I Was There – Actress gets to Werk, South London, 2003-4

Werk – as in Kraftwerk, according to the man himself

There’s a moment in the film Studio Electronique, a documentary about the fledgling Sheffield pop scene of the 80s and 90s and the retired RAF engineer’s home-based studio that helped stoke it, where Human League/Heaven 17 man Martyn Ware remembers his classmate Joe Eliott of Dep Leppard fame coming into school and declaring he had the name for his rock band sorted.

“I’m gonna call it Def Leppard,” Ware recalls Eliott telling him, “only it’s going to be spelt wrong.”

“Good luck with that!” Ware remembers thinking to himself. At that point, the film cuts to a huge American stadium in which Def Leppard, spelling mistakes and all, are whipping a crowd up into an enthusiastic collective frenzy.

This writer’s reaction to the news that Darren Cunningham was planning to call himself Actress was something rather similar, if he’s completely honest with you. The Wolverhampton-born producer explained this to me as he handed me a copy of the inaugural vinyl release on Werk Discs, pointing out his track (‘Mentor’) on the V/A line up and passing on the polite hope that I might be able to review it somewhere.

The label, like the night, was to be named Werk. “Werk,” he told me, “as in Kraftwerk.” The record – ‘Werk One’ EP – was great, of course, and I did review it, obviously.

My prediction, as you’ve probably worked out, would prove about as accurate as Martyn Ware’s was.

Actress has gone on to become of electronica’s most beloved names and has seen his explorations go even further than that, branching out into the world of modern classical music. His appearance with regular collaborators the London Contemporary Orchestra in the Tanks – the concrete walled basement of the Tate Modern – for the BBC Proms in 2017 was simply stunning, one of the most memorable nights of fearless music this reviewer has ever witnessed.

After that, he used AI to create a new soundtrack to a Stockhausen opera in front of a sold out Festival Hall crowd at London’s South Bank Centre, performed in a very smart looking shirt and tie. He’s not quite a household name, or a Def Leppard-sized stadium act, but he’s not far off it. Those in the know will talk about his work in the same reverential tones as the Aphexs and Luke Viberts of this world.

It was the arrival of the latest Actress album Statik that suddenly provoked memories of my first encounter with Cunningham. It’s a highly accomplished and original album that brings comparisons between the sea and the sea of white noise that is ‘static’.

There are impressionist ambient works, evocative but amorphous mood pieces, but also the kind of concrete grooves that took me back more than 20 years, to a small box room above an unpretentious student pub called the Funky Monkey, not far from Camberwell Art College, and the night Cunningham ran with fellow DJs Ben Casey and Gavin Weale.

These days Camberwell is becoming – at long last – a hipster destination, not least thanks to the new undoubtedly switched on and impeccably well connected record store Dash The Henge, but back then it was a cultural wasteland. Back in 2003, the best entertainment in the area was to be found at The Silver Buckle pub, on the central cross between Denmark Hill and Camberwell New Road, which staged a karaoke night that inevitably ended with the then landlord and a handful of his mates singing the anti-IRA song ‘No Surrender’ to a room full of quite bemused looking Nigerians. Entertaining, yes. Likely to progress to a slot in The Proms? Probably not.

So the small posters advertising a free night of electronica once a month were a suprising delight for this Camberwell resident at least. Too select in appeal for the main pub, it was staged in the tiny upstairs room which could house about 50 people, provided said people had not eaten too many pies.

There were no orchestras there, nor even a live set, but what there was was amazing music being played on twin Technics. After the rapid changes and expansions in dance music, electronica had sprawled into a wide church – which suited this writer down to the ground – and you were as likely to hear the wigged out nu-electro of Drexciya as choppy, drum & bass-influenced Planet Mu tunes, leftfield hip-hop beats or the less banging end of Underground Resistance’s soulful techno empire. At the time, when most nights were banging techno or house, it was a revelation.

If memory serves correct, there were sometimes guests, and guests to reemember. The much missed Mira Calix and Andrea Parker of Mo’Wax/Sabrettes fame, once played a joint set that blew many a mind. Another time, at what was probably the most packed night of its brief-ish tenure, Rob Brown of Autechre treated us to an exclusive-packed set of highlights, many from the then highly productive Skam Records stable.

In recent times, Cunningham has become if not reclusive, certainly difficult to interview. Juno Daily’s attempts to take him to British Library’s current hit exhibition Beyond the Bassline: 500 Years of Black British Music for a piece in support of Statik were rejected because “he’s only doing covers”. Before the pandemic, he did agree to be interviewed by yours truly for Electronic Sound magazine but stipulated a list of subjects to discuss – one was Afro-futurism, I wish I could remember the rest – so specific that the magazine decided to decline the opportunity.

That all seems rather at odds with the jovial, approachable and gently funny guy who was always take time to have a quick chat in his warm, Wolverhampton tones. But at the same time, right from the word go, Darren Cunningham was evidently after achieving a certain intensity through his music and very much took his own path to achieve it. He knew what he wanted – and didn’t want – even then. The world of music is definitely richer for having him around.

Ben Willmott

Buy the new Actress album Statik on vinyl or CD by clicking here