from an online community of fresh-faced producers into a palpable underground phenomenon.

His track ‘(Talk To Me) You’ll Understand’ surfaced online in 2015, and its artful blend of hazy pads, trembling guitar lines and well-chosen vocal samples has become a sensation, amassing over a million plays on YouTube and a couple hundred thousand more across SoundCloud, with comment threads awash with impassioned tributes for its emotional resonance.

Hailing from Colchester, Weatherall grew up on a diet of late 80s Hi-NRG and Italo disco dance music under the influence of his Dad, who would travel with a soundsystem and DJ parties wherever he could. “My Dad's really big into dance music in a really big way,” as he puts it. Inspired by the sharp synthesisers, driving drum machines and positive moods of the music, he’s been making music in various forms from a young age, both in bands and solo, including a dubstep project under the name Munching Beans.

Five years ago he began to produce as Ross From Friends, carving out a style he was comfortable to pursue with intent, and from that point things have taken off. In 2015 he minted South London label Breaker Breaker with his debut release ‘Alex Brown’, a three-track EP of rough-edged house textures that threads fraught foundations and gliding melodies together in assured style, with the record quickly selling out an initial run.

Last year scene heavyweight Lobster Theremin locked in '(Talk To Me) You’ll Understand' for release on its Distant Hawaii sublabel, and in 2017 he’s got plenty more in the works.

We spoke to Ross From Friends upon his return from a gig at renowned Lyon club Le Sucre, and later this month he heads back across the channel to play in Paris, with multiple UK dates also penned in the calendar. Sell-out records and international live shows mark out Ross From Friends’ surging popularity, and with a fervent fanbase tracking his every move closely, his continued ascent looks assured.

Exclusive Q+A and mix below.

You maintain an eccentric, somewhat Ross Geller-esque, persona online. Now that you’ve settled on your artist moniker do you feel you have to live up to it? How close would you say this is to your own personality?

I think I'm a little eccentric in nature, but at the same time I'm a very relaxed person. I feel like some of the online persona, and the whole moniker thing, is like being behind a veil, so you can just act up to it. Online it's just fun to have this silly act going on, but there is a bit of that in my true personality, and I suppose it shines through in the character of Ross From Friends. That wasn't intended to be a representation of the character Ross from Friends. I just like to have this goofy outlook on things and it's expanded much more acting as Ross From Friends.

We noticed that you’ve trolled a few publications in the past during interviews. Are you going to troll us?

You'll just have to roll with the punches I guess, see what comes your way! I'll try not to. That usually only happens if the interviewer isn't really giving me anything substantial to talk about.

Noted. I read that you spent six months writing ‘(Talk To Me) You’ll Understand’, with the aim of making something you really love. It’s been something of an underground hit, amassing over a million views on YouTube. How does it feel to see so many people connect with something you’ve poured yourself into emotionally?

It is actually, genuinely, so very rewarding. I put so much love and compassion into that track, and crafted something that was really emotionally relevant to me, while also trying to define what my sound is as well in one fell swoop. To know that a massive amount of people really understand that as well as me is so refreshing. For a lot of the time I was making that track it was a fairly insular process; I wouldn't really speak to anyone about it or show anyone it, aside from little clips, and they'd just be like "cool, whatever". Having the online community to share it with, and hearing people open up and say it's touched them in some kind of deep way, almost spiritually, or just enjoying the track, is amazing.

David Cameron covering it after his resignation speech was pretty special.

Exactly! It even made it to Downing Street, so it's got some serious reach.

Previous musical projects you’ve worked on have included bands and producing “gnarly dubstep”. Do you've feel settled on a sound now?

No, I'm never settled on a sound, and I don't think I will ever be. I feel like my Impact mix is a little bit of a representation of that because stylistically it's kind of all over the place. I make all kinds of things: I have a couple of hip hop aliases; I'm working on some stuff that I sing in; some very pop-based stuff; and various strands of dance music that might come out eventually under the Ross From Friends moniker. I'm constantly trying to challenge myself with various genres and different production styles so I can learn all the different methods.

The lo-fi scene is interesting and unusual in that it’s become a really popular genre of, ostensibly, dance music without having much rooting in clubs.

It is interesting. I guess that a lot of this lo-fi thing is bedroom producers, insular people who maybe haven't even been to a club, and are listening to all this old dance music in just their homes and probably experiencing it more through their KRKs than Funktion-Ones in the club. They're probably used to the setting of listening to dance music in their homes so they experience it differently, and can find a use for it at home, and really experiment with the fidelity of dance music. It is quite an interesting thing.

I think it also recontextualises it a lot. It takes more of an ironic stab at an approach to dance music. The best example really is how Burial did it, he made dancefloor-referencing music, but at the same time it's not made to play in a club, there's no locking rhythm throughout. He made this stuff that was kind of a commentary upon dance music and the way we listen to it rather than something that can really be played in a club.

You’ve been performing a three-man live show in clubs, how long did that take to develop?

A long time. I had the idea to make it into a tactile thing. I had all these ideas: a four-man show, five-man show, dancers on stage. It went through different motions in my head. Eventually there were these two musicians who I really wanted to be a part of it, because I know they're both incredibly talented and really good friends of mine. I disassembled some of my tracks and we had a bunch of meetings where we spoke about how to develop the show using guitar, saxophone, keys and Ableton, it was a very lengthy process to figure it all out, it took around four months of fairly intense practicing to get a set together.

In each of the past two years you’ve put out one release. What does 2017 hold for Ross From Friends?

I'm putting out so much music. I've got a few things locked in which I can't talk about yet; I'm working with some super interesting labels which I'm so, so excited about.

How did you approach your Impact mix? How does it differ to what you’d play in a club?

Much like how I've spoken about people listening to things at home as a different mode of listening. A lot of dance music mixes are straight dance music, which is great obviously, but that's suitable for the club in my eyes. This one features dance music but is much more home listening I feel. Throughout it has tracks that completely inspire the way I produce; it's a real representation of where my inspiration comes from, so that's the main theme that I wanted to set out through the mix. The first two tracks are songs I found while digging for samples, and I thought melodically they were so incredible. I tried to set off the mix with some really nice melodies which then carry on through the mix, while moving through certain styles.

Patrick Hinton is Mixmag's Digital Staff Writer. Follow him on Twitter

Tracklist

Velly Joonas - Stopp

Afet Serenay - Maden Dağı

Big Ben Tribe - Tarzan

International Music System - An English '93

Bicep - Just

Ross From Friends - Crimson

Scissorwork - Walking Home

Sonderr - Goin Home

Ross From Friends - In An Emergency

Youandewan feat. Huerta - Left On Lucy

Equation - I'll Say A Prayer 4 U

Blue Boy - Funky Friday