More than a decade after they first began recording together, Adam Wiltzie has completed one final collaboration with his late friend Jóhann Jóhannsson. Friendship Survival Guide, due Sept. 18 via Deutsche Grammophon, draws from sessions the pair recorded between 2013 and 2017 before the celebrated Icelandic composer died unexpectedly in 2018 at age 48.
The project reunites Stars of the Lid/Windsor for the Derby principal Wiltzie and Jóhannsson, whose acclaimed film score work included The Theory of Everything and Arrival. Originally conceived alongside their collaborations on those scores, the album languished as Jóhannsson’s film career exploded before ultimately being shelved after his death. With the blessing of Jóhannsson’s family, Wiltzie recently returned to the tapes to finish what the composer had once described as “our own weird record.”
The resulting album is both a tribute and a time capsule. Many of its analog tape loops remain exactly as they were recorded more than a decade ago by longtime engineer Francesco Donadello using Jóhannsson’s Revox tape machines, while additional recording sessions between 2023 and 2025 brought in electronic visionary Tim Hecker and composer Bryan Senti. The project also became one of the final recordings to feature producer and engineer Steve Albini, who, according to Wiltzie, “recorded, blasted and amped” many of the album’s guitar parts at Chicago’s Electrical Audio studio before his own death last year.
The roots of Friendship Survival Guide stretch back to a chance meeting in Prague in 2007, when Jóhannsson introduced himself to Wiltzie after a Stars of the Lid concert. The two immediately bonded over ambient music, tape loops, orchestral composition and drone, forging a friendship that soon extended into touring, live performance and eventually composing together. In 2013, while trading ideas remotely between Berlin and Belgium during work on The Theory of Everything, they realized they had the beginnings of a separate collaborative album. Hollywood soon intervened however, as that Stephen Hawking biopic earned Jóhannsson a Golden Globe and an Academy Award nomination, followed by another Oscar nomination for Arrival, pushing the personal project aside.
For Wiltzie, finishing the music became part of processing his friend’s loss. “Our friendship is the story here — that one half of the duo is not around anymore, that he was a good friend of mine and I’m still dealing with his loss,” he says. “At the same time, it feels great to be finishing this music, because you can feel Jóhann’s presence. It’s this living, breathing thing — a beautiful reminder. The quintessentially most perfect and beautiful thing about collaboration is that it’s something you could never do by yourself. Jóhann’s not there anymore, but this artifact we created together is alive and it’s incredible.”
The album’s title reflects that relationship as well. Wiltzie says the track names function as a kind of private language between the collaborators, with hidden meanings rooted in shared memories. The opening piece, “September Nineteen Sixty Nine,” references the month both musicians were born — just two days and an ocean apart.
Friendship Survival Guide will arrive alongside a three-part short film by Belgian director Jonas Govaerts, starring Wiltzie and actor Jeroen Percevall. Described as a metaphysical nocturnal taxi ride rather than a documentary, the visual companion was filmed in Ghent and at a train station in Muizen, Belgium.
The release also sets the stage for a series of performances celebrating Jóhannsson’s music, including an orchestral program at the Vancouver International Film Festival in October featuring selections from Prisoners, Arrival, Sicario and The Theory of Everything. Wiltzie will also return to the road with A Winged Victory for the Sullen this fall, with North American dates scheduled in Chicago, Toronto, Montreal and Brooklyn, N.Y.