USB002 Review

Content Guide

USB002 review: I have to admit, there is something wonderfully chaotic about the way Fred again.. released USB002. Most artists drop an album on a Friday and call it a day. Fred decided to spend ten weeks traveling the world, releasing one song at a time, performing in cities announced mere days before each show. By the time USB002 officially arrives on December 12th, we’ll have already lived with most of these sixteen tracks for weeks. And honestly? That might be the entire point.

The USB series is Fred’s attempt at creating what he calls an “infinite album.” Think of it like a DJ’s USB stick, constantly evolving with tracks that work in the club, updated digitally over time while occasional vinyl releases freeze certain moments in amber. USB001 dropped in June 2024 with bangers like the Grammy-winning “Rumble” alongside Skrillex and Flowdan. Now USB002 takes that concept further, pulling together an absolutely wild roster of collaborators that shouldn’t work on paper but somehow does.

Let’s start with “you’re a star” featuring Amyl and The Sniffers, because it perfectly captures what makes this album so unpredictable. Fred took an Australian punk band and transformed their track “Big Dreams” into breakbeat techno. Amy Taylor, the band’s frontwoman, said working with Fred felt like being Charlie in the chocolate factory, which tracks because this whole album has that same sense of “what mad scientist cooked this up?” energy. The track hit number seven on Billboard’s dance chart, proving that sometimes the weirdest ideas connect hardest.

Then there’s the hip hop side of things. “OGdub” brings together Danny Brown and JPEGMAFIA, sampling Danny’s “Burfict” and building what Fred describes as “a horn fugue that then goes into a punk band that then drops unreasonably hard and just keeps going.” He’s been listening to Danny Brown since he was sixteen, and you can feel that genuine fan excitement in how the track unfolds. It’s seven minutes of controlled chaos that never quite goes where you expect.

The electronic music legends show up too. Caribou appears on “Facilita” alongside MC Teteu, while Floating Points gets the atmospheric “Ambery,” which stretches out to over seven minutes of glacial synths and emotion. Both artists joined Fred for a historic back to back set in Lyon that got livestreamed on Apple Music. The fact that Fred can pull artists like this into his orbit while also working with underground UK producers like KETTAMA and Sammy Virji says something about where he sits in the culture right now.

Historic Moments (USB002 Review)

Speaking of historic moments, we need to talk about Paris. On October 25th, Fred performed at the Pompidou Centre’s final event before a five year closure. Thomas Bangalter from Daft Punk showed up to play a surprise set with him. No mask. First DJ appearance in sixteen years. First time playing without the helmet in twenty four years. Fred posted about it later, saying Thomas told him in the elevator that he first fell in love with electronic music in that building back in 1992. The internet basically melted. Tiësto commented “Legendary!!” and honestly, what else do you say to that?

The Sound (USB002 Review)

The sound across USB002 sits primarily in breaks and UK bass territory, though calling it just that feels reductive. There’s “Hardstyle 2” with KETTAMA and Shady Nasty that lives up to its name. “The Floor” exists only as two completely different remixes of the same collaboration with Skin On Skin and BEAM, which Fred apparently did to explore emotional duality or something. The BIA tracks “Icey..” and “..Feisty” bring a different energy entirely. And “solo” with Blanco, which just dropped December 5th in Vancouver, feels like a late night confession wrapped in bass.

Fred’s production approach hasn’t changed much from his earlier work. He still builds everything in Logic, still uses vocal samples from phone recordings and voice memos. The magic happens in how he layers field recordings under club ready drums, how he manipulates vocal chops through pitch shifting until they become something new, how acid tinged bass from his Monark synth sits underneath atmospheric textures that make you feel like you’re floating. The Japanese House provides backing vocals on “Hardstyle 2.” Dan Mayo plays live drums on several tracks. It’s electronic music that never forgets humans made it.

Context Matters (USB002 Review)

Context matters here. Fred again.. is Frederick John Philip Gibson, and before he became a headliner, he was the invisible hand behind a shocking amount of British pop. At sixteen, he joined an a cappella group at Brian Eno’s studio because Eno happened to be his neighbor, which is the most British music industry origin story imaginable. He went on to produce George Ezra’s “Shotgun,” Clean Bandit’s “Solo,” and twelve of the fifteen tracks on Ed Sheeran’s massive collaboration project. He won a BRIT Award for Producer of the Year in 2020 as the youngest recipient ever.

But his solo career really took off with the Actual Life trilogy during the pandemic. Those albums felt like diary entries, intimate and personal. His July 2022 Boiler Room set went viral. He closed Coachella 2023 as a last minute replacement for Frank Ocean, bringing out Skrillex and Four Tet. Last year, “Rumble” and Actual Life 3 both won Grammys. USB002 arrives with Fred firmly established as someone who can do whatever he wants, and what he wants is apparently to spend ten weeks on the road with his friends making people dance.

The live shows for this rollout came with their own aesthetic. Dutch artist Boris Acket created kinetic fabric installations that moved with the music at each stop. Phones got covered with stickers at the door because Fred wants people present, not filming. USB necklaces containing actual stems and files got sold as merch, turning the album concept into something you could wear. The whole thing felt less like a traditional tour and more like a traveling party that happened to release an album along the way.

It is fair to that there is something messy about the whole USB002 project. It’s an album that exists in multiple states simultaneously. The tracks work in the club, which was always the goal. They also work at home, which Fred might not have planned for but happens anyway when you write hooks this good. The collaborations feel genuine rather than calculated, like Fred just kept texting his friends “want to make something?” and built an album from the results.

When Stranger Than Paradise Records describes USB002 as “designed for late night soundsystems,” they’re not wrong, but they’re also not telling the whole story. Yes, these tracks will destroy dancefloors. But they also capture something specific about where dance music is right now, in this moment where genre boundaries feel increasingly pointless and the best parties happen when you mix punk singers with house producers with hip hop legends and somehow it all works.

Fred told fans he wanted to do shows where he’s “in the EXACT same energy” as the crowd every single time, which is why he structured the rollout this way. Smaller venues. Pop up shows. Cities announced last minute. No traditional album campaign, just ten weeks of being in rooms with people who showed up because they wanted to be there. It’s telling that his solution to making better art was to get physically closer to the people experiencing it.

Final Show (USB002 Review)

As USB002 officially releases on December 12th with a final show in Mexico City, we’re getting an album that’s already lived a full life before its official birthday. We’ve danced to these songs. We’ve watched them evolve. We’ve seen Thomas Bangalter come out of retirement for one. The vinyl release will freeze this moment, but Fred’s already said he plans to release USB volumes for the next twenty years, so this is really just the second chapter in a much longer story.

The critical reception has been consistently positive. Publications have noted Fred’s ability to elevate his collaborators, with some suggesting Caribou and Floating Points might hit new career peaks thanks to their features here. “you’re a star” charted immediately. “Hardstyle 2” hit number one in New Zealand. But the numbers almost feel beside the point when the real story is about a producer who figured out how to make album releases feel communal again.

USB002 works because Fred understands that the best electronic music is a conversation, not a lecture. These sixteen tracks don’t demand your attention so much as invite you into a space where the boundaries between producer and dancer, between studio and dancefloor, between finished product and work in progress all blur together. It’s an album designed to be experienced with other people, phones away, present in the moment.

UK Bass Scene (USB002 Review)

Whether you’re deep into the UK bass scene or you just know Fred from “Rumble,” whether you showed up to one of those pop up shows or you’re just hitting play on Spotify December 12th, USB002 offers the same thing: proof that electronic music can be both massively ambitious and intimately personal, both club ready and emotionally resonant, both carefully crafted and wonderfully spontaneous. Fred again.. made an album that refuses to be one thing, and in doing so, made something that feels vital right now. That’s worth celebrating.