Free/Man: Reconnection
Reconnection – FREE/MAN Finds His Breath Again
by Jack Rush
With his second album Gift In The Shadows set for release in late 2025, London songwriter Charlie Freeman — aka FREE/MAN — offers Reconnection, a shorter but remarkably essential EP that works like a small act of purification. If the album dives into darkness, forgiveness, and the long road back to oneself, Reconnection inhabits the space where calm begins to return: those moments when confusion settles and the outlines of things become visible again.
Freeman has always written from places of wounding and healing — from learning guitar during his father’s illness to the forced reset after his cancelled 2020 tour. Here, too, his music invites listening before interpretation. There is warmth throughout the EP, a necessary slowing down, and a subtle renewal that arrives without fanfare — like the first breath after a long cry.
“Not Tomorrow” opens the record with a soft sway of guitars and an easy, familiar rhythm. Freeman’s high, slightly husky voice carries the lines as if he were speaking to someone beside him, letting the melody unfold the way thoughts do when they’re not pushed. There’s a spontaneous charisma in his delivery, but above all, a gesture of acceptance: being imperfect, gentle, yet still capable of hope.
At the heart of the EP is his rendition of Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song,” performed with disarming simplicity. The arrangement is sparse, the acoustic guitar beats with a slow, measured pulse, and his voice — worn in just the right way, but warm — gives the lyrics all the space they need. He isn’t trying to reinvent the song but to honour it: an act of humility and trust in the power of the original.
Reconnection does exactly what its title promises: it returns to presence, to meaning, to music as a place that heals rather than performs. It’s a brief passage, but full of honesty, setting the emotional ground for Gift In The Shadows while showing an artist still searching — and finding — an authentic way to be free.
Have a listen and connect with Free/Man:
