It’s an album that confirms Stott has been slowly building a platform and not a wall, raising himself above the murk to a midpoint where spotlight and shadow meet. It’s an exciting step forward for an artist who could easily have been content to hang back.
Even at its darkest and furthest out, Faith In Strangers is as warm and engaging as albums that make standard inroads to listeners' hearts.
What Faith in Strangers does do is confirm Stott's position as one of the most stirring and explorative producers going.
Stott looks patiently inside whirring machines and pulls out their constructed heartbeats; Faith in Strangers is simultaneously a machine and movement, a noun and a verb.
Despite a radical switch from digital to analog gear, the album is as bleak and as bracing as Luxury Problems. Stott coaxes his harshest and gentlest sounds yet, sometimes within the same track.
The album is another leap forward for the producer, refining his sense of songcraft and expanding his instrumental palette without sanding down his rough edges in the slightest.
Faith In Strangers amplifies human interaction with the elements and the fractured nature of our relationship with them; this might not be the most joyful depiction, but it has been impeccably well documented here.
Most of Faith in Strangers is a groove machine, albeit a despondent and sometimes hostile one.
Instead of continuing their exploration of Problems‘ more meditative planes, here Stott and Skidmore delve back into the depths, mining mantle-crumbling beats engorged with dread and cautious beauty.
Silence and space are savored even when the tempo ratchets up. But human tenderness still illuminates these tracks at their darkest
#1 | / | Resident Advisor |
#4 | / | FACT Magazine |
#7 | / | The 405 |
#9 | / | Tiny Mix Tapes |
#11 | / | Gorilla vs. Bear |
#14 | / | Noisey |
#20 | / | A.V. Club |
#21 | / | Crack Magazine |
#22 | / | The Quietus |
#33 | / | SPIN |
#8 | / | Rolling Stone (EDM, Electronic & Dance) |