The Four Tet and Fred again.. collaboration train continues, this time with a new guest: Brian Eno.
Today on social media Four Tet announced that his label, Text Records, will release a collaborative album from Fred again.. and Eno this Friday, May 5. Four Tet called the LP, called Secret Life, “the most beautiful album of 2023.”
The collaboration is one among friends, as Brian Eno is a longtime mentor of Fred again.. the U.K. producer born Fred Gibson.
“I think of Fred as my mentor as well,” Eno told Zane Lowe last fall, “in that I learnt so much about contemporary music from watching him working. When I first worked with Fred I could see he was brilliant. It’s very clear. He’s a very very sensitive and good artist, and I was very impressed by that. But I didn’t really understand a lot of what he was doing. It took me quite awhile to think ‘oh my gosh, this is really a new idea about how you can make music.’ So I learned a lot from him. It’s a two way relationship.”
Four Tet, who’s playing three shows in Los Angeles this week tonight through Thursday (May 2-4), also noted that the album will get physical releases on vinyl and CD. A companion online radio station, secretlife.fm has been broadcasting daily starting at 10 p.m. U.K. time.
Secret Life is the first album from Fred again.. since the November 2022 release of his third studio LP, Actual Life 3 (January 1 – September 22, 2022). Eno’s last studio album, ForeverAndEverNoMore, was released in October of 2022. It was the legend’s 29th solo studio LP.
Meanwhile, Four Tet and Fred again.. are on an epic run, having headlined the second weekend of Coachella with Skrillex. The trio were added to the festival’s Sunday night lineup just the day before the event started, after the weekend one Sunday night headliner Frank Ocean dropped out after a leg injury.
Four Tet also released a new single, the eight-plus minute “Three Drums,” last week on Text Records.
See the cover art for the new collaboration below.
