Depending on who you ask, KAI LONDON is either the next Fred again.. or a Porter Robinson tribute act. It is the kind of split that only happens to artists worth arguing about. His new single, “Fred on Mushrooms Again,” pokes fun at the first half of that comparison and turns it into a bit.
The concept is as literal as the title. Watching a Fred again.. clip, Kai’s girlfriend noted that the artist always appears remarkably serious. It sent Kai down a creative rabbit hole with one central question: what would Fred again.. sound like as a child? He answered it by manipulating a flute into the little green alien voice that anchors the drop; a playful build where the source material is pensive, cartoonish, and made by a sugar-high kid poking at a bunch of synths.
Underneath the joke lies a real challenge. The quality Kai admires most about Fred again.. is the balance; club-ready beats on one side, emotional, high-IQ composition on the other. “Fred on Mushrooms Again” is Kai trying to hold both at once: a track built to take the listener on a magical journey while still demanding movement on the dancefloor. It helps that he doesn’t approach this like a dance-music lifer. A multi-instrumentalist raised on N.E.R.D, Nirvana, and D’Angelo, he happily admits electronic music rarely lands on his own playlists, which is exactly why his version of a Fred again.. homage sounds like nobody else’s but his own.
Whether it reads as tribute or roast is ultimately up to the listener.
