Ross From Friends - Family Portrait (2LP)

Ross From Friends’ debut album, Family Portrait, arrived on Brainfeeder in July 2018 and still feels like a little victory for the romantics in club music. It is house built from feelings first, gear second. Felix Weatherall has a knack for turning small, chopped moments into something generous and human, which fits the title. You can hear the personal thread running through it, a nod to the home movies and VHS textures that have long shadowed his work, and to the quietly nerdy joy of stitching memories into grooves.

The Brainfeeder connection matters. Flying Lotus’ label has always given space to records that sit a touch left of centre, and Family Portrait leans into that freedom. The tempos are club friendly, but the edges are soft and slightly frayed. Keys wobble, drums crunch, melodies peek out like sun through a thin curtain. Instead of a fashionable lo fi haze for its own sake, Weatherall uses grit as a way to warm the room. It is a record you can play late at night and still feel looked after.

“Project Cybersyn” was the calling card, a title that nods to the Chilean techno utopian experiment from the early 70s and a track that still hits. It starts with a nervous pulse, then layers in busy hi hats, a bassline that swells and ducks, and those little vocal flecks that he stacks like confetti. The payoff is subtle rather than explosive, which is his trick throughout the album. He builds tension in the way a collage builds meaning, by placing two tones next to each other until the ear completes the picture.

Weatherall’s production pulls from all over the UK continuum. There is the lilt of garage in the swing of the snares, the clipped funk of electro in the bass shapes, the heady release of house in the pads that sigh across the bar lines. He loves a detuned synth line that seems to be learning the melody as it goes. The mix is roomy, never overstuffed, so small details have space to breathe. You catch a filtered chord rubbing up against a noisy snare and think, yes, that little friction is the hook.

Part of the charm is how well these tracks translate off the page. Ross From Friends tours with a three piece live band, with John Dunk on sax and keys and Jed Hampson on guitar, and you can hear how those textures would spring to life in a room. The parts are modular, so a synth phrase can become a sax line, a looped guitar lick can pick up the rhythmic slack. It keeps the music from feeling hermetic, even on headphones.

There is a sentimental streak here, and it is earned. Weatherall has spoken about his dad’s stash of 80s camcorder footage and the pull that archive has on him. You hear that in the way vinyl crackle and tape wobble are used as colours rather than clichés. Family Portrait never begs for nostalgia. It just lets old air into the mix and trusts that warmth to carry the songs.

What makes the album stick is the sense of proportion. The grooves are patient. Nothing elbows you in the ribs. A vocal chop will appear, flicker for four bars, then vanish so you miss it and lean forward. Even when the drums toughen up, there is a sweetness in the harmony that softens the blow. It is easy to imagine these tunes landing in a small club at 2am, lights low, punters locked in, the DJ letting the long crossfades tell the story.

If you collect, Family Portrait vinyl is a satisfying spin. Brainfeeder’s pressings tend to give the low end proper room, which this album needs, and the layered mids come through clean. I have seen copies pop up around town, and if you stumble on Ross From Friends vinyl at a Melbourne record store, do yourself a favour. You can also buy Ross From Friends records online if you are hunting a specific edition. For anyone building a shelf of modern UK dance that leans emotional, Ross From Friends albums on vinyl sit neatly alongside Four Tet and Floating Points, but with a scrappier, more scrapbook feel that is all his.

Six years on, Family Portrait still feels like a small classic, the moment Felix Weatherall stepped out from the lo fi tag and showed how much heart sits inside his machines. If you are crate digging in vinyl records Australia and see that familiar Brainfeeder logo, this one is worth pulling. It is a debut that sounds like a life already lived, flipped into loops and kept spinning.