Skiddle's Future Headliners: Fred Again..

The summer festival circuit is in full swing and countless amounts of memories have been made. New faces took to the stage for the first time, headliners swapped Instagram Live for the huge stages they deserve and we got an odd sense of nostalgia for festival toilets. You may just have discovered your new favourite artist this year.

Each week on Skiddle's Future Headliners we're looking at the names of the future, the ones who have the potential to one day be the top of the bill. Today we're looking at Fred Again.., a DJ who describes his sound as being "Actual Life". His career has taken off recently and we're here to discover why.

In 2021, Fred Again... released his album Actual Life which can be heard as the very ethos of what makes his music so great. An artist who is determined to make sounds out of everything he hears in everyday life, restructuring the world around him in order to make art out of it.

It's an album that sounds as though it was created on the go, with snippets stolen from the exact moments that they happened and immortalised in album form. The vocal clips that you'll find in his songs could have come from anywhere, old YouTube clips, Facebook threads or random notes from nights out.

Fred Again.. was structuring together all these loose pieces whilst on the go, creating wherever his laptop found itself during his journey. In the end, what comes out of all of these cuttings is a sound that is deeply embedded with euphoria and a staggering sense of wonderment in the beauty found all around us if we look hard enough.

One of the best tracks from this album was the closer Marea (we've lost dancing) which features The Blessed Madonna, an ode to the great loss felt when dancing around the world was put on hold. Another guest on the album was Dermot Kennedy who lent vocals to Dermot (see yourself in my eyes). Fred Again.. has also worked with the likes of Headie One, Kodak Black and Rico Nasty.

He released the second part of his Actual Life series, Actual Life later in 2021 and it was an album that was just as life-affirming. Celebratory and melancholic in equal measure, Fred Again.. has such a mastery of mood in his songs, able to mix feelings simultaneously to give you highs and lows in short amounts of time.

He is a DJ who has a lot to give and his live performances are just as addictive and euphoric as his albums. We think he'll be a future headliner because of his incredible vision, few DJs have highlighted the every day in such an articulate way that first and foremost still makes you want to dance.

Don't miss a Fred Again.. show that happens near you. He'll be playing Repercussion in Manchester as part of The Warehouse Project's 2022 calendar and you can find tickets here.

Check out our What's On Guide to discover even more rowdy raves and sweaty gigs taking place over the coming weeks and months. For festivals, lifestyle events and more, head on over to our Things To Do page or be inspired by the event selections on our Inspire Me page.