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You can always tempt me with a bit of dubby techno and so here we are with a new album by Actress. This is an album of beautifully hazy ambience by Werk Discs founder and controller Darren J. Cunningham. The first track opens with shards of lovely atmospheric synths/treated guitars beneath which there is cut up vocal. Track two has more cut up female soul vocal and a sturdy 4/4 beat whilst distant noises and atmospheres fade in and out of the mix. This pretty much is the template for the rest of the album, blissed out atmospheres going head to head with techno vocals and chopped up rhythm. Bits of the old Chicago sound here and there. Few industral sounding squeaks and clatters and there you have it.
Darren Cunningham’s eagerly-awaited new album is an adventurous, ultra-modern, thoroughly British affair, rummaging about in the inner lives of house and techno, and brilliantly elaborating the accomplishments of his debut, Hazyville.
For Splazsh the fog has lifted, the sounds are less submerged than before, but still sticky and close — a signature combination of exuberance and introversion, luminescence and puzzlement.
Unconstrained by the formal cliches of the dance music he loves, Actress’ melodies and arrangements are enthralled by their own genies. Worlds of disturbance and melancholy revolve giddyingly inside the insidious funk of tracks like Get Ohn and Lost. A range of musical influences is redrawn, from speed garage (Always Human) to grime (Wrong Potion), with none crowned king. There is a reflectiveness — the ambient drift of Futureproofing, the radiophonic judder of Supreme Cunnilingus — in amongst the industrial, synth-wave flavours of Casanova, and the stirring, stately Maze.
In love with the mysteries of groove and repetition, Splazsh is both a culmination and a new beginning for Actress, a substantial and eccentric work from a brave and coolly individual artist.
tracklisting
Hubble/ Lost/ Futureproofing/ Bubble Butts And Equations/ Always Human/ Get Ohn (Fairlight Mix)/ Maze/ Purrple Splazsh/ Senorita/ Let's Fly/ Wrong Potion/ Supreme Cunnilingus/ The Kettle Men/ Casanova
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