Actress - R.I.P (CD, Double vinyl LP)

“I'm just an instrument”, Darren Cunningham has stated recently. If so, he's surely constructed entirely from wires, circuits, buttons, plastic casing and keys so he must look bloody weird when he's stood in Tesco express buying some Singapore noodles. I bet he gets some real funny looks. Joshing aside, this second long-lengthy outing for the most Honest of Jons is coming over a real treat this drizzly aft. Taking his profoundly experimental post-bass music sounds further into the disorientating arena of blippy cosmic ambience, spacious abstract techno, chiming or glitchy minimalism; shuddering mind-shattering vistas and dreamy bass-infused music. My fave track of the bunch, 'Shadow from Tartarus', appears half-way through, coming into my ears like a gloriously fizzing and drowsy mind-clouding beast replete with seriously muffled and blunted 4/4 thud, phased digital fuzz and gorgeous, ascending vibraphone effect taking murky Berlin techno to new extremes of boundary-baiting and beauty. It's a remarkable centrepiece which thoroughly cements his reputation as a pioneering electro-bot. 'Caves of Paradise' is another wonderful piece for me, a brilliant chunk of future-braindance with a cute AFX-y melody bobbing under wooshy ice-dry atmospherics and clattering off-kilter woody beats. He just does what the hell he likes this feller, and so he should. A couple of tracks could really set the mood in a club, some cuts may just about work a particularly open-minded dancefloor, whereas others are more along the lines of beautiful alien sketches. Nothing too comfy or over-familiar from this guy and as a whole I'm as keen on set this as I was on 'Splazsh'; long may he continue to smudge the lines of electronica.