Faith in Strangers

It is as brilliant. What Faith in Strangers does do is confirm Stott's position as one of the most stirring and explorative producers going.

The most fully formed and wholly unique record in his discography.

The intended arc from invitation toward aggression occssionally scans more as zigs and zags between a few distinct suites. Still, the separate moments are astounding, evidence of a musician who has managed to remain inquisitive even as he’s established his signature.

Not dance music in any traditional sense of the world, Faith In Strangers has injected itself into a crowded conversation on originality alone.

Faith in Strangers is more than an album that comes to life. It details life from the inside out, focusing on each movement’s innards rather than its outer coat.

His most intimate work to date. [Jan 2015, p.68]

The repressive weight of the production creates a micro-climate that's compelling to move through. [Feb 2015, p.83]

There are no phony builds, no bass dropping, no obvious patterns. Faith in Strangers keeps listeners on their toes, and keeps their head nodding the whole time.

Faith in Strangers is long-form listening at its finest.

Faith in Strangers is pretty outstanding, an eclectic, innovative, and cohesive addition to the ambient canon. Yet for all their bold gestures, most of its tracks remain beholden to the genre’s tradition of layered open-endedness.

That’s maybe what’s so remarkable about Faith in Strangers, its uneasy balance between beauty and menace, calm and roiling intensity.

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.

On his new record, Faith in Strangers, the details are different but the achievement is similar.

Despite a radical switch from digital to analog gear, the album is as bleak and as bracing as Luxury Problems.

[Stott's] sound is so much more finely honed, well defined, better executed, yet left frayed around all the right edges.

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 doubles down on the industrial brutality of Problems, while also balancing that with a sense of hope and comfort rarely heard from Stott previously.

It remains as disquieting and spectral as anything Stott has done, but its newfound guile is such that it no longer needs to bludgeon listeners into submission to strike a killer blow.