Fred Again.. concludes a 4-day residency in support of recent album USB002 in true style.
The last five years of UK music has truly belonged to Fred Again.. His trilogy of Actual Life albums released over the murky quagmire of Covid re-imagined club music through the intimate, solitudinal lens of lockdown isolation to deliver the most pertinent music of the era. Pairing no-frills DIY aesthetics (the subheading to each Actual Life release merely stated the date range over which they were created, while many of the track titles were named after the track’s sample artist), Fred ordained an unlikely marriage of intimate samples fraught with tenderness and euphoric, dancefloor-bothering production.
True to his mercurial, magpie-esque ear for a sample, the producer (real name Fred Gibson) has accrued music’s most varied armoury of collaborations, from The Blessed Madonna to Dermot Kennedy; Kodak Black to Brian Eno.
It stands to reason, then, that Fred would have the industry’s most stacked contact list, which has been truly put to the test over the course of his 4-night residency at London’s iconic Alexandra Palace. The stint’s three prior shows have seen The Streets’ Mike Skinner, Romy, Underworld and La Roux all take to the stage alongside the producer to assist as their own tracks have been given the Fred Again.. treatment.
Tonight’s performance – the final of the run – sees the most enviable list of guests to date. Joy Anonymous appears early in proceedings for their Fred collaboration ‘peace u need’ immediately before Mercury prize-nominated BERWYN appears for ‘ BerwynGesaffNeighbours’. It’s barely 7pm in North London before Ezra Collective join Fred on stage, later accompanied by Grime forefather Kano for a colossal, brass-backed rendition of his seminal track ‘P’s And Q’s’.
London native Jamie T, who has already made an appearance over the course of the residency, doubles down to perform the visceral, slow-build of ‘Lights Burn Dimmer’ – Fred Again..’s recent reimagining of Jamie’s 2023 track ‘Hippodrome’ – before the evening’s crowning crown jewel is unveiled.
Daft Punk’s Thomas Bangalter is met with feverish fanfare to perform only his second DJ set in sixteen years (the first of which also took place alongside Fred last October in Paris), opening with a euphoric outing of ‘One More Time’ before embarking on a marathon B2B with the evening’s host.
“There is not a single human being on the face of this Earth who has done it better than this man right here,” Fred declares in a rare moment on the mic, as genre-defining Daft Punk hits including ‘Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger’ and ‘Around The World’ are interpolated with cuts from across Fred Again..’s own tenure, including ‘Turn On the Lights again..’, ‘Facilita’ and ‘Jungle’ alongside left field drops of The Weeknd’s ‘Starboy’ and Usher’s 2004 smash ‘Yeah!’.
A triumphant spin of Daft Punk’s ‘One More Time’ closes a historical set; rubber-stamping a moment in time to be archived for the ages; Live Aid for the cross-body bumbag wearing, White Claw-sipping epoch.
Casting one’s eye over the sea of unity and shared euphoria populating Alexandra Palace, those lonely lockdown kitchen discos where Fred Again.. first found his mass audience truly couldn’t feel further away.
imagery: @jcrispinphoto
