XL founder Richard Russell’s collaborative project brings out an unfiltered, unrehearsed freshness in its guests that the album can’t quite manage for itself.
The second album from XL Recordings boss Richard Russell as Everything Is Recorded is obsessed with ending from the moment it starts. Friday Forever chronologically documents a Friday night out, with track titles time-stamped to mark the journey from Uber to bathroom stall to hangover. Near the beginning of the album, drone-folk artist Maria Somerville intones, “The night won’t last forever.” Moments later, London singer and rapper Berwyn flips her ominous warning into a more upbeat refrain. The words appear again throughout the album, an effect that seeks to capture the underlying nihilism and mortality of nightlife. Russell is an expert on the subject of raving, as his time in 1990s electronic duo Kicks Like a Mule attests. But Friday Forever never quite sheds its inhibitions to achieve euphoria.
Russell’s obsession with the fleeting nature of time also influenced a new composition process, one more fluid and spontaneous than his 2018 self-titled debut. He generated percussion on “10:51PM/The Night” by banging on the floor and banister of his recording studio, and the result is loose and urgent. But as a noted crate-digger, DJ, and co-founder of the label that brought the world Adele, the Prodigy, and Dizzee Rascal, Russell’s greatest talent is his ability to spot and nurture talent in others. On Friday Forever, he doesn’t just collate voices, but brings out an unfiltered, unrehearsed freshness. On “02:56AM/I Don’t Want This Feeling to Stop,” the magnetic south London MC Flohio semi-improvises over a twisted sample of reggae singer Mikey Dread’s “Dizzy,” hyping herself with off-the-cuff ad-libs.
Friday Forever’s talent roster is younger and lesser-known than that of Everything Is Recorded, and the album is bolder and brighter for it. When Ghostface Killah shows up for a comical verse on “03:15AM/Caviar,” the effect is mildly jarring—his voice is too familiar, too weighty. Flohio and Mancunian rapper Aitch are deft and charismatic, but the record’s breakout star is Berwyn, a Trinidad-born, London-raised artist who has yet to release his own debut. At the album’s peak, “1:32AM/Walk Alone,” he weaves between Infinite Coles’ futuristic R&B stylings and Russell’s blown-out bass with lithe precision.
The sheer number of collaborators, however, can make the record feel crowded. Russell finds beauty in the dissonance between them—there’s a quiet poignancy when Ghostface appears on the same track as his son, Infinite Coles, one delivering straightforward bars, the other drifting melodically in and out of falsetto. But elsewhere, it can feel scattershot. The universality of the concept—that anyone and everyone loves a Friday night out—breeds a lack of specificity. Irish singer Kean Kavanagh’s bleary-eyed hangover song and skit are charming, thanks to his breezy and unaffected performance, but the over-conceived storytelling feels hollow.
So while wistful strings and the warm voice of Crass co-founder Penny Rimbaud on “11:59AM/Circles (Outro)” fulfill the narrative function of an album closer, as a piece of music, it feels thin. Rimbaud’s final meditation on the passage of time (“temporal... yet eternal”) doesn’t hit as hard as it could, considering how often we’ve heard that “the night won’t last forever.” There’s nothing spontaneous about a constant reminder to carpe diem. Likewise, Russell’s take on nightlife feels studied. For a man who’s lived and breathed rave culture, his album about the experience is strangely lacking in highs.
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