Adam Wiltzie finishes collaborative LP Friendship Survival Guide, started before Jóhann Jóhannsson's death

The two musicians first met in Prague in 2007, when Jóhannsson, then transitioning from Icelandic shoegaze to large-scale orchestral work, introduced himself at the merch table of a Stars of the Lid show, Wiltzie's band. Wiltzie remembers it as a “first-night-on-Earth-type meeting, two guys who just met but seemed like we'd known each other our entire lives.” A decade of collaboration followed: Wiltzie toured with Jóhannsson, worked as his live sound engineer, and in 2013 was invited to co-write cues for The Theory of Everything score. The process, he says, was “very inspiring and creative” and “the catalyst for the idea of recording an album together.” Jóhannsson described it as “our own weird record,” but his career soon “skyrocketed to the moon,” pushing the album onto the back burner.

After Jóhannsson’s death in 2018, Wiltzie left the tapes untouched until, with the family’s blessing, he returned to them. Some tracks remain as they were a decade ago, captured on Jóhannsson’s Revox tape machines. Others required additional recording between 2023 and 2025, with Hecker and composer Bryan Senti assisting. Several guitar parts were “recorded, blasted and amped” by Albini at his Electrical Audio studio in Chicago, months before his own sudden passing. The album’s opener, “September Nineteen Sixty Nine”, takes its title from the month both men were born, two days apart. Wiltzie says the piece titles “anchor the sound in our recognisable friendship” and function as “a private language between the collaborators.”

“Our friendship is the story here,” Wiltzie says. “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.” He recalls their final phone call, shortly before Jóhannsson died in February 2018: “He had just played a concert in Barcelona, and was sounding calm and lucid. He was having a really good day, and seemed in a really good place. And then he was gone.”

Alongside the album, a three-chapter short film by Belgian director Jonas Govaerts, starring Wiltzie and actor Jeroen Percevall, will be released on the same date. Upcoming performances of Jóhannsson’s music are also scheduled, including an orchestral programme at the Vancouver International Film Festival in October.