Fred again.. has just announced that his debut solo album ‘Actual Life’ will drop on April 17th. The highly anticipated project will be released via again.. records, the artist’s own record label, and is an extension of a 6-track EP that he released last year with the same title.
As described in his bio on Warner Music’s website, the ‘Actual Life’ projects exhibit “a signature sound that sees [Fred] building tracks around vocals uncovered from the unlikeliest of sources; from obscure YouTube clips to personal FaceTime conversations, random Instagram accounts and iPhone video footage of half-remembered nights out.” With Fred interweaving fragments of personal and biographical vignettes into his music, the title ‘Actual Life’ takes on a very literal meaning,
The forthcoming LP will include previously released singles: ‘Kyle (I Found You)’, ‘Julia (Deep Diving)’, and ‘Marea (We’ve Lost Dancing)’ as a bonus track. On the album, the multi-instrumentalist and producer names each song after the person who is sampled on the track, thus making real (or ‘actual’) individuals the inspirational source for his music. Whilst Fred has always made extensive use of samples, his ‘Actual Life’ projects, unlike any other music he has made, contain songs where vocal samples are the centrepiece around which everything else orbits.
For instance, ‘Julia (Deep Diving)’ was created around a passionate and strangely poetic Instagram post by Julia Michaels, where the American singer-songwriter said, “I am deep diving into your emotions, and sometimes I think I might be broke, but you’re bringing back all my feelings, and I f***ing love it.” Speaking about his use of the sample with The FADER, Fred said, “The most beautiful thing about this sample to me is just the tone of Julia’s speaking voice. It’s so heartbreakingly fragile but kinda playful at the same time. Like her voice literally sounds like the fizzy excitement of first falling in love. I’m so grateful to her for letting me build a whole new thing out of it.” The sample provides the foundation for a blissful, piano-driven deep house track that really draws out “the fizzy excitement” that Fred alludes to.
Although he specialises in house and dance-pop grooves, the versatility of Fred as a producer is undeniable, as illustrated by the diverse range of artists that he has produced for and collaborated with. These include: Ed Sheeran, Stormzy, Burna Boy, The xx, Headie One, Halsey, Stefflon Don, and many more. In particular, his critically acclaimed collaborative mixtape with Headie One ‘GANG’, released around this time last year, emphasised the true scope of his artistic capabilities. The album saw Fred and Headie combine to make drill music pulled from the future, holding onto the sonic fundamentals of the genre but superimposing onto it a never-before-seen electronica flair. Notably, the project’s release came just after Fred’s win at the BRIT Awards in 2020, where he took home the coveted ‘Producer of the Year’ award.
Even prior to the release of his debut solo album, Fred already has a very impressive musical resume. Having supplied his peers with an array of outstanding production features over the past few years, it is now time for the talented star to take centre-stage on this upcoming project.
