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Fred V - Luminous LP [Hospital Records]

Authors

Welcome to my eighteenth album write-up! I apologize in advance for the wall of text that is about to follow. Scroll down for a TL;DR on the LP.

Background

You don't have to be Living In The Past to know what Drum & Bass Constellation was responsible for Igniting Forest Fires, turning any Storm of Tension into an Electrifying Hurricane of Wild Love, and Radiating Major Happy vibes since forming a little bit more than 12 Years Ago. Of course, I'm referring to the masters of Cinematic Party Music, whose Cosmic-Flowchart-guided Voyage across the globe has taken them from the Morning Eclipses of San Francisco all the way over to the Paradisiacal Auckland Sunrises, Fred V & Grafix.

Over their tightly packed tenure of roughly 8 years together, across three stunning albums, they have reached impossibly high Altitudes of quality, touching the hearts of everyone from the Angry Jazzers to the Really Happy Aliens with their Glockenspiel Riddims, Comb and Clap Funks, and soundtracking the Games People Play, whether it's driving down the Rainbow Roads of Forza Horizon, or slaying Anime Hydras on Wobbleboards with 3D Goggles on. They were the soundtrack to Our Story, they expressed the feelings I got Whenever You Appear, the way you could Let Your Guard Down when I'm Here With You, and the all Too Familiar Faded Blue when I realise you Already Disappeared. Like Icarus, we flew so high up into the Atmosphere, past the Skyscrapers and the Clouded Skies, but when the duo announced their split-up in 2018, the Oxygen levels depleted and we Dove straight back down.

Still, we walked away from the announcement feeling like Better Times Are Coming, because they each Recognised the brilliant Colours of the project would begin to be Fading soon anyway and knew they needed some time for themselves, some Room To Breathe, to Come back To Life stronger than ever. Now, six years on, Fred V has shown just how much he is able to Shine as a solo artist as well, Radiating Ultraviolet energy all across the scene, as vibrant as ever, if not more. Like The Sun!

To celebrate the joyous occasion of his second solo album, Luminous, releasing on this very day, I want to take you down a rather Long Distance down memory lane, exploring every facet of how we got here that my Searchlight could find along the way. Don't run Away just yet, Come a little Closer, Stay Here for a while - let's (finally) talk about Fred V.

Frederick Vahrman (1990 - 2007)

When I first stumbled upon Frederick Mark Isaac Trapnel Vahrman's full name in one of his later Fred V-logs, the thought that his artist moniker might actually stand for Fred The Fifth did not seem as far-fetched as before. However, even though he is definitely considered royalty in DnB circles nowadays, I don't think the South-Western Bri'ish lad has any blue blood in him. While I couldn't find out all too much about his family's relationship with the royals, Fred does describe them as very musical and even attributes a lot of his favourite musical discoveries to his father's vast collection of tunes. Fred IV's library wasn't the only thing pushing Freddie Junior's musical education though! Even though all he wanted to do for a living at the time was design rollercoasters and eat too much cereal, he also started guitar lessons at the age of ten, which eventually lead to him spending his later teenage years as guitarist for the band Juggy Murray, and even got his first steps in producing at thirteen, thanks to his cousin gifting him an admittedly rather basic version of Acid Pro.

Around the time he got his hands on his very first set of decks, so 2006-ish, Fred's inevitable DnBiphany also materialised in full force, the sheer combinatory force of which sent him down the ruinous path of electronic music forever. Not long after, in 2007, his friend Jaye Balmer, known as Siege MC, introduced him to another Exeter lad with similar interests, Joshua Melrose Jackson - you probably know him as Grafix. Siege had already been an instrumental part of Fred's (very) early success, connecting him with a lot of the local promoters and just generally getting the word about him out, but it was this simple act of bringing these two like-minded people together that probably had the most impact on both of their musical career trajectories. Compared to Josh, Fred had a couple more years of production experience under his belt at that point, giving him ample opportunity to try out his potential future job of a music teacher at first, but even back in 2007, he already foresaw his student eventually overtaking him in the production skillz department.

Simple Beginnings (2007 - 2011)

Before their collaborative work could come to fruition, however, Fred was already well on his way to releasing his own solo tunes. Inspired to go the whole distance by interviews with the likes of TC and musically influenced by anything from the "obvious dnb people" like Mutated Forms, Logistics and London Elektricity to legends like Bonobo, Steve Reich, Cliff Martinez and Jimi Hendrix, the Myspace page of Fred V was finally born in early 2008. It might be due to the decay of the platform or due to a concentrated effort to get rid of all the (very) early stuff, but it seems like it took until 2009 for his first tunes, a bootleg of Layo & Bushwacka!'s Love Story and his first original In my head, to actually come out. Usually you'd expect these kinds of primordial works to fly under the radar (and some even earlier but now-offline ones might have, to be fair), but both of these actually managed to get shouted-out at the legendary BBC Radio 1xtra DnB show, and In My Head even landed on the then-very-much-new Liquicity!

As the next year rolled around, the accolades accelerated way faster than ever expected. Not only were both his self-released tunes and the various ones pushed on Bassdrive, Cue Recordings and KG's Talkin Beatz supported by Grooverider on BBC Radio 1, Crissy Criss on BBC 1Xtra, and the likes of Danny Byrd, Netsky and even Mutated Forms for that sweet full-circle moment, with his string of gigs in the Southwest area he also garnered himself a nomination for Best Southwest DJ at 2009's Southwest Drum & Bass Awards! The following year, the Southwestern boi would of course keep delivering in spades in the Southwestern parts of England (Southwestern doesn't look like a real word anymore) like Bristol, Bournemouth and his hometown of Exeter, but it also saw him making a couple jumps over the canal, to shell it down in Bruges and Zurich.

For thematic purposes I've tried to focus on the things that applied to just Fred here (one could say I have been Freding the Veedle), but it would be disingenuous to leave out just how much he has been working together with Josh Grafix at this point in time already. Sure, all the mentioned releases were Fred's own solo bangers, but all this time, they've already been working together in the not-so-dark shadows!

Helping each other out on production, sharing scene contacts, appearing on the same releases and lineups, on which they sometimes even played official collaborative sets together, with "Fred jumping around like he’s crazy" and "Josh looking bored", joining forces for their BBC Radio 1Xtra Guest Mix, of course both studying Creative Music Technology at the Bath Spa University, and starting with a long-forgotten and probably lost tune sampling the Foo Fighters' Everlong, also actively collaborating on tunes, with the first crop of those having come our way via Mainframe (supported by Annie Mac!) and Allsorts (supported by Zane Lowe on Radio 1!) in 2011! Plus, from the very first days of their production journeys, they have even both been regularly sending their stuff over to Hospital Records, in the hopes of maybe eventually joining the ranks of all their idols. A pipe dream, to be sure.

Until they both got a call that would change their lifes forever.

Dum dum duuuum.

Ascending To Royalty With Graf The Ninth (2011 - 2014)

Realistically it was probably at least two meetings, one confirming Fred's tune Simple Beginnings would make it onto Hospital Records' 2011 round-up compilation, and the big one in October. That fateful day, Fred and Josh walked out from a rather ominous-sounding "meeting" with a full-blown exclusive three-album deal as Fred V & Grafix. I want those kind of meetings! No more weirdo Fred V + Grafix or Fred V and Grafix either, this royal coupling prefers the ampersand from now on. Considering how deeply intertwined their musical journeys had already been at that point, with them even having already created a joint SoundCloud account at that point, Hospital Records wasn't necessarily the reason why they started fully embracing working twogether, but the deal did jumpstart the duo to heights previously thought impossible. Even in the two months right after the deal, we've already got Find My Way on the Fifteen Years of Hospital anniversary album and remixes for Emeli Sandé and CJ Bolland rolling in, plus a shortlist spot as Best Newcomer DJ at the Drum & Bass Arena Awards 2011 - but 2012 was when it really got crazy.

As if trying to hit as many milestones as they could before the Mayan zombies ate us all, they've landed their first huge hit singles Just A Thought via Viper and of course Major Happy via Hospital's third Sick Music compilation, alongside massive remixes for Camo & Krooked, Daddy's Groove, Skepta, Rudimental (earning themselves the Remix Of The Week™️ stamp of approval from Friction), Madeon (earning themselves a number 1 on Beatport's DnB chart), and even Ed Sheeran, became a regular on BBC radio with guest mixes for Crissy Criss' and their curations for the Xtra Ralent show on 1Xtra, plus a Mini-Mix for Annie Mac's show on the main channel, playing shows around the continent in Cologne, Barcelona, Prague and Romania, smashing up festivals like Dour and Nass, and this time around actually winning the Best Newcomer DJ Award. Together with their good friend and career catalyst Jaye Siege, they even created their own club night in Exeter, GetMe, at The Cellar Door underneath The Revelry, with headliners including but not limited to Delta Heavy, Brookes Brothers, Shy FX and Wilkinson.

In other words, while they were still creating an EP entirely out of found sounds, making French House type beats or writing one of the many required essays to finish up their degrees, they casually eclipsed their peers' dreams multiple times over.

After already getting their feet absolutely soaked on multiple fronts, and with more and more inspirations now coming from guitar-driven bands like Friendly Fires, Biffy Clyro, M83 and The xx, the Exeterrestrials continued rolling through the successes with VA one-offs like Purple Gates, singles like Here With You / Minor Happy, a battle for the ages against none other than Sub Focus on their combatative remix for Endorphins and the arrival of their debut EP, Goggles! While a creative process of Fred continuously "laying down some live shit like guitars or cellos or something" and the two of them building something around that sounds a little wild to say the least, the EP did connect with the scene, with Games People Play being debuted on Annie Mac's show and the abrasive title track receiving the "Ace of Clubs" co-sign from Crissy Criss. Once again, the duo received some awards nominations, this time for Max Palmer's legendary video for Major Happy and Hospital's (at the time) go-to director Andrew Attah's clip for Goggles, but what they'll probably most remember from this time was the jump over Australia, New Zealand and the United States, playing their very first shows outside of Europe!

Wait, but wasn't this whole deal with Hospital about albums? Where are they? Well...

Recog-nice (2014 - 2016)

Three years after signing their deal, it was finally time for the first chip off the block, their debut album, Recognise, released in March of 2014! In the works for around one and a half years, they've tried and, in my opinion, succeeded to diversify their sound as much as possible by seeking for inspirations far and wide, with the likes of Bonobo, whose tune 2010 Kiara shaped much of what would become Green Destiny, Hans Zimmer, the sounds of which could later be found on Bladerunner, and Led Zeppelin and their guitar work, having influenced a lot of the album's sound, exploring multi-genre possibilities for the very first time on House vibe Let Your Guard Down or Halftime opener Hydra, and, thanks to Fred being fascinated by the emerging vocal-driven nature of Disclosure's and Calyx's output at the time, them investing in their more singer-songwriter qualities in the form of Fred taking singing lessons.

While title track Recognise, once again supported by Radio 1's Annie Mac, was the only one to feature Fred's wonderful vocals, he was still quite involved in the writing of the lyrics Josie, Kate Westall, Ian Horrocks, Tudor and Etherwood delivered in Fred's little home studio. Aside from Spotify telling me that Keeno has worked on some of the tunes, the album is otherwise a 100% pure Fred V & Grafix production. Launched with an extra spicy hometown album party, the release went over incredibly well, with it almost cracking the top ten in the UK Dance album charts, receiving a nomination for Best Album at that year's AIM Independent Music Award and Etherwoodian collaboration Forest Fires being crowned Radio 1's #Tuneoftheday, being placed on the channel's elusive B-list, and even entering the UK singles charts at #77!

To go along with the single release Emperor and Panda remixes of the title track and Etherwood's, Taiki Nulight's and Massappeals' reworks of Forest Fires, the duo dished out a whole slew of brand new remixes for the album just 8 months later, with their remix album Unrecognisable. They didn't stop at just letting the likes of Keeno (him again!), Logistics, Dan Dakota, Urbandawn and many more Hospital and Med School alumni unrecognisable-ising their debut album, Fred and Josh jumped on the remix train as well, with rad reimaginings of Secondcity, MNEK, Netsky and Hybrid. Every good album cycle of course also needs a massive tour and boy have they upped their game in that department that year. Not only did they revisit the beautiful sites of Australia, New Zealand and North America (this time including Canada with Dan Dakota on support!), they also threw down some lush heaviness in Austria, Hungary, Switzerland, Netherlands, Serbia, Russia, Poland, Germany, and, duh, the UK.

Even outside of album-related news, things were going incredibly swimmingly, as Fred V & Grafix also became Hospital's figureheads at both the Radio 1 Soundclash, in which they wiped the floor with the Shogun, Viper and Ram teams, and the epic match-up against Rudimental at V Festival, which they of course also won. I mean, it's called V festival, of course Fred would take that trophy home! Not to mention FV&GX's music appearing on Driveclub's soundtrack and Forza Horizon 2's Hospital Radio that same year still, crossing off yet another item on the already decimated bucket list. The in-between-albums phase of 2015 was relatively quiet, but still saw them compiling an edition of the infamous Hospital Mixtapes, including more Fred vocals on This Can't Wait and a VIP of Major Happy, remixing Carmada on OWSLA and Bipolar Sunshine, and going on the obligatory tours across Oceania and performing shows in Singapore, Cologne, Japan, Hungary, Croatia, exetera. Not to forget their first-ever run of live shows across the UK in early 2016, including a completely sold-out show at the Scala in London!

Oxygoing Strong And Stable (2016 - 2017)

Fanboi warning: we're now entering my personal Nostalgia Zone™️.

After the arduous process of the debut-iful first album, things sadly did not get much easier for the two when it was time for sopho-more. Not only did they come up with so many different tunes that could potentially make it on the long player that it became hard to whittle them down to the still rather big batch of 15 tunes, the newly built songwriting team made up of Fred, Amy Pryce and Tudor also had trouble getting some of the vocals accepted by the A&R team, with Ignite in particular having had four full vocals written that were all turned down. Thanks to this tireless work of the songwriting team, a wider and more experimental sound than ever, with the pool of inspirations ranging from Mura Masa's minimalism and found sounds, to give their unique drums that extra crunch, to Porter Robinson's wet, spacy reverbs and Flume's genre-breaking everything, and collaborative input from Kele of Bloc Party fame, their university friend Dials and songwriter Brad Ellis, of Afterglow fame, allowed Oxygen, released in June of 2016, to become the masterpiece that it has.

Not only has it, and especially Ultraviolet, been an essential part of my early days of DnB discovery and holds a truly special place in my heart, it was also showered in admiration on the radio side by Friction, MistaJam and Annie Nightingale, gave them the opportunity to deliver one of the infamous Essential Mixes for BBC Radio, managed to smash into #7 in the official UK Dance charts and garnered them nominations for Best Album and Best Producer at the D&B Arena ceremony of that year. Pretty good, I'd say. Outside the album spectacle, however, they also continued to show off with absolute stunners like Constellations and its Forza Horizon 3 VIP, the legendary Tension with Metrik, and remixes both for Dabin, Dillon Francis, Philip George, Theresa May, Fred's cat, A Bottle Of Jägermeister and Mat Zo, and by S.P.Y and Smooth. Between all of that, of course, and despite Fred breaking his leg, they still managed to squeeze in tours across Australia, New Zealand and the US!

A Cinematic End (2017 - 2018)

Whereas they were, relatively speaking, (cinema)taking their sweet time with the first two albums, we really did not have to wait all too long for the third long player, Cinematic Party Music, released just a bit over a year later, in September of 2017. Described by the duo as the "by far most organic, personal music" they had written so far, this third installation in their saga saw them going the extra mile by writing, composing and performing everything themselves. Well, Welsh Jesus Tudor was still around to co-write a couple of tunes, but still, everything else was just Fred V and Grafix, with Fred of course taking on the role of writing, recording and performing the vocals. Thanks to inspirations drawn from acts like Coldplay, Arcade Fire, Alt-J and The 1975, with more direct influences coming from Tom Misch (especially the guitar on When You Appear), and Bon Iver, Imogen Heap and The Japanese House for the heavily layered vocal performances all across the album, the whole album isn't just their most personal collection of tunes yet, it's also their most Indie and arguably one of the most unique albums in DnB history, or at the very least in recent times.

While Hurricanes (Wild Love) was of course the big hit from the LP, the love also rolled in for Colours Fading, which saw support from Friction on Radio 1, Target on 1Xtra and Hype on Kiss FM, the comb-filtered funk groove Comb Funk, which Metrik spotlighted, the wonderful San Francisco, shouted-out by Annie Mac, and Fire With Fire, which Noisia of all people played out on their radio show. In fact, the whole album resulted in yet another nomination for Best Album at the D&B Arena Awards, became Mixmag's Album of the month, and managed to sneak into the UK Dance charts at #5, even entering the UK Album charts' top 100.

Since the album was entirely self-made and self-played, they were able to completely revamp their live shows to just the two of them: Josh on the guitar, Fred on the mic. Together with their creative director and sound tech John, they ironed out all the details and debuted it, ahead of the album, in a rather cozy, intimate setting at The Louisiana in Bristol, before going the full distance and playing it out at huge festivals like Lockdown and Hospitality In The Park in September. Aside from the obligatory NZ/Aus tour, that same year they also smashed up the light show extravaganza that is EDC Las Vegas with Metrik and TC on a quadruple back to back, almost 10 years after Fred got inspired by a TC interview in the first place!

During the LP's press cycle, Fred and Josh already said they were taking a break from albums for the foreseeable future, which makes sense considering their original deal was fulfilled, but, knowing what's coming next, it's like they were trying to send a sneaky message with their single releases and remixes as well. A remix for Camo & Krooked's Slow Down? Auckland Sunrise and Sunrise (Four Seasons) (still begging for a release) for Forza Horizon 4, a remix for Becky Hill's Sunrise In The East - it almost reads like "this project is slowly coming to an end, but don't worry, new projects are already on the horizon". The Cinematic Music Party is over, but a new dawn is rising. In real life, however, no one suspected a thing, and the live shows 3.0 rolled through the UK and NASS festival, followed by shows in Japan and America.

Then, the news drops. Coming 2019, Fred V & Grafix will be no more, with only one more New Zealand tour run to finish it off, before they both continue on as solo artists. As an insurmountable amount of grief spreads all across the community, with declarations of both love and sadness pouring in left right and centre, the scene also remained a little sceptical. Could they keep this quality up on their own? Could they live up to the glory days of their early solo work again? Do they even want to do that?

Fred on his own again.. (2018 - 2024)

Just like the fans, Fred wasn't quite sure how to go on about this thing on his own at first. Of course, he was still with Hospital and knew what he wanted to do, but there were so many things that he just let Josh do or was used to get his input on, that he now had to figure out on his own again. For instance, instead of just talking with Josh about WIPs, he now started sending them to other peers like Flite, Metrik and, to be fair, still also his former partner in crime. They were still very good friends and valued each other's opinions highly, after all. Right as the old project ended, Fred showed us a rather new side of his, with his futuristic Flume-y Halftime debut Burning Me, just a couple months later leading into the similarly uniquely wobbly, Halftime-featuring, Proximity EP. Fred not, dear DnB lover, while promoting this first extended look at the new Fred, he was already assuring people that this is still a DnB project first and foremost, and would concentrate on exactly that from then on.

Slowly but surely, single after single, with his second EP Distance dropping in between, and after moving to Apeldoorn in The Netherlands, he would get his solo groove going and the next couple of years saw him collaborating with the likes of Hybrid Minds, Logistics, Krakota, Audioscribe and a whole bunch more, remixing Hamzaa, Tom Walker, Maduk, B Motion, Fly By Midnight, Tom Walker again, Luude and so many more, with a clear highlight being his first solo album, Radiate, in 2021. My review colleague has done a spotlight on the album back then, so I won't lose all too many characters on it except for three fun facts I found out while researching: 1) Tudor co-wrote seven of the tunes on Radiate! 2) Already Disappeared was initially written for FV&G! 3) Reaching Dawn is his tribute to the last Hospitality at Motion in Bristol before the lockdowns hit.

Since it was Covid times you might think this would be the one section where no New Zealand tour is mentioned, but you would be quite wrong. Not only did he manage to escape the madness for a few months there at the height of everything in 2020, he also returned once more in 2022, and even managed to make it over to North America in 2023, for the first time in five years! To fill the time that suddenly opened up with this drop in gigging, Fred, as many others, went live a couple of times, even joining Josh on his lockdown streams (🦀🦀🦀) for a very special reunion stream, and from November 2021 on, started doing a weekly show on Kiss FM!

From November of last year on, Fred started releasing tunes with a suspiciously similar artwork and by April we knew what was up: his second solo album Luminous was on its way! Right, hey, that's why we're here, in the first place! I remember now!

Resources

Track Breakdown

Congrats, you've made it to the Track Breakdown!

1. Collide (feat. DNMO & Paul Dowling)

We make our way into the cosmos of Fred's fifth total long player with the fusion of beauty and danceability that is opener Collide. Together with returning fellow UK-based fellas Aiden DNMO Morgan on the production and Paul Dowling on vocal duties, they built an excellent arrangement of crunchy guitar bass lines complimenting the delightful synths lighting up the night sky like fireflies in the more energetic sections, and an absolutely lovely atmosphere, punctuated by the most wonderful of guitar breakdowns, for Paul to deliver on in the most marvellous of fashion.

2. Take You There

We continue the Dowlingian vocal streak (albeit uncredited) with an incredibly vibey, pitch-shifted Paul delivering the titular line on our next stop through Fred's sonic explorations, Take You There. Floating through space, we've only got Paul's mantra echoing in our heads, until waves of synths start building themselves up in front of us, continuously rising to the point of our senses become overwhelmed - and then we're hit with the masterful switch into a certified Fred V sound design masterclass. A back and forth between effortless lobs of synth stabs and an incredibly bit-crushed, heavily distorted response, is joined by a stupendously large reece like you've never heard before, smoothly turns back into the intro's synth arrangement getting more and more plucky and in-your-face, until layers upon layers of distortion crush your skull to bits for the grand finale. He really did take me there!

3. Luminous

As if recovering from what we just witnessed, Luminous started out by transporting us out into nature, the bird chirps only interrupted by the constant ringing of synths and the echoes of roaring bass lines in our heads, until the uncredited Lottie Jones brings us fully back into the synthified yet still strikingly beautiful world of Fred. With each hit of the big, echo-y drums, water splashes up from the ground, allowing the quick-firing rays of synths to create a vibe spectacle extraordinaire, which later on turns even more alien, when the second set of rays start firing in between the existing ones, creating this weirdly entrancing rhythm of beauty.

4. Games (feat. Lottie Jones & Richter)

Games, with South Californian Shane Armijo Richter, takes the vibes a couple notches further down the sad scale, at least at first. A melancholic piano playing a lovely melody, glitchy rain keeps falling down in the background, a phone is ringing. Enter: Lottie Jones. This time credited, Lottie is concerned with the titular games their love interest is playing, but once the subtle bass oomphs accompanying the lo-fi weir-do drums and the soft wandering pianos of the intro are hypercharged into bassy synth explosions, she realises how much power they still have over her. Similarly, Fred fooled us hard, and fake-out-drops it all into a call-and-response between moody ear candy pluckings and said larger-than-life oomphs, and continues to switch it up with insane reeces, some frankly ridiculously filthy stabbies, until the whole instrumental devolves completely into a glitchy mess. Just like the relationship! Insane insane insane tune.

5. Dive (feat. Tudor)

Speaking of insane, let's Dive off into the vibe abyss again. No games this time! Originally released back in 2022, this is the oldest tune included, but considering just how perfect it is, it makes sense it ended up on here. Inspired by Snowpiercer's soundtrack, Fred not only crafted an instrumental full of gorgeous little moments, with my highlights being the piano and that out-of-this-world guitar in the breakdown, he also invited the one and only Tudor on the tune to deliver his absolute best work yet. Those drawn-out aaaaaa's from him, together with everything going on in the instrumental, are just 12/10 man. One of my favourites of 2022, and I still cannot get enough of it.

6. What I'm Hoping For (feat. Laura Brehm)

Still cooling off from all the bangerangers of before, Fred roped his current partner (according to FB) Laura Brehm, from FatRat and Feint fame, into it all to craft the auditory hug that is What I'm Hoping For. Through the beautiful but broken-down drums going their own Halftime ways, Laura's signature angelic voice shines like the light at the end of a tunnel, leading us to the smooth stream of heart-warming bass wubs, subtle guitar-synth plucks and just generally softly euphoric vibes that is the drop. Just so wonderfully wholesome.

7. Take Over (feat. Dan Dakota)

How about some wonk™️? On Take Over, Fred recruited Canadian weirdo design wizard Dan Dakota, after a good decade of mutual support, to finally join him in the studio, and man am I glad. Right away, things are already full of found sound weirdness - snares made out of random kitchen items being smashed together, some weird wind chimes (??) and I swear someone is stepping on the ground for the kick. Another uncredited vocalist takes us over from the raw weirdness to the drop, where the duo unleashes the full might of their wonderfully melodic, maximally dynamic, guitar-fueled funky sound design spectacle. Ear-shatteringly massive pairs of stabs, interspersed with little riffs, all sorts of found sounds, UFO hover type sound effects, huge basses and punctuated yet crazy drums - plus a second drop that is just bursting with chuggy weirdness and wet snares. It really does feel like my mind is being taken over by an alien life form. "Invade my mind" and all that.

8. Metronome (feat. Danny Connors & Petra)

The funk keeps on funking, on Metronome. Extended Tom Grennan family duo Danny Connors, from Loadstar and live guitar things fame, and vocalist Petra Luke, from Gorillaz' recent tour fame, take us on such a loungy journey of teasing love, that you might forget that we're in Fred's filth era right now. Right when you are ready to light up your cigar and chillax a little, we're assaulted by this back-and-forth machinery between a quartet of maximally supercharged note hits and a supremely fonky bass line, that Fred feeds more and more ear candy into, until it all explodes into an impossibly large bass. Lead by an actual metronome and the returning vocalist duo, we walk right back into the madness, this time extra spicy, extra bouncy and extra staccato'd.

9. Polsloe Bridge

The rave might be over (for now), but the afterparty vibes flourish at Polsloe Bridge, named after the train station in Exeter. As we wait for our connection home, stuttery neo-2000s synth melodies illuminate the (very) early morning sky, while other trains occasionally rumble through the station, with our breakbeaten mind still racing at hundred-seventy-four miles per minute. Incredible, incredible vibes, especially that outro is just stunning all-around.

10. Restless (feat. Lottie Jones)

Even when we try to get some sleep going, our past mistakes keep us awake, on Restless. On top of a faintly choir-y atmosphere, which might as well just be a bunch of Fred vocal layers, punctuated by a soft piano and minimal drum action, we get to listen to the wonderful Lottie Jones lay the whole emotional drama out in front of us, performed as phenomenally as ever. Fred understands just how powerful this vibe is, and lets the drop continue to roll through with it, only adding a deeply rumbling bass and a snappy snare to complete the picture of anxiously laying awake at the otherwise gentle, silent night. Also, the breakdown is an absolute masterclass.

11. Faded Blue (feat. Hybrid Minds & Lottie Jones)

Speaking of masterclass. First official album single Faded Blue, the fourth (!) total collaboration with Hybrid Minds, featuring Lottie Jones' fourth vocal performance just on this album (not complaining about either), tells an intensely emotional tale of the profoundly saddening, lasting effects the ending of an intense relationship can cause in its participants. It is also absolute perfection. Not only is the combined layered vocal performance of Lottie's stunning voice and Fred's equally magnificent organ genuinely one of my favourite vocals ever, is both ridiculously catchy and heartbreaking, everything surrounding it - the lush pianos, the sweeping synth waves, the signature Fred vibes - works so incredibly well with it, that it became a compulsion to listen to it. It was already one of my most played tunes of 2023, and I'm still nowhere close to sick of it.

12. Subliminal (feat. ALLKNIGHT & FJ Law)

As if I'm not enough of an emotional mess already, Fred takes another jab at my heart with the penultimate stop on this journey, Subliminal. Thanks to an actually, unironically tear-jerking performance by Glasgow-based ALLKNIGHT, also known as Jodie Knight, on top of, at first, subdued looping synths and intimate guitar strums, I was already primed for Emotion Time™️, but every single time I hear Jodie putting her whole emotional weight behind her voice once the synths starts drowning her out, I can't help but feel a shiver down my spine. This emotional highlight crescendos into the smoothly rolling, warm, piano-chord-filled drop, which is where London-based songwriter/producer/artist FJ Law shares his side of the story with an equally heartbreaking performance that ends with him keeping on keeping on throughout the empty void that is the breakdown, before we return to roll things out once and for all. Spectacular.

13. Divinity

One last time, we crank up the vibe machinery, with album finale Divinity taking us through multiple stages of beauty. From its fluttery, glitchy, break-filled intro, we quickly start rolling out the track-spanning drop with a lovely little beautifully distorted bass line and simple drum loop combo, but soon enough, a delightful nostalgic synth joins in on the fun, and the breaks bring us to our first of many breaks. After a few seconds of pure classic FV&G euphoria, we are back in roller business with a synth loop reminiscent of Major Happy et al., before an all-too-familiar highly-pitched vocal makes its debut - one I swear I've heard before but simply cannot identify for the life of me. This trip down memory lane bleeds into a chaotic, break-heavy section, all spliced-up and glitched-out to the max, that I choose to believe represents their split-up times, before things smooth themselves out into the simple roll-out synth vibe. One by one, everything fades out, until we're left with only scrunched-up nature sounds. Intentionally thematic or not, I can't stop listening to it.

Conclusion

On Luminous, the fifth total, and second solo long player he has worked on over his more than 15-year-long career, Fred's at times otherworldly yet always deeply human artistry shines as bright if not brighter than ever before. Not only are we exploring the craziest, most alien soundscapes that Planet Fred V (his name does sound like some distant moon) has ever offered, which is saying something, the songwriting and vocal performances present all across the 13-track runtime are so impossibly beautiful and so overflowing with both grief and love that it connected with me on the deepest of emotional levels, bringing me to tears on multiple occasion. I am so incredibly grateful for both the vehemently scrunched-up bass faces and the immeasurable beauty this album has brought into my life.

If I had to choose favourites, I would probably go with Games, for its unique blend of sweeping synths and straight-up disgusting sound design flexes, Polsloe Bridge, because I could roll through that stunning trance-y 2000s vibe for hours on end, and Subliminal, for its gorgeous vocal performances that connected so deeply with me, I can already see myself screaming the lyrics along in the shower tomorrow. Also, even though they were already released, Dive and Faded Blue just have to be mentioned as well.

TL;DR: Outrageously creative sound design that still manages to achieve both tear-jerking beauty alongside the mind-bending, revolting filth, perfectly fused with unbelievably poignant songwriting astonishingly performed by an all-around great cast of vocalists - an absolute highlight of the genre.