Friends Electric

Friends Electric refers to two seperate entities: a Welsh electro band, and an English production duo. Based in the former mining town of Neath – or about as far from the hip clubs of London as it’s possible to get without crossing water - Friends Electric are a quartet in their early 20s who formed their first band aged fourteen. Sneaking in to a Soulwax show in 2006 persuaded them to swap their guitars for synths, move together in to a terraced house and do jobs as diverse as delivering pizzas and engineering Abba Mania to fund the purchase of enough equipment to fill their front room. Debut single Wall of Arms was released via Self Raising Records in Summer 2010, with its follow up (Golden Blood) released November 29th 2010. New single Something You Should Know will be released on April 4th 2011. The line up is Dan Thomas (vocals/guitar/synth), Matthew Fry (bass/synth/vocals), Dean Gorno (drums/electronics) and Ritchard Lavis-Williams (synth/guitar/vocals). Friends Electric the producers were initiated in 2002 as a freestyle, no rules production project. The team is primarily made up of 2 people, Sam Rice-Edwards & Bill Robin Fuller, who met while in their teens at a party in Notting Hill Gate. They have been producing music together on & off since the early 90's & after writing dance music in various genres, & being at least slightly dissatisfied with most of the results, they decided to start a project with little or no rules pertaining to genre, groove or bpm. The result of this decision was Friends Electric. 'Seed' ideas are formed by Sam & Bill, & rough mixes are circulated to various musical friends around the world, who are left free to improvise with them. The recorded parts from these improv sessions are then assembled, re-structured, combined & processed by Sam & Bill in order to arrive at a finished piece. They have performed live at parties & music festivals all around Europe as well as Africa & South America. They recently remixed Pitch Black & are working on an album. Sam is based in London, Bill is now based in Berlin.