Friend of Mine

Though their moniker is singular, DJ Dodger Stadium are the team of two electronic music producers living and recording in MacArthur Park, a densely populated and timeworn section of Los Angeles. The warm cacophony of this particular corner of the world is reflected throughout Friend of Mine, a sequence of 10 compositions united by traditional house music ambiance. Fragments of sentences ricochet through the tunnels of the songs, and single words change meanings as repeated by a cast of disembodied but soulful voices. The undercurrent of blues in “The Bottom Is as Low as You Can Go” and “One Who Lost” becomes explicit on “Sit Down, Satan,” the album’s spookiest and most ethereal entry. The overall mood is one of exhilarated melancholy. “Love Songs,” “Never Win,” and “Friend of Mine” are momentous enough to uplift halls of clubgoers, but Friend of Mine doesn’t capture the communal excitement of a club so much as a long night’s afterglow. Its subject matter is the feeling one gets walking home alone in the wee hours, when the elation of a party persists only as an echo inside one’s head.