Despite being a household name within the UK electronica scene, Fred again.. has just dropped his first solo album ‘Actual Life (April 14 – December 17 2020)’. The LP includes a number of previously released singles, including ‘Kyle (I Found You)’, ‘Julia (Deep Diving)’, and ‘Marea (We’ve Lost Dancing)’.
The album opens with ‘April 14th 2020’ and ends with ‘December 17th 2020’, two brief vocal snippets from the 26-year-old himself. In between the spoken intro and outro, Fred constructs an album featuring personal samples and obscure audio clips embedded within electro-pop grooves. The sample-orientated tracks conjure a sort of musical realism that allows actual life, as the album title suggests, to take centre-stage.
Importantly, the stage is given to ordinary life and ordinary people. For instance, the artist recently shared a clip on Instagram of a man named Carlos enthusiastically talking to the camera, alongside a video of him weaving the audio from this clip into downtempo, piano-driven production. The video was a preview of ‘Carlos (Make It Thru)’, track thirteen on the new project.
Accompanying the video, Fred wrote, “Carlos is the OG in this for me. He was the first video that I woke up wit on my phone that was like oh wow this guy is music. I feel enormously indebted to this dudes spirit. I’ve made like at least 8 different tunes out of him as I’ve developed what I was wanting to do over the last year or so, and I think maybe I’ll have a song called Carlos on every record I do now. I think so. Like there’s a mad up beat one, there’s a 160bpm techno one, there’s one wit like all these rap features n shit.”
The music is almost an afterthought for Fred; it is the people wrapped up within these songs that truly matter. Each sample captures a feeling or an emotion, and his music merely offers a way to explore such moments. The original vocal sample of ‘Carlos (Make It Thru)’ captures the upbeat spirit of Carlos, which the London-based producer then transposes into the musical mantra ‘we gon make it thru’. In doing so, an individual’s attitude to life is transformed into a universal rallying call, one that has never been more pertinent given the struggles of the past year.
Throughout ‘Actual Life’, Fred’s music is a site where personal moments are given universal meaning in such a manner. Whilst life and people have always been muses for artists, his use of samples literalises this notion, creating music with a very tangible connection to the real world.
‘Actual Life’ is available to stream below:
