ACTRESS Vinyl & CDs

Review: Darren Cunningham's work as Actress has always been top drawer, though you get the feeling that his relationships with record labels have sometimes been a bit testing. The good news is that he seems to have finally found a supportive home in Norwegian experimental music powerhouse Smalltown Supersound. Put simply, Statik, the tenth Actress album, is one of his most immaculate and immersive sets to date, with Cunningham shuffling between heady, slow-born electronic soundscapes, smacked-out IDM, glitchy aural collages full of minor-key melodies, blissed out dancefloor workouts (see the brilliant 'Ray'), experimental ambient dub and spacey excellence ('Cafe Del Mars').

Review: Darren Cunningham's latest full-length LP, Statik, is yet another bullseye for the experimental musician. Seeming to nail that impossible balance on the fulcrum between 'static' or 'still' digital noise and 'watery' melodies alluded to in the many titles on offer here ('Dolphin Spray', 'Doves Over Atlantis', 'Cafe del Mars'), this one is ultimately a worthy proof of concept: that even the most arid, bare-bones music can possibly originate from a flow state; that water itself is not wet. Get ready for an ice-cold plunge into a sonic liquid you've likely never immersed yourself in before.

Review: Actress is back with another masterful diversion away from the tired old narratives of what dance music used to be. Darren Cunningham himself suggests this record is a 'voyage into luxury sonics', and you can find yourself carried away on some truly exquisite musicality whether it's the meandering jazz piano of 'Push Power (a 1)' or the haunting voices flickering through 'Game Over (e 1)'. Throughout, though, there's still that strong sense of Actress as he's always been, anchored by grubby rhythms, passing through a filter unique to his sound alone. This special edition of the album comes with a bonus disc containing the '88' LP, which originally only came out on tape and digital in 2020.

Review: Darren Cunningham continues his inimitable exploration as Actress with a new album reportedly informed by game theory. Drawing on the tactics of chess as a framework for creating and releasing his ninth studio album, the artist himself describes this as a 'voyage into luxury sonics', and indeed 'Push Power (a 1)' has a certain languid piano jazz sophistication to it. But there's still plenty of that rugged, off-centre groove beating away underneath, and in its subdued and singular style, it feels like an Actress record through and through. Profound, moving and bold in its originality, this is yet another triumph for an artist who constantly shakes up the conventions of club music.

Review: Actress (Darren Cunningham) releases his ninth album to date, 'LXXXVIII', coming as the very first presentation of the artist's voyage into "luxury sonics". ?A lifetime in the making, 'LXXXVIII' is the culmination of 25 years' honing mind-shorting, soul-igniting audio infusions for dancefloors, rave dens, festivals and concert halls. Less grainy than earlier works like Ghettoville or more recent albums like XX2RME, this one recalls a more immediate approach, the same onee heard on his forum-bound free downloadable albums, working in a wider stylistic gamut from minimal to glitch.

Review: Announced with the most cryptic of statements and accompanied by a thousand online think pieces, the long awaited Ghettoville from Actress is finally here! Much like previous long players from the Werkdiscs boss, Ghettoville is not an album your brain will digest in one sitting, especially since it packs in sixteen tracks across the three slabs of vinyl. Described as "the bleached out and black tinted conclusion of the Actress image," Ghettoville draws on all the familiar Actress signifiers with the ghostly remnants of hip hop, Detroit techno and Chicago house scattered across the album. On immediate listen there are a few standout tracks, the ragged Motor City soul of "Gaze" and the brilliant finale "Rule" but we'll let you discover the rest for yourselves.