Still from Breathe by Fredfades & Ivan Ave
Fredfades’ & Ivan Ave’s ‘Breathe’ EP is available digitally and also pressed on a limited edition vinyl EP of 250 copies with full colour artwork and inner-sleeves. It will also be available with a bonus Fredfades’ 7”. The 45 includes a song called ‘Comes and Goes’, featuring Charli Dos Santos & Kristoffer Eikrem, plus the instrumental version and 2 extra bonus beats. Fred mixed the project himself and then Mr Brown mastered the project for vinyl.
The EP contains 17 tracks all produced by Fredfades, some of which were produced on the Emu SP-1200 and the others on the Akai MPC 2000XL. The A-side are all vocal tracks by the Norwegian lyrical genius Ivan Ave, formerly known as Ivan Average. The B-side is like a mini Madlib ‘Medicine Show’ with a mesh of Fredfades instrumentals, samples and cuts. It’s one of those records where you can put the needle on the wax and listen to it the whole way through, with no gaps In between the songs. The song ‘Waiting Forever’ is featuring Kristoffer Eikrem on the trumpet, who Fred met through a fellow friend/musician, Mathias Stub’ø (Proviant Audio, BBE Records )& Tarjei, who plays the keys. The song was recorded at Norges Musikk Høyskole / The Norwegian Music High School.
The bonus 7” ‘Comes & Goes’ also features Kristoffer and Charli (Fred’s girlfriend). Charli adds the vocals to the track while Kristoffer played the trumpet again on this one. It’s a great song.
For those that haven’t heard of Fredfades, he’s a hip hop producer/DJ originating from Norway. Fred’s a well-travelled DJ who’s played all over Europe & the US. He’s been collecting vinyl from the early age of 14 and collects all kinds of music from, jazz, modern soul, boogie, mid 60's psych to late-eighties electronic dance music.
Fred is one-third of the crew; along with partners Deckdaddy & John Rice the three together make “The Oslo SP Ensemble”. They've released a series of CDs called the “SP Shit Series” which have become cult-classics among the SP-1200 producers around the world. There are five volumes, all available for free download, which you can find online. The crew haven’t released anything together for a while but Fred has continued to put out beat tapes on his own and has a lot of music in the stash. There’s also a free download of a remix project of some of Fred’s favourite songs. This is available through our Bandcamp page. http://kingunderground.bandcamp.com/album/remixes
You can catch Fredfades every week spinning on the hip-hop radio show Goodshit Radio (www.goodshitradio.com) alongside Norwegian hip-hop pioneer Don Martin.
Ivan Ave’s real name is Eivind Øygarden. He’s 25 and comes from Telemark, Norway. He’s a DJ/MC and record collector who collects jazz, funk and soul and was part of the Norwegian hip hop group “The Afeeliated”. Ivan teaches music, English & cooking in a junior high school in Norway. After making contact with Fredfades his main focus has been to build and make music together, merely for the love of it.
Fred and Ivan (who called himself Ivy League back then) recorded an EP together back in 2009 which they called ‘The Brains’ EP. They released it on Fred’s own label, “Reppin' Outta Control”. There were three producers doing the beats back then, Deckdaddy, John Rice & Fredfades. Fred first met Ivan Ave at a party through some graffiti dudes they both knew. He had already heard his music with Bishop (part of the group “The Afeeliated”) and knew he was a skilled rapper. The two then followed up “The Brains” EP with a free digital EP called ‘Pine Trees’. Ivan then focused on a new project with Bishop following up with a new volume of the mix tape “Saving The City”. (They put out two mix tapes with the same name).
After that Ivan Ave moved to Oslo. The two started to hang out more and started recording new music. Fred’s philosophy has always been to create "theme-less" music without trying to work to a concept/sound and to build up a collection of the songs to pick from. He’s on the beats 24-7, his archive is HUGE so it’s a tough pick. Some of the beats on the “Breathe” project are old and some are relatively new. Ivan was given carte blanche, writing to whatever he was feeling, then Fred took care of the mixing and tried to make a red line sound wise. The combination of these two is so fresh and brings a new, whilst still classic, sound to the game.
