“If you don’t know, don’t worry.”
“I have been lost for a while; but I’m really trying.”
“Find someone that loves you for your weirdness, not someone who tries to make you normal.”
There are times when I am late to the party in discovering an artist or band. I try to listen to everything I can, but there are moments when I’m slow to discover the latest music from IG stories or TikTok. I firmly believe you find new music in your life at the right time when it calls to you. There are songs I haven’t listened to that have millions of plays. Artists that do not have their music played on the radio and they have millions of song plays and followers on Spotify and Apple Music. Beyond the mainstream radio and playlists, there exists a whole ecosystem of musicians and bands that are waiting to be discovered. There is no expiration date to the finds, they’re ready to be found when the listener is ready.
This reminded me of a 60 Minutes segment I watched in 2021 about newly discovered Prince music that was set to be released 5 years after his death. One of the musicians working on the final touches of the posthumous album explained “music is not like milk,” it does not have an expiration date. The sounds are there to find you when you are ready.
And yet, I feel that there is a sort of timing that is needed when discovering music that encompasses the period in which it was made in and to some extent how you are feeling.
I am kicking myself for not coming across UK DJ Producer Fred Again.. sooner. I only came in contact with his music in November 2022. I am late, so much time has already missed, but I am here for it.
In the Spring and Summer of 2020, artists leveraged social media to play music or DJ sets for fans when stay-at-home orders and social distancing kept people out of clubs and attending concerts. Hip-Hop DJ and Rapper DNice helped keep people sane with continuous sets in the height of the pandemic from March to about September 2020. Major artists from Taylor Swift, Charli XCX, and Lil Uzi Vert dropped albums during the pandemic’s height as a means of creative output instead of touring. Artists found a way in the pandemic years to engage with their audience. Often making music that describes the moments of separation or isolation from others.
I did not discover him during the height of the pandemic However, his music has defined the moments of the pandemic and the subsequent years for me. I discovered Fred in late October 2022 by listening to his album Actual Life 3 on an evening run and was immediately intrigued by the crying in the club beats combined with the vocal samples. Unknowingly with very little context while scrolling Instagram in the summer of 2022, I quickly scanned and liked a snippet of his famous Boiler Room DJ set that caught Fred notoriety, but did not make a connection until I discovered Actual Life 3.
Fred Again.. is an entry point into Electronic Music. Whether a casual dance listener, a devoted EDM fan, a seasoned rave or a festival goer, there is a connection between his ambient sounds to his ambitious dance floor anthems.
Born Fred Gibson, Fred Again.. got his start as a producer and vocalist under renowned composer and producer Brian Eno who produced for bands such as the Talking Heads, U2 and Coldplay. In a full circle moment of Brian Eno’s mentorship to Fred, the two have a collaborative ambient album released in Spring 2023 called Secret Life. Throughout the 2010s, Fred Again.. raised his profile in the UK as a reliable producer within the sounds of Rap, Dance, and Pop. According to Mixmag Magazine, in 2019, Fred produced 30% of the UK Pop Chart #1 singles. A quick Google search shows Fred Again holds a wide track record of production credit spanning the last decade working with artists from Ellie Goulding to Ed Sheeran to K-Pop Global stars BTS and UK rappers Stromzy and Headie One. Fred Again.. also produced the bulk of the 2019 Ed Shereen album No. 6 Collaborations Project. Fred Again lent his production skills to multiple artists for chart-topping songs and albums over the years, but what he put out through his solo work led to notoriety, of playing multiple festivals and at the most recent Grammy’s taking home two Grammy’s for best Electronic/Dance song and album and receiving a nomination for Best New Artist.
Over the past year and a half, the work of Fred Again..’s music has taken on major prominence through tours, festivals, and notable DJ Sets. In the Spring of 2023 Fred Again..’s exposure expanded when he became a last-minute addition to a close-out set at Coachella when R&B Singer Frank Ocean canceled his initial headline set on the festival’s closing weekend. Fred Again.., along with his prominent DJ friends Skrillex and Four Tet, played a memorable mix to the Coachella crowd largely consisting of improvisational track sets to keep the crowd dancing and guessing if a bass drop or a pop song would play the next minute of the set.
In the same spring, Fred Again played a remarkable Tiny Desk Concert on NPR, playing a variety of different instruments. Then playing a 5 hours long set at New York’s Madison Square Garden with Skrillex and Four Tet. Times Square also hosted all 3 DJs for a daytime set. These high-visibility performances and the industry approval from the Recording Academy have led Fred Again.. to have a sold-out set of concerts in Los Angeles and New York City in the fall of 2023. Hearing Fred’s music playing at a maximum level in prominent concert halls and venues showed that everyone was coming back together to experience dancing with one another.
I had the pleasure of seeing Fred Again.. in Chicago for Lollapalooza in the summer of 2023. It was beautiful to hear the difference between his studio recordings and live performances. In this short span of 3 years, Fred Again.. has proven he can perform in the top stadiums and festivals, or create ambient reflection music for smaller venues. During the set, Fred Again.. played a mixture of songs that hyped up the crowd hype. At the end of the set in between everyone yelling the lyrics and quotes of all the songs, the opening piano chords of Deliah (Pull me out of this) had the crowd singing in unison waiting for the beat to drop as the crowd began to dance.
His ability to capture memories, and moments and be around others propelled Fred Again..’s popularity during the pandemic (a period of deep isolation for most of the world.). His 3-album collection of songs titled Actual Life, launched in 2019 reflects his connection to his audience. His album was inspired by recorded videos and sounds from the peaks and valleys of social media to dialogue recordings of people Fred Again.. encountered along tours and out in London nightclubs. Fred Again..’s mentor Brian Eno encouraged the artist to focus on a solo project in 2019,. In essence, making the dialogue of everyday life into a meaningful conversation with the people around him, something his listeners desperately needed during a time when stepping out the door presented a world in turmoil from COVID-19 to civil unrest.
This collection of songs gave voice to the longing many of us were feeling. There was this deep need in ourselves to dance with friends again amid anxiety and uncertainty. The three Actual Life albums run around 40 minutes to close to an hour, documenting feelings of yearning, belonging, and grief, and still managing to create a desire to dance. These songs evoke great introspection and thought by splicing the voices of others into downtempo rhythms and grooves to bridge the feelings of walking alone at night to crying at the club.
The album’s themes and lyrics from the songs create stories for the listener. For example, The song Me (heavy) is an anguished song in which Fred laments for a friend who is in deteriorating health. The lyrics of “I want to run in there and steal you out…unplug the wires and steal you out.” A solemn piano brings a visual representation of the process of grief and sadness when someone you care about is in dire straits. In the song Marea (We Lost Dancing), Fred Again.. takes a recorded conversation with Chicago House DJ The Blessed Madonna, monologuing the fear and anxiety of losing the space to dance in clubs. Which then sets up a thumping bass groove designed for people to dance in clubs and festivals. The strategy evokes feelings, not unlike a story, about what people went through during the pandemic; loss, fear, and isolation. Cut from all of this comes a need for hope and understanding that the grief and anxiety of the moment is no match for hope and the power of dance to help us move forward. One constant motif one hears in the Actual Life series, is a one line, “We Going Make It Through.” Fred Again.. recorded the phrase from a construction worker named Carlos in Atlanta during an interview.
There is healing in the song We Going Make It Through. it sounds too simple to be a motif all by itself. Every time the lyric comes in, it gives permission to dance amid doubt and anxiety. The reoccurring phrasing from videos recorded by Fred and spliced clips scoured by Fred from social media and throughout the internet, and plays in the foreground of Fred Again..’s music showing emotional breadth within the grooves.
When listening to Fred Again and hearing the inspiration and sampling sources for his projects, I am reminded of another UK producer named Burial that heralded the original Dubstep sound. Burial is a critically lauded but low-profile electronic producer in the UK music scene in the mid-2000s. Burial uses a series of live and recorded vocal samples and YouTube videos similar to Fred Again.. to create heavily instrumental tracks creating introspection and feeling from the quaking beats and distorted lyrics that often repeat to create a certain motif and theme addressing anxiety and loneliness throughout London’s inner boroughs.
Bringing the connection back to Fred Again.. roughly 15 years later with his Actual Life Series, the constant repetition of lyrics to invoke emotive messages borrowed in Burial’s template of introspection Fred is moving to a top-level scale to be played in large stadiums and festivals. Take one example, when Fred Again.. plays the song Delilah (Pull Me Out of This) to invoke the weight of the moment and then lets the beat swell to create euphoric bliss for the crowd.
When Fred’s Actual Life series was being released and catching notoriety online, everything was still closed and shut down due to the pandemic. In a low-hanging cloud of doubt and uncertainty, we can experience life as it was before social distancing and stay-at-home orders. Concert venues, festivals, and nightclubs were the first to be shut down. In 2020 and 2021, which feels a distant memory, there was considerable fear among club and festival goers on whether it would ever be safe to experience dancing in sweaty crowded rooms with the people we love as we used to. Songs such as Marea (we’ve lost dancing), Me (Heavy), or Billie (loving arms) help us dance through the fear and uncertainty even when we are alone in a kitchen, longing for a future dancing with friends or loved ones in crowded rooms.
Fred Again..’s music is designed to be played in large stadiums and festivals. Where strangers can become friends while singing out in unison the lyrics to Fred Again..’s music and sweating out the weight of the world. When I saw Fred Again.. at Lollapalooza last summer, three large widescreen monitors showed the original sources for Fred’s music. People were singing and anticipating when the beat would commence to start as people anticipated the drops in the music to dance around. To feel joined together with other people of different identities and from different walks of life all to be joined in song hearing “We Goin Make it Through” played throughout. At that moment, all the problems in the world and in our lives do not have to be solved, but by dancing with others, knowing we will be ok.
When Fred played the lead-up to Billie (loving arms) at the tail end of his Lollapalooza set, the growing vocals around the festival ground of “It feels like…shelter…when you” kept playing as the crowd moved together. The song with the rising vocals is reminiscent of the pulsating 90s House track which namesake is used and sampled on. As arms are compared to a shelter, the simple need to put your arms around someone to create closeness and safety is all that is needed to be invited and welcomed. No more, no less. Billie invokes warmth and comfort to be seen and known by others with the shelter of friendship or love being the foundation.
Fred uses motifs that push back against the culture that tells us we are going to get things figured out quickly. “We Going Make it Through,” “I am a Party” “Sometimes I want to feel the pain.” These are not simple messages that we can easily digest. The invocation of language is translated into dance to communicate the troubles. The storms in life are unavoidable. Whether it’s navigating a pandemic or an age where we have to figure out who we are in the midst of transition, grief, heartbreak, or fear this music can help us move with grace knowing we can find comfort and safety in unexpected places. And that we’ll always be able to find time to dance.
“In this smoking chaos, our shoulder blades kissed…I Found You…I Found Beautiful, I Found You Exploding…I Found You” Fred Again, Kyle (I Found You)
The Typecaster 