Frayd – Vacation EP
(Photo by K.NE)
Ottawa electronic artist Frayd can boast he has opened for the likes of Ryan Hemsworth, and MSTRKFT in the past year – all before graduating high school. At only 18 years old, Gabe Roberge (a.k.a Frayd) has found his footing with the likes of Ryan Hemsworth, Flume, and Porter Robinson. His debut full-length Mountain was released at the end of last year, but the young musician has kept his creative flow in motion with his newly released Vacation EP.
The five track EP was a very collaborative effort, finding his features through Soundcloud. Roberge explains:
“Before the EP was even an idea, I was working on “On Me” with Vikki Gilmore. I had found her on Soundcloud totally out of chance one day and knew I needed to work with her. As I was working on that song, I also had a few other little ideas and beats, so I basically just started looking everywhere for undiscovered talent and eventually began compiling a few songs with people that I thought fit very well together. My goal was to fit as much young talent on to it as possible – even down to the cover art made by a friend from school”.
Although he admits the project was fairly tedious in terms of communication, it was all worth it in the end. Vacation is composed entirely of original tracks, with the features writing most of their lyrics, while Frayd’s futuristic and animated production serves as their layered and textured foundation, taking different shapes across the five tracks. He creates dynamic future house tracks like “On Me” and “After Dark”, while he shows off his instrumental creativity on the Porter Robinson-esque single “Vanilla”, and even dabbles in futuristic hip-hop beats on “Left Alone” and “Glasses On”.
Vacation is not only an impressive addition to the young musician’s discography, but an engaging illustration of the collection of talent found around the world.
