Fred again (explained)

Dirt is a daily email about entertainment.

Terry Nguyen, Dirt's senior staff writer, helms our dispatch, a running recap of the latest digital culture news. This week: Fred again, a Berlinale mini-dispatch, and AI DJs.  

ICYMI, Dirt co-founder Kyle Chayka has departed to focus on his work as a staff writer for The New Yorker, continuing his column there and finishing his second book, FILTERWORLD: How Algorithms Flattened Culture. That book will be published by Doubleday in January of 2024. The best way to get updates on the book and Kyle's work is to subscribe to his personal Substack newsletter. You can also follow him on Twitter.

In the final scene of Triangle of Sadness, a self-laudatory shipwreck of an Oscar-nominated movie, the shimmery beat of Fred again’s “Marea (we’ve lost dancing)” builds towards a crescendo as Carl, the protagonist, sprints through the jungle in a primal frenzy. It was an absurdly perfect track for the film’s conclusion, despite my qualms with the overall movie. I had the song on repeat for the next few days.

It wasn’t the first earworm I caught from the 29-year-old British producer, whose real name is Fred Gibson. His melancholic synth-trumpets in “Kyle (I found you)” and “Eyelar (shutters)” have wormed their way into my top songs on Spotify. Yet, I was annoyed by the feel-good flatness of “Marea,” which was released in February 2021. One reviewer called it the dance music equivalent of the “Imagine” video, and I get why. The track remixes a phone call from Marea aka The Blessed Madonna, a DJ who was privately bemoaning the pandemic’s impact on nightlife, EDM, and its community of artists. Madea’s lament, however, quickly loses meaning with each reprise. “We’ve lost dancing” is diminished into hollow echolalia—the phrase reverberating as a sound effect, rather than a lyric. It might lead a listener to wonder about the nature of loss during a pandemic: Was losing the ability to dance with others really the worst part?

Still, it’s a damn catchy track. Fans of Gibson joke that his stage name refers to his uncanny ability to produce highly addictive dance tunes: Play it again Fred! And again! Gibson has written chart-topping hits for artists like Ed Sheeran, Rita Ora, and Stormzy, but didn’t release his own music until 2019. His mentor, the British musician Brian Eno, was encouraging him to focus on his work, rather than produce for others. The pandemic offered Gibson that space. Through his early singles and 2020 EP Actual Life, Gibson has developed a signature style grounded in sampling lo-fi audio snippets from daily life—conversations with friends, live recordings, voice notes, ambient noise—typically undergirded by a house beat. He has been described as a “scrapbooker” (Pitchfork), his music a “sonic bricolage of digitally documented lives” (New York Times). Gibson is peripatetic when it comes to genre; similarly, his music is a suitable soundtrack for private listening, house parties, crowded bars, or music festivals. This ambition to be universally listenable threatens to undermine his later anthems, ramping towards a generalized catharsis in “Clara (the night is dark).” But with co-signs from EDM veterans Four Tet and Skrillex, he is cementing his reputation as the next generation’s dance floor DJ of choice.

Over the past few weeks, the trio has played at a series of semi-spontaneous pop-up raves across the world, from London to New York. Gibson seems to enjoy the grassroots facade of a pop-up show, even as his ticket prices have skyrocketed on the secondhand market. (On a Thursday night in August, I waited in line for an hour in Ridgewood for a “secret” Fred again set, only to be cut off as the venue reached capacity. Rumor had spread that Skrillex was the special guest.) The recent Madison Square Garden show, anchored by Skrillex and Four Tet, sold out on Ticketmaster in a matter of minutes. The three DJs managed to blend their tastes “into one overarching sound as they passed off control of the boards to each other,” reports Variety’s William Earl from the field.

Perhaps Skrillex’s long-awaited, dual-album return is a sign that the 2010s are back with a vengeance. Coupled with Fred again’s steady rise, it seems we are destined for another year of dance-heavy beats. Two other artists on the come-up I’ve been eyeing: rapper Ice Spice and pop singer PinkPantheress, who was featured on Skrillex’s Don’t Get Too Close.

PLAYBACK

Snippets of streaming news — and what we’re streaming.

• Spotify debuts an AI DJ — “basically a humanization of its already existing AI-generated playlists.” (Gizmodo)

• The CGI in the new Ant-Man isn’t great because Marvel’s VFX workers are underpaid and overworked. (Vulture)

• Vulture’s Alison Wilmore on Paul Mescal, our “disappointment heartthrob.”

• Apple TV+’s growth has flatlined. Redditors on r/tvPlus have a lot of opinions on the streamer’s supposed decline.

• Netflix is lowering subscription prices in more than 100 territories globally, but not in North America and Western Europe. (The Hollywood Reporter)

  • The move is Netflix’s “next step in creating a nuanced, bespoke approach to pricing on a country-by-country basis – a far cry from how the product was pitched after the global rollout stage, where in many countries it was extremely expensive, uncompetitive against very cheap local streamers and only accessible by (their words) ‘Western-oriented elites,’” says one analyst.

BERLIN POSTCARD

Dirt friend Chris Erik Thomas (@frailfag) is at Berlinale and graciously allowed us to republish their mini-dispatch of the film festival from the Dirt discord. (Join and talk movies with us!)

• On Manodrome (dir. John Trengrove): "Jesse Eisenberg disappears into his role as a masculinity obsessed man who gets indoctrinated into a man cult by cult leader Adrien Brody (who is named Dad Dan). Very good acting and I think Eisenberg could try for an acting nom if the film gains traction, but it has some extremely questionable plot choices that left me feeling really nauseated about it. It was one of those Very Serious Movies about an Issue Plaguing Society (crisis of masculinity) that doesn’t dive deeper into the subject."

• Chris also saw A24’s Past Lives starring Greta Lee (which they had choice thoughts on), and two debut European features, The Lost Boys (also called Le Paradis) and Disco Boy. The latter two both contained dance scenes that provided "emotional catharsis and connection to the respective characters’ cultural heritage, which also acts as a rebellion against the systems they’re trapped in."

MIXTAPE

Good links from the Dirtyverse.

• Dirt CEO Daisy Alioto helmed the Sunday Long Read newsletter last week. Her recommended reads are stellar. My favorite was this lost interview with Brazilian novelist Claire Lispector (New Yorker).

• A scent quiz from DS & Durga.

• Hunter Harris profiles Usher, a win for Leos and Usher fans (me). (GQ)

  • Usher talks about being toxic, catering to the female gaze, and BlackPink. He apparently took his teenage sons to the K-pop group’s concert in Atlanta: “I’m goofy! I’m looking like, ‘Wow, this is amazing.’”

• An analysis of the food in Happy Together (dir. Wong Kar-Wai), which was filmed in Buenos Aires with no planned script. (Vittles)

• I am trying Claire Saffitz’s croissant recipe this weekend. (NYT Cooking)

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