Fred again.. – ten days · Album review ⟋ RA

September 11, 2024
Madellina Monica
popnews

The superstar producer delivers another straightforward, largely forgettable LP that feels trapped in a nostalgia loop.
Call it luck, call it privilege, call it genuine talent, but it's hard to deny that Fred Gibson has achieved an extraordinary amount in just a few years. The 31-year-old British producer, also known as Fred, has reached milestones that most of his peers could only hope to achieve over the course of an entire career. His 2021 debut album, In real life (April 14 – December 17, 2020)was a tearful, house-inspired diary entry that came in addition to his day job at the time: co-writing hits for Ed Sheeran and Stormzy (in 2019, Gibson wrote a whopping one third of the songs in the British charts).
Real life followed suit, reaching number 9 on the UK Dance Albums Chart and garnering almost 500 million streams on Spotify alone to date. Since then, Gibson has released two more Real life Records (each with even greater success), collaborated with Romy, Sam Smith and Swedish House Mafia and released an ambient record with his childhood neighbor and mentor Brian Eno. Earlier this year, Gibson won two of four GRAMMY nominations and even competed with himself in the Best Dance/Electronic Recording category. Gibson has reached a point where he can announce a series of arena shows anywhere in the world with just a few days’ notice and they sell out immediately (as is the case in Australia last year). Unlike many mainstream electronic producers, he is not an anonymous face producing hits that disappear into the ether. His music is synonymous with his own grinning face, which Boiler room set or next to Skrillex And Four Tet on the Coachella livestream. Gibson presents his albums as audio diaries, filled with spoken word samples from people he meets on tour, on the tube, or on the streets of London. It's this relatable quality that divides music fans the most, inspiring either devotion from casual musicians or passionate criticism from those who reject the idea of a refined snob enjoying above-average success with a supposedly authentic British sound, nicely packaged for the masses. This kind of discourse should be silly—lots of producers come from wealthy backgrounds, they just don't put themselves in the foreground like Gibson does—but it's created an interesting domino effect. Whenever a seemingly credible producer like Four Tet enters Gibson's orbit, accusations of “selling out” are made; a rare occurrence in an era when the lines between pop music and “authentic” dance music are blurring like never before.

ten daysGibson's fourth album and first non-Real life-branded release, shifts the parameters of his signature sound only slightly. The LP is built around sung vocals – including Gibson’s –, slurred rhythms and straightforward melodic samples, meaning we thankfully don’t have to grapple with the implications of landed gentry sampling an Atlanta construction worker, nor do we have to resist the urge to just listen to a late Burial tune on Spotify instead. The contents of ten days is still unmistakably Fred again..: gentle house and techno ballads with the Instagram Rio de Janeiro filter over them. They tend to swing into ponderous, beatless sections or build to sugary synth drone finales, as if they know their final destination will ultimately be a short film produced by Nike and directed by a young British creative. Some songs feel like copied homework versions of other tracks: the Chika and Anderson .Paak collaboration “Places to be” is a nod to Kelis and Andre 3000’s “Millionaire”; “Just Stand There,” featuring Northern Irish singer SOAK, sounds like a creamier version of Melle Brown and Annie Mac’s 2022 lovefest “Feel About You.” The tracks that feel like direct homages to older, better tunes tend to fare better than the bulk of the album, which is hugely sentimental but never sharpens its edges to counteract all the mush. “Glow,” despite the six producers—Gibson, Four Tet, Skrillex, Joy Anonymous, Duskus and Parisi—is standard EDM, youthfully euphoric but easily forgettable. (Perhaps the fact that six producers worked on it added to the anonymity.) From there, the album continues to struggle. “Ten” features the slick, gossamer vocals of talented London upstart Jim Legxacy, but here he’s largely used as another piece of furniture, a texture to blend into Gibson’s rounded house beat. “Peace U Need,” another collaboration with Joy Anonymous, aims for sublime piano house, but like much of Gibson’s music, feels like it’s being played from a distance, washed out in a way that’s perceived as expressing depth or nostalgia. In practice, it feels more like Gibson was struck by lightning while watching a video. Skin club scene, and is forever condemned to make electronic music that is only suitable as a soundtrack for desperate looks, bitter tragedies and single tears running from perfectly shining eyes.
Tracklist