WORDS JESSICA FERGUSON
Photos By: Theo Batterham
Fred Again.. has got places to be.
The widely beloved British music producer just kicked off the start of his North American “Places We’ve Never Been” Tour with another multi-sensory, crowd-shaking performance that generally defies definition. Thousands of headscarf-sporting Fred fans flooded the concert venue with the same frenetic anticipation many of us felt when first exiting the longest stretch of lockdown four years ago — a complex and fractured moment in our recent shared history that reverberates through every beat Fred and his electrifying cohort, Tony, so carefully drop.
This duality is intentional.
It was, after all, the pandemic that created the perfect storm of social isolation, global uncertainty, community- building, and untapped retro-nostalgic creative imagination that resulted in Fred’s meteoric rise from behind- the-scenes producer to solo sensation within the minds and hearts of his fans worldwide.
Out of context, it might be easy to mistake Fred Again.. for any other music producer looking to serve up a good time from the platformed pulpit of a DJ deck — that is, at least, until the very first lightbulb flickers to life and illuminates a shapeshifting laboratory of light, sound, and vibrational engineering that definitively sets Fred apart from any one else.
Then, his fingertips hit the keyboard — and he disarms everyone with a rare, radical transparency. Fred doesn’t just invite us into his kaleidoscopic inner world of real, raw, multimedia-rich reflections — he transports us smack-dab into the center of his psyche before slingshotting us right back into a collective euphoria.
The eclectic series of songs, samples, and emotionally stunning revelations Fred shares throughout his set showcase a variety of otherwise ordinary realities that he artfully reimagined as a means of “making sense of things” when he — like so many in the crowd — was “in a very low place.”
In witnessing Fred’s creative genius explode across formats in this pulsing, painstakingly playful audiovisual experience, three key takeaways emerge: (1) humanity will forever crave connection, (2) oftentimes, our strikingly personal stories are actually universal, and (3) a concert can casually transcend space and time.
How? One minute, Fred’s lullabying us from the stage above with the promise that “it gets better with time” — and a split second later, he and Tony emerge above the crowd to deliver a deep-bass-dirty-beat buffet.
That is, of course, until he ended up on the roof.
In short, this tour is going to make people feel something new, something invigorating, while proving just how much magic can come out of combatting the darkest seasons of life with art, heart, and community.
For tour dates and tickets, visit www.fredagain.com or follow him on socials @fredagainagainagainagainagain for real-time updates and last-minute pop ups.
The upcoming run follows sold-out headline dates and festival appearances across Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, and the U.S.