USB002

Putting the adverb in his alias to good use, Fred again.. has spent the past decade becoming ubiquitous. Born Frederick John Philip Gibson, he’s crafted chart-toppers for names like Ed Sheeran and BTS, kicked it with iconic rappers like Skepta, recorded an uncharacteristically subdued album with Brian Eno, and spun at some of the planet’s most Instagrammable places. Now, after another blockbuster year, the DJ de jour lands with the second official instalment of his “infinite” album project, USB. Dropped incrementally over the course of a 10-week, 10-city tour, USB002 is a slick odyssey through contemporary dance music, with a typically bass-heavy thrust and names like Amyl and the Sniffers, Danny Brown, and Floating Points helping out. It makes for an energetic soundtrack to stadium raves, but it’s not always easy to tell what, if anything, he’s trying to say with it beneath the snarling low end.

Like its predecessor, USB002 is presented (at least in its digital form) less as a complete album and more like a track dump from Gibson’s overheated hard drive and revolving-door studio sessions. As a concept, it purports to trade the typical album-release cycle for something sprawling, iterative, and hyper-shareable. It suits Gibson’s prolific work rate and, more interestingly, might hint at a new release model for DJs: the USB as an album. (For most of us, the continually updated tracklist, now 34 tracks long on streaming platforms, mostly just looks like a playlist.) But with artists increasingly letting their albums trickle out piecemeal, it’s debatable how novel the USB concept really is. Packaged as a never-ending release, USB002 lands more like a clever promotional gambit than a pioneering twist on the album format.

The music suggests a producer making decisive choices, even if he isn’t quite evolving from the project’s first installment. Gone are the maudlin pop and deep house that marked pre-USB hits like “adore u.” And while typical Fred again.. signatures do surface, like the slightly-too-saccharine gated chords on “solo,” or the smudged, low-attack synth breakdowns on “you’re a star,” USB002 favors the club over the contemplative. UK garage and four-on-the-floor beats lurk under nearly every track, the melodies are insidiously catchy, and Gibson’s production moves spotlessly, thanks to his past in pop music. Even on tunes like “..FEISTY,” where wobbling bass and chunky kicks might usually tip into mix-drowning excess, Gibson’s precision reins everything in, letting BIA’s strutting vocal lines propel the track.

Some of USB002’s efficacy, like PinkPantheress’ Fancy Some More? or Charli XCX’s Brat remix project, can also be attributed to the sheer density of its guestlist. Not many producers have the ability to pull together such a wide-ranging crew, getting JPEGMAFIA, Floating Points, Australian techno producer Skin on Skin, Caribou, Twitch streamer PlaqueBoyMax, and UKG superstar Sammy Virji all rubbing shoulders in Fred’s crowded virtual DJ booth alongside earlier collaborators like Skrillex, Romy, Lil Yachty, and Overmono.

Where PinkPantheress and Charli XCX’s projects, although remix-based (and similarly clouted), felt like genuine interactions between peers and influences, USB002’s link-ups often feel more functional than mutually illuminative. The album’s beats are uniformly punchy, offering solid foundations for his guest vocalists; the euphoric chords of “solo” make for an effective contrast with Blanco’s heartbroken rhymes, and BIA’s rasp sounds fittingly menacing paired with the blown-out garage and hip-hop beats of “ICEY..” and “..FEISTY.” But if anything, his collabs sound too much like Fred again..—there’s barely any trace of Floating Points inside the lumbering “Ambery,” save some brief flickers of synthesizer, and Caribou is similarly rendered anonymous beneath Brazilian singer Menor Teteu’s lilting vocals on “Facilita.” And the album’s most provocative feature, from Aussie punks Amyl and the Sniffers, is rendered unrecognizable amid the pro-forma drum’n’bass breaks of “you’re a star.” There’s no doubt that Fred again.. knows his way around a banger, and industrial-flavored techno of tracks like “I Luv U” makes a welcome return to the darkness of “Rumble.” But for a project touted as “infinite,” USB002 feels curiously constrained by the narrowness of its horizons.