Fred Again.. – Ten Days :: OndaRock's Reviews

There stutter house as an open garden. In his fifth album the producer Londoner Frederick John Philip Gibson pushes the dance trend born as a luminous coda to the future garage of Burial, and focuses more than ever on collaborations. “Stutter” means “babble”, and as per the manual of the microgenre pioneered by Fred Again.. it exploits fragmented voices, raised pitch and distorted to build textures that are both rhythmic and melodic, maintaining the emotional and spiritual soul that the human voice inevitably brings with it.

While Burial's transfigured post-dubstep vibes often led to dark, introspective tones, Fred Again..'s music leaps towards a dancefloor imaginary, airy, where euphoria and melancholy find an intoxicating balance. Capable of convincing, moreover, a growing number of followers – the beauty of 15 million monthly listeners on Spotify, who have become closer to the artist thanks also to the inclusion in 2022 of “Marea (We've Lost Dancing)”, taken from his first “Actual Life”, on the “Triangle Of Sadness” soundtrack.

Since debuting in 2021, i featuring were a constant in Gibson's approach, and the collaborative flair had reached a new dimension with the album preceding this one, “Secret Life”, released together with the doyen Brian Eno. In “Ten Days”, more than ever, the many guests who populate the album enrich its variety without flattening its personal streak. “Places To Be”, featuring Anderson .Paak, is a brilliant foray into hip-hop, tight and effervescent, with a flow enthralling player who anticipates the base.
On the more intimate side, the slow “Fear Less” finds its delicate intensity thanks to the languidly eighties bass, nocturnal and enveloping, perfect support for Sampha's neo-soul movements. On a completely different field, “Just Stand There” places on a piano battente uno spoken word apathetic and high rate of britishnessintertwining them in a pressing rhythmic crescendo to give life to a piece that has the charm of a musical confession.

In various tracks, the constant dialogue between light and thoughtfulness echoes the mood favored by Four Tet, and here in “Glow” Kieran Hebden himself (in the company of Skrillex) comes in support of Fred Again…: sparkling synthetic arpeggios radiate free horizons, sublimating that pervasive sense of wonder that unites the sensitivity of the two artists .
“Ten”, the title track undeclared, brings the skilful use of rhythmic and vocal segmentations to its peak, fluctuating between trap, hip-hop and rnb, and introducing the hypnotic step housey sporadic offbeat – present enough to leave an indelible mark, but rare enough to always arrive unexpectedly, stealthily breaking the kidnapping trance and give for an instant the joy of a new re-enchantment.