Fred again.. doesn’t do many interviews, but he seemed genuinely delighted while opening up to Nardwuar in a conversation published Monday (Oct. 14). “One of my absolute heroes so I’m just honored to have been in a room with him,” Fred wrote upon sharing the 45 minute chat.
The pair cover a lot of territory during their talk, discussing everything from a night Fred had in New Orleans after an Ed Sheeran show and his thoughts on Sheeran’s live shows generally, to Fred’s current roommate (Henry Counsell of Joy Anonymous) to getting his first copy of of Logic when he was 11 years old.
Fred tells Nardwuar that he’d previously been using a complicated analog method to create multiple tracks, and that his world opened up when his guitar teacher gave him the software that would allow him to layer as many tracks as he wanted. “That was kind of the beginning of the greatest love affair of my life,” Fred says.
Speaking on his long history of working with his friend and mentor Brian Eno, he also talks about how Eno turned him on to U.K. electronic legends Underworld, who he recently went to see at London’s Alexandra Palace with Skrillex. “Sonny walked in and was like ‘This is the rarest crowd dynamic I’ve seen in years,’” Fred recalls of the show. “Phoneless, present, in it, it was all feeling loose in the best possible way.”
Fred also expounds on about how he prefers working in cafes rather than in studios. “There was a coffee shop in central [London],” he says a cafe he liked in particular. “They’d bring out the extension cord, and I got too comfy to the point where I was plugging in interfaces and a mic… It’s nicer to be in the world as opposed to in some closed off, no natural light room.
“I think the reason why I like writing in places that aren’t studios and out in the world is because you get this constant collage of humanity,” he continues, “this thing just walking by, it’s always moving and changing… I think it just keeps your brain alive and moving versus gradually getting stiller and stiller in the vacuum of a dark room.”
He also talks about the personal conversation he had with the Mayor of Perth, Australia, in order to convince city officials to let his team turn decibel levels up by two or three degrees during a recent show there. “‘Two or three?’” Fred recalls the mayor saying, “‘You can push it to 15!’ Shout out the people of Perth.”
The flannel-clad Canadian interview icon then inquires about Fred’s frequent collaborator Four Tet, asking specifically about Four Tet’s early band, Fridge. “I think he’s got this very exploratory, childlike mindset, which makes everything he does have this kind of through line to me,” Fred says. “I think he could do 20 different bands and it would all have the same sort of Kieren-ness to me.”
At the end of the interview, Fred presents Nardwuar with a hand drawn card illustrating major points of Nardwuar’s career and life and a little calendar with a circle around “September 29,” which Fred calls “Nardwuar day.”