- The UK artist's long-awaited debut album is a stunningly introspective study of the queer experience, from the 1980s to present day.
- May 24th, 1988, was a dark day in the history of queer British politics. Margaret Thatcher's conservative government enacted a series of virulently homophobic laws called Section 28, prohibiting the "promotion of homosexuality" in public life. The law effectively ended LGBTQIA+ resources like student support groups and educational programmes across the nation, at a time when AIDS was still claiming thousands of lives per year. Section 28 stayed in effect to some degree until 2003, but those who grew up in the '80s and '90s remember its devastating effects—and the wave of queer activism that rose in its wake.
Section 28 may not be an obvious jump-off point for a full-time DJ's debut album in 2024, but Midland's Fragments of Us is more than just a simple collection of downbeat, sometimes esoteric progressive house and IDM tracks. It's a studied reckoning with queer history and identity, bridging the personal and political through a medium that has always pulsed through the gay scene: dance music. As Midland, Harry Agius has expertly produced an authentic and deeply emotional reflection of LGBTQIA+ pride in dance music—one that celebrates both the dance floor and the picket line.
The first track that delves into Fragments of Us's political core is "In My Head." Beginning with a terse broadcast voice announcing the institution of Section 28, Agius bombards the listener with echoing news clips from the period, and voices shoot from all directions to debate the place of queer people in society. "I do not want homosexuality promoted!" shrieks one woman, her voice exploding into a burst of reverb. In almost all of the excerpts from "concerned" citizens and ruthless politicians, the word "homosexual" punctures the mix again and again, almost brutish in its sterility. Meanwhile, swirls of percolating synths and skittish beats convey a stomach-churning sense of anxiety and confusion. Although somewhat literal, the samples don't feel gimmicky or oversimplified. Manipulated and distorted in tandem with the music, they demonstrate how Agius is able to pair his luminous IDM with the fear and rage attached to the subject matter, without either losing their edge.
Agius has been releasing critically acclaimed mixes since the late 2000s, many of them also inspired by a rich chronicle of queer music, including house, techno and pop. As a producer, he has left his own well-defined fingerprint on current dance music culture via remixes for superstars like Dua Lipa and Little Dragon. While he could've gone the obvious route and recruited a coterie of his most popular collaborators to provide guest vocals for this album, many of the voices present on Fragments of Us are long gone, ghosts recalled from the annals of queer culture.
David Wojnarowicz, the seminal American visual artist who died of AIDS in 1992, is one of these figures from the past. "David's Dream" features a spoken-word sample Wojnarowicz recorded in his car as he processes his imminent death and ponders how the disease has ravaged his artistic community. "All this desolation feels like one big grey mirror held up to my own heart," he intones amid pulsing minimal beats and plaintive synths. As the music fizzles out, his last soul-baring note hangs alone in the air: "Really, I just don't want to fucking die." The filmmaker Marlon Riggs, another victim of the AIDS epidemic, is sampled on "Construct a Future," a slow burn that simmers in agile arpeggios before reaching a crest of symphonic downtempo. Rounding out the album's historical perspective, Riggs' monologue about the systematic exclusion of racial topics in the gay rights movement of the time sounds just as vital in the present day.
While the spectre of AIDS looms heavy on Fragments of Us, "1983-1968," featuring Australian producer and activist Jonny Seymour, offers small outtakes of victory. "I'll never forget, in 1996, when there were no more HIV deaths to report," recalls Seymour, as Agius's fuzzy electronica gives his words space to breathe and expand into the present. Dealing with these heavy themes, the music never takes a backseat. Agius's understated production thumps forth, amplifying these voices with a nurturing hand. It's precisely how he delicately pairs these samples with his considered, intricate production that elevates these tracks beyond their initial concept.
What helps is that decades spent working crowds means Agius knows his references like the back of his hand. The charming, metallic drum machine and robotic keyboards on "You Said You'd Be Good" play like a tongue-in-cheek homage to queer and queer-adjacent '80s synth pop bands like Soft Cell, Visage, OMD and early Depeche Mode. "Ritual" samples the 1986 song "Lucky Cloud," which originally features Arthur Russell, the High Priest of New York's downtown scene who lost his life to AIDS in 1992. Here, Agius transforms Russell's warm tenor into a glitchy, spaced-out joyride, with stuttering beats skating atop a tingling synth melody and glistening harmonies.
Agius succeeds in showing multiple facets of queerness through the lens of dance music, but it's not until "Chapter 10" rolls around towards the album's end that we're finally transported to one of the most reliable milieus of gay awakening: the dance floor. Much like the universal queer experience of hitting the club after a long, hard week of surviving in a heterosexual world, "Chapter 10" feels like a life-affirming release, a time to both process and exercise the journey that brought us here. Over a chattering crowd, Agius delivers a throbbing epic with heavenly synths that climb towards the rafters.
It's the album's reminder that the joy of being queer far outweighs the pain, which is in turn what makes Fragments of Us such an arresting study in queer identity. Yes, we have loved, yes, we have lost, and yes, not of all us made it in the end. But each of us have contributed to this glorious culture, woven through generations, only growing stronger with each thread. The word "fragment" implies disparity, but that's clearly not Agius's intention: this is a story of power in numbers, illustrated by an artist with an ironclad grasp on the music that made his community.
Lista de sequência de músicas01. Omi Palone
02. Fragments Of Us
03. In My Head
04. Never Enough
05. Vogue In Slow Motion
06. David's Dream feat. David Wojnarowicz
07. Ritual
08. 1983 - 1996 feat. Jonny Seymour
09. You Said You'd Be Good
10. NYCDL feat. Luke Howard
11. Chapter 10
12. Construct A Future feat. Marlon Riggs
13. First Light Over The Grove