Fred Again.. - Actual Life (January 1 - September 9 2022) review: soulful and touching

London producer Fred Gibson has worked at either end of the electronic music spectrum, taken under the wing of experimental pioneer Brian Eno as a teenager and going on to have a hand in chart-topping songs by Ed Sheeran, Stormzy and Clean Bandit. His solo guise sits somewhere in the middle: accessible melodies mixed with abstract soundscapes, with such a distinctive intimacy that the songs could only have emerged from his laptop.

Across three albums with the title Actual Life, all released in the past 18 months, Gibson has taken the modern day habit of documenting and sharing absolutely everything, and turned it into poetry. Voice notes from friends, public conversations and other snatches of reality all become song samples, with each track titled for the person whose voice appears on it.

During lockdown, when we all missed those real connections, his music felt particularly poignant: the melancholy of a sound meant for blissed out crowds that had turned itself inwards. The DJ The Blessed Madonna spoke for all of clubland on Marea (We’ve Lost Dancing) when she said: “If I can live through this, what comes next will be marvellous.” Another repeated sample was an American man assuring the listener: “We’re gon’ make it through.”

That optimism continues on the third installment. “This is not the end of the world,” someone says on Berwyn (All That I Got is You). “Just know that it gets better with time,” sings a sweetly digitised voice on Bleu (Better With Time). Now that we have presumably arrived at what comes next, the music is becoming more expansive too. The synth pulses on Nathan (Still Breathing) sound grand and bold.

Delilah (Pull Me Out of This) has a new energy, any darker undercurrents swept away. Towards the end of the album, Clara (The Night is Dark) has the kind of pounding beats and cavernous chorus that would suit arenas – though three sold out shows at Brixton Academy in December will have to do for now.

Gibson seems to have realised that a lot of the traditional messages of house music, which sound so meaningful when you’ve danced yourself into glorious oblivion in the small hours, apply equally to our emergence from lockdown. “You’re not alone.” “Though the night is dark it won’t be very long.” “The morning light appears.” It keeps his music feeling soulful and touching even when there may not be quite so much to feel sad about any more.

(Atlantic)