I may be in danger of sounding incredibly pretentious here, but Friendship Survival Guide feels much like a lingering memory that has been left to float in the air once everyone has departed. Like an ethereal, beautiful moment in time that has been expertly captured and delivered directly to the core of the prospective listener.
The collaboration between Adam Wiltzie and Jóhann Jóhannsson had already been sitting quietly in the background for years before this album finally emerged. The two first connected in the late 2000s, clearly sharing an affinity for music that could occupy the space between ambient, classical and experimental. Wiltzie had already established himself through Stars of the Lid and A Winged Victory for the Sullen, while Jóhannsson had become one of the most distinctive composers working in modern film (his credits incude The Theory Of Everything and Arrival amongst many others).
That cinematic influence is everywhere here, but Friendship Survival Guide is far more than just a generic collection of unused film cues. The music feels deeply personal, controlled and purposeful. Without a a visual accompaniment, I found myself almost creating my own images and awakening my own emotional journey throughout the forty-or-so minutes of these heavily emotive compositions.
The instrumentation focuses largely on piano, strings, electronics and drones. Each of these elements gradually emerge from the silence, often taking several minutes to reveal where they’re going. September Nineteen Sixty Nine is a particularly striking example, slowly expanding from something intimate into a huge, almost weightless orchestral landscape. That sense of suspension runs throughout the record. Both parts of Dazed and Reflective Glory have a wonderfully disorientating quality, their layers seeming to drift in and out of focus, while Give Into Gravity feels heavier and more grounded…hence the name.
Knowing Jóhannsson’s fate inevitably alters the experience. He tragically died in 2018, and Wiltziesubsequently returned to the unfinished material they had created together, completing the project several years later. That gives the record an unavoidable poignancy, but importantly, Friendship Survival Guide doesn’t feel like a memorial album constructed around grief. It feels like a collaboration that simply continued in a different form, and perhaps that’s why the album’s quieter moments hit hardest. A sustained note, a distant string arrangement or a slowly developing harmonic shift can suddenly feel loaded with huge significance simply because we are acutely aware that Jóhannsson is no longer there to hear it.
Wiltzie has always understood that stillness can be as powerful as movement. Jóhannsson brought a different side to the same coin, a composer’s ear for orchestration and his innate ability to make minimalistic musical ideas feel monumental. Together, those approaches create something that manages to feel both microscopic and enormous. It’s music for empty cinemas, long journeys, early mornings and solo walks through shaded woodlands.
Ultimately, it goes without saying that Friendship Survival Guide is a record that is all about connection. It captures two musicians who understood each other’s musical language well enough to leave space for one another, and somehow that relationship remains audible years after the recordings were made.
Poignant, expansive and undeniably human, it is a fitting final document of a friendship expressed through sound.
Best Paired with – a dimly lit room, a vivid memory and a whisky glass raised to lost friends.
Reviewed by Bryn.
Adam Wiltzie & Jóhann Jóhannsson – Friendship Survival Guide is out now on Deutsch Grammophon.
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