Ross From Friends

While attention for his sitcom-influenced stage name has been somewhat polarising, Ross from Friends’ Felix Clary Weatherall has embraced the decision and flourished. Within a couple of years of making music, a string of EPs popularised his lo-fi house sound, leading him to be snapped up by Flying Lotus’s Brainfeeder label in 2018.

From that point, a sonic shift occurred based on the producer’s increasingly obsessive attention to detail. His debut album, Family Portrait, was the first to showcase his mind-melting take on tech house, and three years later Tread evolves his sample-based approach utilising Thresho – a software-based utility coded by Weatherall in Ableton’s Max for Live.

DJ Seinfeld also named himself after a famous TV show. Have you had similar problems being perceived through the lens of a sitcom?

“I think it gets funnier as time goes on. The bigger Ross from Friends gets, the more widespread my reputation becomes, but I definitely have days where I’m like, fuck, I’ve made a huge mistake here. But a lot of people have discovered my tunes through the show – in the early days there’d be lots of comments from people saying they’d watched clips of Friends on YouTube, Ross from Friends came up and they loved the sound.”

We’ve read you’re a big fan of Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love album. How do you think she’s fed into your creativity?

“I think it’s mainly her super-bold approach. When she came out with in the late ‘70s people were really confused but she was just being herself and I think that’s a really admirable approach. I hope to be inspired by that same level of confidence when I’m producing. All of her tracks are so dynamic, engaging and rich in substance, and I’m not too mad on lyrics but hers definitely add an extra layer. I herald her as much as Bowie and think her innovation is on the same level.”