NOTE: jacket has a dented corner but VINYL IS MINT & SEALED
On Friend Of Mine, Dj Dodger Stadium has found ways to take classic, sweeping, unpretentious house-music sounds and used them to build these big emotional crescendos. Friend Of Mine is an album that works, on its own terms, on some uncanny level, finding an emotional space where the kick drums lock into your heartbeat in more than one way.
DJ Dodger Stadium is the duo of Jerome LOL and Samo Sound Boy, the two co-founders of the L.A. dance label Body High. Friend Of Mind is a house music album, and it does house music things. It doesn’t belong to some new hybridized genre, and it never does anything showy to grab your attention. Instead, the album works so well because of the subtle and correct little choices that the two producers make. They know the exact right moment to let the drums kick in, to create that tiny rush of euphoria in your brain. They know when to add things and when to drop things out. Their tracks often ascribe to the whole build-up/breakdown structure, but they don’t trumpet those breakdowns in the way that so many festival EDM types do now. The tracks rise and fall in due course, cleanly and confidently arriving at their chosen destinations. And both producers use the same tricks that house producers have used since house music began: 4/4 drum patterns, wailing divas, infinite-loop samples, bouncing synthetic basslines. I don’t have a whole lot of raving experience, but I imagine the tracks would work well in a club setting. They move. This isn’t the sort of music that exists so that we can sit and contemplate it. It’s light, buoyant, alive music, music that sounds amazing blasted out of an open window on a sunny day.A1 The Bottom Is As Low As You Can Go 2:49 A2 Love Songs 6:45 B1 One Who Lost 4:33 B2 Memory Lane 5:08 B3 Never Win 4:31 C1 Trouble 4:29 C2 By Your Side 5:01 D1 Sit Down, Satan 2:34 D2 The Dust 5:28 D3 Friend Of Mine 3:12
