“Do not fear any of those things which you are about to suffer. Indeed, the devil is about to throw some of you into prison, that you may be tested, and you will have tribulation ten days.”
Revelation 2:10
South London producer Fred Gibson has released a fourth studio album titled ten days, yet another sonic boxcar in a long train of albums put out in recent years. Under the alias Fred Again, stylized as Fred again.., Gibson has earned a reputable position in the modern electronic scene while cultivating his own brand of an approachable, everyday-chap persona. Eschewing robot helmets or mouse heads, Gibson presents himself to the world front-and-center through intimate NPR Music Tiny Desk concerts, selfies that serve as album covers, and sweaty Boiler Room sets where he interacts with the crowd.
On ten days, Gibson attempts, with limited success, to infuse his lineup of house and alternative R&B tracks with personal touches. The focus of the album, in Gibson’s words, is some “very small intimate quiet moments” handpicked from ten days of the past year or so. Amid the vocal features and house beat pulses, however, these intimacies get lost, and the album struggles to bridge Gibson’s individuality with the house genre’s characteristic repetition and dancable tempos. There are moments where ten days flirts with this embrace of artist and genre. On the track “fear less,” for example, Gibson sings about an intimate moment in traffic and the comfort of the passenger’s presence. Yet these attempts at personality were overwhelmingly regulated to the 10 interludes, labeled “.one” through “.ten,” that were inserted between songs to serve as vapid transitions. Each between nine and 31 seconds, they are composed of voice memos and amorphous recordings that serve as acoustic chasers for the accompanying full-length tracks, and are often devoid of meaning. “.four”, for instance, involves nine seconds of a car’s turn signal clicking.
The heavy-hitters on ten days constitute a group of singles that came out prior to the album’s release, and contain a collection of big name features. On “glow,” dubstep icon Skrillex is featured alongside the reclusive electronic artist Four Tet, also a native Londoner. The track seems to sag under its many collaborators — Duskus and Joy Anonymous join in on the fun as well — and devolves from its initial soothing cadence into an irritating earworm drilling into your skull. The LP’s biggest hit, “adore u,” effectively bastardizes featured artist Obongjayar’s vocals into something resembling a father crooning to his child underwater for three minutes and 40 seconds. On the aforementioned “fear less,” vocalist Sampha is denied the usual rich timbre of his voice, and instead is put through Gibson’s torturous filter system until he sounds as if he’s singing through drywall in the room next to you. This vocal conundrum plays a broader role in the experience of ten days as a whole. Where listeners want Gibson to inject himself into the proceedings, he’s absent, yet when talented vocal features are introduced, he plays too large of a role and contorts their voices into something that feels very detached and processed.
The album is not without moments of enjoyment, however. As much as the track “just stand there” produced an aural migraine, I was taken by force on the track “places to be,” featuring Anderson .Paak and CHIKA. This is where Gibson displays his musical chops, giving his features a rhythmic backbone for their own styles and inflections. The track wastes no time in delivering kinetic urgency, a trademark of quality house. Gibson sculpts the track’s tempo and overlays as the features switch from CHIKA to .Paak, impressively shaping the song around each feature’s style. This sense for composition is prevalent throughout the album, yet in its entirety, lacks either effective delivery or experimentation.
In essence, what Gibson has delivered is another uniform groove to his emerging discography. Fans of Fred again.. will no doubt enjoy a select few of the album’s track list. His role as the wholesome, regular producer, unlike Skrillex’s brand of EDM sidecut punk or Four Tet’s quirky undergroundness, remains intact. Still, the majority of songs don’t have that permanent quality and instead lump together in an electronic globule, even if you play them againandagainandagain..
