One of dance music’s biggest stars creates an expansive, busy LP with some key guest-star assists
The British dance and pop producer Fred again . . is a DJ who plays clubs and raves and also a hit-making pop producer who, working with Ed Sheeran and Stormzy, among others, was responsible for a full one-third of 2019’s British number-one hits. Think of him as a little Diplo or Skrillex and a little Jack Antonoff. Two other producer-DJs also come to mind while listening to Ten Days, Fred again . .’s fourth album: Jamie xx and Four Tet, both expert at melding a melodic indie sensibility with the oceanic repetition native to DJ culture—and at getting those things over even to a non-dancing nonce.
Ten Days is an electronic album more than a dance album—it’s meant for listening, and even when he foregrounds the beats, they’re always part of a larger and often busy picture. There’s a lot of aural haziness here, a filtered-light psychedelia redolent of the edible era, and an arsenal of guest vocalists. Not to mention producers—“Glow,” the most pumping track here, features none other than Diplo and Skrillex, along with Duskus. It’s a slow builder that centers on a repetitive bright-metallic synth squelch that starts out merely cute before distorting into far more fetching shapes. And the soaring finale, “Backseat,” features a prominent sample from the late Scott Hardkiss, the San Francisco DJ-producer whose wide-open-skies style, heavy on the breakbeats so prominent again in recent dance music, offers another source for Fred again . .’s feel-good genre melt.
Sometimes that breezy quality doesn’t work; the music’s a glittery, affectless quality that can feel like a lack of commitment, even as you note the sheer amount going on during a given track. That’s where the singers come in. Fred again . . puts Anderson.Paak and Chika through as many filters on “Places to Be,” but they sound exuberant as the track, which speeds along at near-drum & bass tempo. Just as triumphant is the guest spot from….wait for it….Emmylou Harris. The 77 year-old country legend lights up “Where Will I Be” with a vocal like a candle flickering in a back alley of Sleepy Hollow. And the doleful quality of Joy Anonymous’s croon on “Peace U Need” underlines its bittersweet lyric—and makes its packed-warehouse-at-3 a.m. piano line charge even harder.
