The album Friendship Survival Guide by the late Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson and his close friend and composer Adam Wiltzie features a number of collaborative orchestral psychedelic drone compositions.
Wiltzie, co-founder of the now-legendary drone duo Stars of the Lid, and Jóhannsson, the award-winning composer and orchestrator, shared a decade-long friendship and creative partnership, writing, performing and recording together prior to the latter’s tragic passing in 2018. Friendship Survival Guide stems from the pair’s numerous 2013–17 studio collaborations on sessions for Jóhannsson’s scores of the 2014 Stephen Hawking biopic The Theory of Everything and director Dennis Villeneuve’s 2017 sci-fi thriller Arrival.
After years away from the recordings, Wiltzie returned to the tapes with blessings from Jóhannsson’s family, completing Friendship Survival Guide to honour Jóhann’s legacy. “Our friendship is the story here, (…) Jóhann’s not there anymore, but this artifact we created together is alive and it’s incredible. I could never have done it without him”, says Wiltzie.
