It is a silent form of loneliness that falls in when you are around people, yet somehow not really connected to them as their bodies are around, but their souls are not. Energy Whores know that instinctively, and Electric Friends makes it what you can nearly feel almost slapping your face in the light of a screen.
Carrie Schoenfeld and Attilio Valenti make the track look like the slow moving shadow scene, beautiful and enthralling. It is slow, it is gradual and gradually unpeels the layers of digital gloss, until you are left standing in front of one naked and uncovered thing. The trip-hop sounds are floating in the production like dense fog, creating an impulse that calms and narrows at the same time, reverberating the push and pull of the online spaces that it silently challenges.
The reservedness of Electric Friends is what is of real weight. It never raises its voice. It only sits there, warm and long-suffering, urging you to take your time with the discomfort, to have closer looks at the acts we play at connection. The hazy vocals seem to flow with a certain certainty, and Schoenfeld slices the air with clarity , and one is left ponder what is left after the signal dies.
Made out of synths, electronic drums and keyboards, it is deliberately artificial in sound. It is the scrolling of the night, that numbness which is faking intimacy. In this case Energy Whores do not provide comfort easily. Electric Friends will remain with you until it fades away quietly glowing, to make you remember that the most brilliant screens sometimes cast the darkest shadows.
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