Why Fred once more.. Is Precisely What Digital Dance Music Wanted
Fred once more.. is inescapable nowadays. However in contrast to different names hyped advert nauseam into oblivion this 12 months, his is one you would be sensible to emotionally put money into.
For some motive, musicians are nonetheless anticipated to masquerade as doppelgängers of themselves—cringey caricatures sharing manufactured moments by the vacuous engines of TikTok. Content material tradition is the music trade’s latest and most vicious plague, and it corrodes the psychological well being of its most genuine artists.
However as social media continues to dig its crooked claws into the sincerity of musicians, Fred once more.. is fracturing its nefarious nature by being his most real self.
There is a unhappy sense of attrition within the wearisome world of digital dance music, the place sacrifice and compromise are considered routine truisms. Artists typically relinquish a chunk of themselves so as to perpetuate their industrial picture, solely to be callously rejected when they pursue personal growth.
However Fred, whose music features as a diary by sampling real-life encounters he captures on video, resides proof that followers solely need the actual you. Within the wake of the pandemic, we crave actual connections with honest artists—not some low-cost facsimile grown in a Petri dish utilizing helixes of TikTok DNA.
And if we’re fortunate, his upcoming album will throw a wrench into content material tradition, an limitless wooden chipper that chomps away at our greatest artists by forcing them to prioritize vapid social interplay over music creation. If musicians can succeed just by sharing uncooked, uncut materials from their precise lives as a substitute of spending hours modifying it to protect a faux one, perhaps they will lastly have the ability to breathe.
Theo Batterham
Final week we had been on the gothic grounds of the Hollywood Perpetually Cemetery, the place Fred carried out a triptych of sold-out reveals. He is at present touring forward of the discharge of the album, Precise Life 3 (January 1 – September 9 2022), a Grammy darkish horse.
It is no secret that the hype surrounding Fred has exploded in 2022. However any scintilla of skepticism we had shortly disintegrated inside 30 seconds of his first keystroke.
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Performing in Hollywood—a metropolis that churns out viral cookie-cutter androids like Nvidia—Fred put his humanity entrance and heart. The prolific DJ and producer projected his experiences on an enormous LED display screen, which was fittingly formed like a cell phone.
Banter with a pleasant development employee and a non secular soliloquy from a girl had been simply two of those visuals. With the profound skill to show their foibles into visceral dance music, Fred has develop into a grasp of unfiltered storytelling.
There’s an alluring humility in somebody who’s in a position to so effortlessly discover magnificence within the little issues.
Fred sunk his tooth in from the get-go, kicking off by enveloping us within the warm-and-fuzzy electronica of “Kyle (I Discovered You),” which samples famend slam poet Guante.
It wasn’t lengthy earlier than the spellbinding flutes of “Flip On The Lights once more..” slithered into focus. Fred’s collaboration with Swedish Home Mafia hit completely different within the boneyard, its deep sub-bass eerily slicing by the evening’s summer time air like a scorching knife by butter.
In an evening flush with electrical moments, certainly one of its plain highlights was Fred’s incandescent stay rendition of his heartbreaking monitor, “Me (Heavy).” After calling for a lull within the power, he softly sung concerning the struggles related to staying sturdy whereas the well being of your higher half deteriorates within the hospital.
“I need to run in there and steal you out, unplug the wires and kiss your mouth,” he quavered earlier than a soundless, awestruck crowd.
The efficiency opened a window into his soul that no quantity of lasers, pyrotechnics or different ostentatious rave manufacturing may provide. It is an axiom that EDM festivals and concert events largely rely upon sensory overload, however Fred dismantles it by eradicating these hole distractions.
When there is not any smokescreens, the one factor you are in a position to concentrate on is the silhouette onstage—and the music emanating from it.
Precise Life 3 (January 1 – September 9 2022) is scheduled to launch on October twenty eighth, 2022.