The past four years have been quite astronomical for UK producer and DJ Fred again.., whose meteoric rise has established him as the current it-boy of UK dance music. ten days, his latest album and third on major label Atlantic, finds him at his most commercially astute. Fresh off GRAMMY award wins and sellout arena shows – this approach is unsurprising. The irony is that the success of Fred again..’s crossover appeal should be cause for celebration in an era where the boundaries between pop and underground electronic music have never been blurrier. Instead, ten days blurs those boundaries into something so indistinct and featureless (despite a revolving door of features), it rinses the crossover of any appeal.
The audio diary samples that made his Actual Life series first compelling (and later contentious) are gone – and thankfully so, as this signature quickly collapsed into gimmick. But what we’re given instead feels like even less of a progression – a roster of collaborators who look enticing on paper, but add little to an album that already lacks substance.
This is especially true of tracks with overstuffed credits, like glow. Here, Four Tet, Skrillex, Joy Anonymous, Duskus and Parisi join Fred again... Even at seven and a half minutes, there’s not enough room for any of these heavyweights to contribute anything noteworthy. Jim Legxacy’s gossamer vocals on ten dissolve like sugar – sweet, but ultimately diluted. When SOAK appears on just stand there, it’s less a song than a mood board for melancholy,
The production is quintessential Fred again.. fare – house music run through an Instagram filter, all soft edges and hazy rhythms. Though he makes a commendable effort to reach for the heights of house music euphoria, he mostly lands somewhere in the middle – a dancefloor that’s driven more by aesthetic and less by emotion.
Most telling is peace u need, which aims for transcendent piano house but ends up sounding like it’s being played from three rooms away at a house party you weren’t quite cool enough to be invited to. It’s the perfect metaphor for ten days as a whole – music that gestures at depth while remaining stubbornly surface-level. As big as Fred again.. is to the zeitgeist, on ten days he somehow feels smaller than ever.
