Album Review Technology + Teamwork - We Used To Be Friends

If there were such a thing as analogue AI, it might birth something like Technology + Teamwork. The debut from the pair – Sarah Jones and Anthony Silvester, who previously collaborated as part of late-‘00s post-punk outfit XX Teens (and if that first name sounds familiar, yes it’s she of New Young Pony Club, and most infamously, the powerhouse drummer behind Harry Styles’ live presence) – is both weathered and chrome, like lost tapes spanning decades of genre, gathered by a time traveller and burned into an alien Walkman. It’s bravely ambitious, if a little difficult to pin down, never sticking around at its destinations for long. There’s throwback funk on ‘You Saw Something In Me’, which at its chorus shirks into baroque-pop. Later, ‘Moving Too’ throws hyperpop at the wall to see if it sticks, while ‘Amsterdam’ is a crackling horror video game theme. Then there’s the instrumental ‘Oh Oh’, a sci-fi scene-setter with hints of SOPHIE, and the David Bowie-adjacent outro ‘What A Year’. At first it’s a lot, but once the whiplash settles, its intentions are clear: to experiment with improvisation, uncertainty, randomness and rule. Stand-outs include the very filthy, leathery ‘And So…’; ‘Big Blue’, another funk hit with an icy, modern twist; and its title track, a massive, celestial, existential banger. Although a little anxious to settle, ‘We Used To Be Friends’ is nevertheless fearless and irreverent, and in many ways, totally ahead of its time.